Basketball
Favorite athlete: Breanna Stewart
Favorite team: UConn Women's basketball
Favorite memory competing in sports: My favorite memory was hitting the half court shot against North Penn in a district playoff game to put us into overtime.
Most embarrassing/funniest moment while competing in sports: My first varsity point was a wide open lay-up and I walked but the ref didn't call it.
Music on iPod: Fetty Wap
Future plans: I will be attending the University of the Sciences where I will be playing basketball and majoring in Pre-Physician's Assistant.
Words to live by: "Everything happens for a reason".
One goal before turning 30: To be happy working my dream job and have a family.
One thing people don't know about me: I have lived in Hawaii
By Mary Jane Souder
John Calderaio remembers it well.
The Warwick-Warrington Girls’ Basketball coach had just gotten his first glimpse of then nine-year-old Jordan Vitelli on the basketball court when – 24 hours later while watching his daughter’s soccer game – he spotted Vitelli playing on an adjacent soccer field.
“No sooner had we seen her than she’s chasing down a ball, and she gets a look on her face like, ‘No one is going to stop me. I’m going to make this happen,’” Calderaio said. “She beat this kid to the ball, slid over, kicked it away.
“My daughter who was watching the game with me and I fist bumped each other – we have a real player here, one of those kids that has the ‘it’ factor, and Jordan has that. That’s one of the things you can’t coach. You can get kids to be more aggressive, you can get them to play harder, and things like that, but you can’t teach that ‘it’ factor.”
The now Central Bucks South senior recently completed a stellar high school basketball career, putting her name in the record books as the program’s all-time leading scorer. In a not-so-surprising coincidence, coach Beth Mattern also mentioned the ‘it’ factor when describing her senior captain.
“She’s the cream of the crop in my book,” the Titans’ coach said. “I don’t say that lightly because I have a lot of respect for the girls who are on the court right now and who have been previously, but she just has that special ‘it’ factor about her and that ability to lead and to work hard and kids follow her lead.”
Intangibles aside, Vitelli is clearly among the very best. The senior guard capped her final high school basketball season with a selection to the 2016 PA Sports Writers All-State second team as well as the 2016 Inquirer Southeastern Pennsylvania second team. Vitelli is a three-time all-league selection, and she is a two-time team MVP. The senior captain leaves South as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,048 points.
Mention the accolades to Vitelli, and she will talk about only one - scoring a thousand points. Making the accomplishment so significant is the fact that she entered her final high school season needing 401 points to reach the milestone.
“We had to get so lucky in the playoff run,” she said. “It was a lot to take in knowing I might not reach it, but I’d be so close. I tried to hide it as much as I could, but I wanted to reach that goal so badly.”
As for the other accolades that came her way - ask Vitelli five different ways what it was like to be recognized as one of the very best in the state, and she moves on to another topic. Vitelli doesn’t talk about being a team-first player, she simply is one.
“She’s just special,” Mattern said. “She’s hard to actually describe because any words I come up with to describe Jordan almost puts her in a box because she’s so many things.
“She’s mature, she’s responsible, she is poised under pressure, and she’s a hard worker. She’s flat out just a leader and someone who people follow and listen to and just respect. She just gets that respect by being herself and just working on her game and staying true to that because that’s who she is.”
If that’s all anyone knew about Vitelli, that would be more than enough to put her in a category reserved for a select few, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Bad set of wheels
Unbeknownst to most, Vitelli played her final two high schools seasons in severe pain.
“Sophomore year I had a stress fracture, and when I came back a month later, I developed what we thought were shin splints,” she said. “I played AAU season, and they weren’t as bad until a tournament in (Washington) D.C. where you play six games.
“The last game was a huge game, and I had to ask my coach to take me out because I was hurting the team, and I knew that staying in the game wouldn’t have helped us. I couldn’t even make a shot because my legs were so dead.”
Vitelli took time off in August and saw several specialists. She thought she found a solution.
“I run foot over foot, and they thought it was that, so I did physical therapy for two months to fix my running gait, and that didn’t help,” she said. “I still had shin splints, but they weren’t as bad because I hadn’t been running.
“The beginning of my junior season they were pretty bad since I was playing a lot of the game, so they became inflamed very quickly, and it was hard to give 110 percent when I couldn’t physically give it.”
The symptoms were always the same.
“My feet go numb, and they feel like cement bricks, and my shins are on fire,” Vitelli said. “Throughout the season this year, before my adrenaline kicks in, I had to ask for a sub in the first three minutes.
“I would get a quick water break, sit down and let my adrenaline rise. Then I’d get back into the game, and most of the games, like the big games, it was a little easier for me to ignore the pain and be able to play really hard and do what I wanted to do. Towards the end of the season, they were so bad that the adrenaline wasn’t taking over any more.”
It would have been easy to take time off. Vitelli didn’t.
“She practiced hard, she practiced a lot,” Mattern said. “I can’t remember when she didn’t practice.
“She has never used her legs as an excuse. People don’t know she has that issue because she plays through it. Sometimes she’ll say, ‘I need a minute.’”
Listening to Mattern tell it, Vitelli was barely able to make it through practice the day before the Titans’ district quarterfinal game against top-seeded North Penn.
“I knew she was going to play because she always plays,” the Titans’ coach said. “I just knew her legs were different and worse than what they had been.
“I wasn’t sure what we were going to get.”
What the Titans got was a performance for the ages. Vitelli scored 28 points, including a shot from well beyond halfcourt to knot the score at the buzzer after North Penn took a 45-42 lead with 2.9 seconds remaining. The Titans went on to pull off the upset in overtime.
“She was pretty unbelievable,” Mattern said. “That’s just part of Jordan’s aura.”
Vitelli on the move
If it seems as though Vitelli moves through life easily, fitting comfortably into any setting and with any age group, perhaps that’s because she’s had the kind of life experiences few have had. The daughter of a U.S. Navy Captain, she moved six times and had lived in five different states by the time she was in fourth grade. The third in a line of sisters, Vitelli and twin brother Joe – a member of the football and lacrosse team at South - were born in Georgia. From there, the family moved to Pennsylvania and then California and Maryland followed by a three-year stop in Hawaii before making the final move to Pennsylvania.
“Fourth grade it wasn’t that hard to move, but coming here and not knowing anyone and having to make new friends and starting over – it’s kind of hard,” Vitelli said. “But I think that’s why we always keyed on sports because it was easy to make new friends that had the same interest as you, so sports definitely made the transition to different states easier.”
Vitelli competed year round in soccer, basketball and softball. Basketball was always number one for Vitelli, who got her first taste of the AAU circuit in ninth grade and then found a home with Montgomery Fusion the following year. From the outset, playing basketball was never about individual goals.
“I think the only goal I set for myself was scoring a thousand points and I knew it was an accomplishment my parents really wanted me to reach,” she said.
The chronic leg pain as well as her commitment to pursue a career in nursing all but took the idea of playing collegiate basketball off the table for Vitelli.
The next chapter
Vitelli grew up knowing she wanted to pursue a career in the medical field.
“Nursing seemed to have the aspect of taking care of people and having that one-on-one contact with them,” she said. “Through high school, I knew I wanted to be more than a nurse.
“I figured I’d go into nursing, work a couple of years, have that experience with the patients and then go back to nurse practitioner school.”
With older sister Madi pursuing a career as a physician’s assistant, Vitelli more recently began to research that career option as well.
“In the back of my head, I knew either of those occupations I would have been happy with,” she said. “I could see myself doing both.”
With a good education at the top of her list when it came time to choosing a college, Vitelli made a deposit to attend Penn State University, following in the footsteps of Madi and leaving open the option of playing club basketball.
“Throughout high school, people would ask me if I wanted to play basketball in college, and I would say I wasn’t sure because I knew it had to meet my academic standards, and also, I thought I wanted a big school,” Vitelli said. “I could see myself at Penn State.”
But when her final high school season ended in a state quarterfinal loss to eventual state champion Cumberland Valley, Vitelli was no longer certain she could walk away from a sport she loved.
“I could play club for Penn State and be happy, but I don’t think it would have completely filled the void of that competitiveness,” she said. “It wouldn’t have been perfect for me.”
What felt perfect for Vitelli was an opportunity to play at the University of the Sciences, a highly regarded academic school whose coaches – head coach Jackie Hartzell and assistant Jim Ricci – targeted the senior guard as a top recruit.
“U Sciences was always in the back of my head because I knew they had the pre-physician’s assistant program,” Vitelli said.
In early April, Vitelli e-mailed Hartzell, visited the campus and four days later committed to the school after playing in the All-Star Labor Classic, telling Hartzell before she’d broken the news to her family.
“I think it was the perfect moment I could have committed,” said Vitelli, who will be joining forces there with North Penn standout Mikaela Giuliani. “It worked out perfectly.
“My family means a lot to me. They’re my number one fans. I’ve learned a lot from my mom and dad through sports. It’s very important to me that they’re able to come to my games in college, and even my grandmom (Grandma Grace) who is always at my sporting events – she would come to practices if she could, so to be close to her is awesome.”
As for the chronic leg pain that plagued Vitelli the past two-plus seasons, that will soon be a thing of the past. Her condition – not shin splints after all – was recently diagnosed as bilateral compartment syndrome. Vitelli will have surgery on both legs on May 26 and should – according to her doctor’s prognosis – be 100 percent within three months.
Playing on pain-free legs will be something brand new to Vitelli.
“I’ve been playing with it for two years,” she said. “I feel as though everyone feels that pain. I don’t remember what it’s like to run without it.
“A lot of times I would be hesitant – my legs would hurt and I couldn’t drive to the basket. I would do a pull-up jumper because my legs were so tired. I think it’s really going to change the way I play.”
Setting the bar high
Vitelli will leave Central Bucks South as the new standard bearer for basketball players. The senior guard - just the second female to surpass the 1,000-point milestone - led the Titans to their first ever state berth and subsequently their first win in states last winter. Vitelli speaks fondly of the support the team received from both the school and community during its magical run, but what she will remember most was the special bond she shared with her teammates.
“Not only will I take away the friendships but I’ll take away the memories that we made together on an off the court,” the senior captain said. “Through wins and losses, we were always there for each other, motivating one another to be better as a player. On the court, we became a team, and off the court, we became a family.”
An excellent student, Vitelli boasts a cumulative GPA of close to 4.0. She is part of Titans Connect and Athletes Helping Athletes as well as Link, OEG (Operation Eternal Gratitude), a club that focuses on soldiers and veterans, and HOSA, an organization for future health professionals.
Vitelli will be missed for her contributions on the court at South, but it’s much more than that.
“Jordan has been a one of a kind player that I feel so lucky to have been able to coach,” Mattern said. “She takes her academics and her roles on and off the court as a leader seriously. Most importantly, she is a great person who cares about being a great sportswoman and a great friend to everyone she knows.
“There’s no one that I know of that comes in contact with Jordan that does not like her and – once they spend a little time with her – respect her and what she does and how she carries herself.”
