Track & Field
Favorite athlete: Stephen Curry
Favorite team: Dallas Cowboys
Favorite memory competing in sports: Leagues freshman year at Bensalem. This meet is when I realized that I love this sport.
The most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Junior year I was trying to show a freshman how to do the glide, the grass was muddy, I slipped and face planted into the mud.
Music on my playlist: It depends on the day but The Weeknd is never skipped!
Future plans: I plan on throwing at Allegheny College and starting my career in the film/TV industry.
Words to live by: "If you don't fall, how are you going to know what getting up is like?" -Stephen Curry
One goal before turning 30: I want to have completed college and work in the film/TV industry
One thing people don’t know about me: I have a permanent reminder on my bicep that "My mom is my strength."
By Ed Morrone
To understand what makes Ehliyah Wade so special and beloved inside the William Tennent community, one must visit the greatest source of her strength.
Ebony Lacy was Wade’s best friend. She and Wade did everything and went everywhere together. They especially loved to sing songs, whether they were tunes the duo heard on the radio or silly ones they made up together. Like Wade, everybody knew and loved Lacy, with their infectious social butterfly personas making them magnetic forces that the masses gravitated toward.
Ebony Lacy died on October 29, 2020, in Memphis, Tennessee. She was Ehliyah Wade’s best friend.
She was also her mother.
The death of a loved one, especially a parent, is bound to hit anybody like an uppercut. As a child, it’s even more impossible to comprehend. So when Lacy passed suddenly and tragically, it would’ve been understandable if the trauma sent Wade to her knees. And while she has certainly had moments of pain and anguish in private, something beautiful came out of the biggest loss of Wade’s life: she used her mother’s spirit to uplift the lives of everybody around her.
The results have been staggering and profound. But first, Wade would like to say some things about her best friend, who she keeps close to her in the forms of a necklace around her neck and a tattoo on her bicep that reads My mom is my strength.
“She was the grown version of me,” said Wade, a senior thrower on Tennent’s indoor and outdoor track teams, as well as a captain of the school marching band’s Color Guard. “I’m the spitting image of my mom. I act like her, and I have her caring heart. She was the older me. We were best friends and the same person who did everything together.”
Wade still feels her mother with her everywhere she goes, especially in the form of music.
“Music was the big thing for us,” she said. “We made up and sang songs, so there are so many that make me think of her. Say I’m having a bad day with a lot of heavy things on my mind, and I walk in a store and I hear a song that we sang is playing. That’s her, having my back and looking out for me. Or I’ll be crying in my room, and something will fall over and I just know. She’s still with me, looking down at me and smiling every day.”
Once you start talking to those in the Tennent community who are close to Wade, it becomes quickly evident how much of a shining star she is inside the school building. Several of her coaches spoke of Wade’s natural motherly instinct, and it’s easy to decipher who that came from.
Wade was born and raised in Memphis, and while she said she moved around a lot as a kid, it was mostly around her hometown. She also spent some time living in Minnesota, and ultimately came to Pennsylvania in eighth grade to live with her grandparents, as her parents in Memphis saw it as an opportunity for Wade to be more financially-stable and have better educational opportunities than the city’s public schools offered.
Originally a cheerleader, Wade found her activities instantly at Tennent, joining the marching band in the fall before making both the indoor and outdoor varsity track teams as a freshman. Despite waiting behind upperclassmen at first, she acclimated quickly.
It wasn’t long before coaches, teammates and administrators at Tennent discovered that Wade wasn’t like any other student. She was something much, much more.
“She is one of the most humble kids I have ever met,” said Nicole Rich, Wade’s assistant indoor coach and a longtime family friend. “By that I mean with everything she’s gone through with her mom passing, a lot of kids would take that energy and put it into a million other negative places. With Ehliyah, she used it to her advantage. It was tragic, and she did have a hard time understanding why. But she’s using it more as ‘My mom empowers me.’ She’s a ray of sunshine.”
Rich, who also is a cafeteria worker at Tennent, said Wade stops by every single day of school to say hello and chat. Rich also said she talks to Wade like an adult, confiding in her about things happening in her life at home. The two comfort and uplift one another. Rich has three sons, ages 9, 6 and 3, and Wade is one of the first people Rich will call if she needs someone to watch them. Rich has seen how good Wade is with her nephew, Noah, and trusts Wade unconditionally with the wellbeing of her own children.
“She’s the type of person who makes you step back and say this is the reason why I do this,” Rich said. “Her aura and glow makes you so comfortable. She makes you feel like you can depend on her for anything, and I want her to depend on me as much as I know I can depend on her.”
Rich has been close to Wade and her family for decades, having run at Tennent in the early 2000s with Wade’s uncle (and Noah’s father), Troy. But those sentiments on Wade’s character and humanity extend beyond her close friends.
Charlie Dicarne is the marching band director at Tennent and Wade’s faculty supervisor with the Color Guard. Dicarne talked about his own personal struggles during the pandemic, saying he sometimes had difficulty getting out of bed, coming to work and trying to make sense of it all for his students. It was hard, really hard, and while he tried, Dicarne wasn’t succeeding in hiding his anxiety.
His students, led by Wade, approached him one day at school and asked him if he was okay. He wasn’t, and he broke down in tears as Wade and her classmates were quick to console him.
“When I was younger, I felt like you learned from teachers,” Dicarne said. “Now that I’m an educator, I learn just as much from them as they do from me. Ehliyah was able to be that mother hen, and that rubs off on the other students. She is so humble and kind, and one of the biggest sweethearts in the world. Everybody knows and loves her at this school.”
Wade is the kind of kid who breaks down cliques and barriers, no easy feat inside a high school in 2022. She is as friendly with the athletes as she is any other group, and none of it is forced. Being a leader simply comes natural, and the empathy she holds has been passed down to her by her late mother and her surviving family members.
Vinnie Murphy is the head indoor track coach at Tennent, and like anybody you talk to, he has a story he wants to share about Wade. Back in Wade’s freshman year, she had a teammate and close friend who was the only one on the team who qualified for states. Not wanting her friend to have to endure such a nerve-wracking experience alone, she asked Murphy if she could accompany the two to Penn State in case her teammate got performance anxiety.
“She has this ability to be an old soul,” Murphy said. “She is wise beyond her years, and that was the first time where I said, wow, this kid is really something. She’s able to have a deep and powerful conversation with me as an adult, but also flip the switch and go read to kindergartners. There’s such a range there to be able to deal with little kids on their level, calm her best friend down during the biggest meet of her life and also teach every adult she comes into contact with a lesson on life as well. She bridges every single gap, and really is a light whenever you see her.”
Wade has become a difference-making athlete at Tennent, especially as a thrower on the track teams. Throwing is not the most popular aspect of track and field, and despite the fact that she had no prior experience throwing a discus or shot-put before ninth grade, she quickly became skilled at it because like everything else in her life, she threw herself completely into the endeavor. She studies YouTube videos exhaustively, lifts weights to strengthen her core and practices her technique daily.
But just as much as she puts into her own athletic pursuits, Wade leans into her mama bear persona even more. She loves to be the leader, the glue that holds things together, and supporting her teammates comes naturally to her.
“It’s just so much a part of me that I don’t know how to not do it,” she said of being someone her school counts on. “It’s who I am and how I am. I have such a caring heart, and I want to see everyone win. I want to be on top with everyone, not alone. I love seeing my friends, family and community thrive just as much as me. I try to make everyone happy as best as I can, even if it’s just putting a smile on their faces. You never know what a person is going through, and a smile can go a long way. I have my own share of issues and trauma, and I just love giving back as a happy person.”
Wade’s teachers and coaches know she has gone through hell, and all of them are blown away at how she has handled it. She never lets on publicly if she is struggling, so much so that her coaches doubted that most of the students in the school know Wade’s story. Murphy said that the biggest role model in the Tennent community is not a teacher, a coach, a principal or star quarterback.
“It’s Ehliyah Wade,” he said. “I don’t know if people here knew her full story, but they need to.”
Of course, these adults in the Tennent community were all there for Wade at her lowest, even if she never showed outward signs of cracking. Wade told a story about a conversation she had with her ninth-grade biology teacher after her mother died. The teacher leveled with Wade, telling her that she was going to be sad about her mother’s death her whole life. That much is unavoidable. But, the teacher continued, you still have a future to live for, and that matters.
A lightbulb went off in Wade’s head, effectively her Ah-ha! moment. She was utterly devastated to lose her best friend, but her mind quickly began racing as to how she could turn the worst time of her life into a positive, and not just a positive for herself individually. Wade meant the people around her even more than herself, wondering how many folks she could touch with her mother’s spirit. As it turned out, the answer was a lot.
“Suddenly, the rainy clouds went away,” she said. “Yes, I was a mess. I still am, privately, but I knew that I had to get through this. Losing my mom has helped me so much in so many different ways. How to be a better leader, how to be more empathetic to those around me. It also helped me realize that everyone has stuff going on, not just me. I wanted to be more open to people’s thoughts and feelings, and just be less self-centered.”
On her bad days, she leans on family. She visited her dad and other family back in Memphis over Christmas break, and she is ensconced in love and support at home from her grandparents, uncle and cousin, all of whom she shares a house with.
It would be understandable for the Tennent faculty and staff to want to keep Wade around forever. How are they going to hold things together without her presence once she graduates? It’s startling to hear just how many of these grown men and women have come to depend on this young woman so deeply, and they are going to miss her immeasurably. That being said, everyone in Wade’s orbit knows her star is shooting to unlimited heights, and they all know she is going to continue impacting the world with her positive light and spirit on a much wider level.
From here, Wade’s journey will carry her to Allegheny College in western Pennsylvania, a Division III school about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh. She will be throwing for Allegheny’s track and field team and plans to major in television and film, stating a desire to become either a sports broadcaster, or perhaps even a director or a producer. She fell in love with the idea of being both in front of and behind the camera while getting involved with the student television station at Tennent. She also took an Intro to Film Production class that she found fascinating.
She called Allegheny her dream school, and said being able to throw for the track team was “just a cherry on top.” Wade also said that while going through the recruitment and college selection process, she knew that Ebony was somewhere out there, watching, guiding and smiling that her daughter was still pushing forward and excelling at everything in her life.
“One hundred percent,” she said.
The prevailing theme here seems to be that Wade is so universally loved at Tennent because she is authentically herself. The care she exhibits for others is genuine, to the point where anyone in her presence becomes organically comfortable and at ease.
“She’s been able to stay Ehliyah,” Tennent spring track head coach Eric Reynolds said. “For kids, using a popcorn analogy: every kernel pops at a different time. Ehliyah’s popped early and she matured as an individual and human being. She is enthusiastic and puts her all into whatever activity she’s involved in. She really is the mother of the group — very grounded, mature and intelligent.”
Even the administrators feel it. John Creighton is Tennent’s athletic director, and his first year on the job coincided with Wade’s freshman year. They were both new, having come from other schools in other places, and they leaned on each other as they felt out their new surroundings.
“When we first started talking about athletics, her inquiries were that of a student preparing for college in their junior or senior year, and she was in ninth grade,” Creighton recalled. “She holds herself to the highest of standards and smiles while doing it. Leaders make everyone better around them, and that is Ehliyah Wade. Students like her are why I became a teacher and coach.”
Wade feels the love, and loves them all back tenfold. Having moved around so much as a kid, she said Tennent was the first school she spent four straight years in. This allowed her to put down roots, and once those roots started blooming into a magnificent flower, her Tennent family was the umbrella that protected her from the worst storm of her life.
“I love them so, so, so, so much,” Wade said. “Coming to school every day is always the best part of my day. I love how there’s so many different people I can go to for advice. If I’m having a bad day, I know the coaches and teachers to talk to. They understand that sometimes Ehliyah isn’t okay and feels like crap because certain things happened. There’s only three months left here, and I’m really going to miss it next year.
“What I’ll always remember the most about this community is how they accepted me for who I am and how I am. They were so accepting and so supportive, and I just love them so much."
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