Volleyball, Basketball, Soccer
Favorite athlete: Stephen Curry
Favorite team: Philadelphia Phillies!
Favorite memory competing in sports: “Singing ‘Love Story’ when traveling in our vans to the Christmas Tournament in Maryland and then spending the day in D.C.”
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that happened while competing in sports: “One of my teammates made her first three-pointer and was jogging backwards down the court, dancing wildly, and fell in front of a huge crowd. Luckily, she was athletic enough to roll over and act like she did it on purpose!”
Music on iPod: “You name it, I probably have it!”
Future plans: “I hope to become a pediatrician or a coach at the collegiate level and then have children!”
Words to live by: “Sometimes you’re ahead. Sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”
One goal before turning 30: “Be successful enough in my career that I can start my family.”
One thing people don’t know about me: “When I was younger, I never aspired to be anything but a professional surfer.”
Lisa Ridgeway aspires to one day become a pediatrician. The Upper Merion senior also would like to coach at the collegiate level.
If there’s a way to do both, it’s a safe bet she will for this is one student-athlete who has found a way to do it all during a stellar high school career.
By the time Ridgeway graduates this June, she will have accumulated 12 varsity letters.
If starting and starring in three sports for four consecutive years wasn’t enough, she’s also an honors student and takes a full course load of AP classes.
“It’s amazing,” said basketball coach Tom Schurtz, who teaches Ridgeway’s AP English class. “She’s the complete package – she’s a good citizen, a good student, a great basketball player and a great volleyball and soccer player.
“I know she’d like to play basketball (at the collegiate level), but she’s decided her first and primary responsibility is to find a school that she will be challenged at and that has what she’s looking for in an education. She’ll probably use basketball as a vehicle to get the education she wants.”
And quite a vehicle basketball will be for Ridgeway, who has led the Vikings in scoring and rebounding every year since she stepped into the starting lineup as a freshman.
“She’s been the backbone of this team for the last couple of years,” said Schurtz. “I’m excited for her senior year because when she was a freshman we were really struggling, and I was asking her to do a lot.
“I told her, ‘By your senior year, we will fix this. You and I will sit down and put the pieces together, and we will fix this.’ I think we’re starting to do that.”
The Vikings are 7-3 in the month of December.
“A lot of that (success) is because of the effort Lisa has put in during the offseason,” Schurtz said.
The Vikings are coming off a huge 74-65 win over Reservoir to capture the title at the Sherwood Holiday Tournament in Maryland. Not surprisingly, Ridgeway copped tournament MVP honors, accumulating a triple-double in back-to-back games. In the title game, Ridgeway had 21 points, 15 rebounds and 11 steals.
“When you talk about basketball players, you look for strengths and weaknesses,” Schurtz said. “Lisa’s complete – she’s a good ball handler, she’s a good shooter, she’s a good defender, she’s a good post player, and she can guard the post or she can guard the wing.”
Ridgeway has been competing on the AAU circuit since she was in seventh grade, most recently with the Rebels.
“She spends her summer playing 75 basketball games,” Schutz said. “What that’s translated into is she’s focused.
“We’re in a position now where she’s helping her teammates focus. Whether it’s at practice or a game, she’s very positive, and she leads by example.”
Ridgeway, according to Schurtz, is also a student of the game.
“She’s the type of player who can cover positions one through five, and she can play positions one through five, and that’s really rare,” he said. “If a post player gets in foul trouble, she can play post and cover the post. I can also have her bring the ball up against pressure on the very same series.”
Ridgeway, the youngest of three children, has been playing basketball since a young age, but that was just one of a multitude of sports she played and excelled at. She also played club volleyball and soccer and played softball until she was in eighth grade.
“I think I’m a competitive person by nature,” she said. “At the same time, I know the whole point is to have fun, but if you compete, you do end up having fun.”
Ask Ridgeway her favorite sport, and she cannot be pinned down.
“I really just love whatever sport season it is,” she said. “I love basketball when I’m playing, I love volleyball when I’m playing, and the same with soccer too. It just depends on what time of year it is.”
That being said, Ridgeway, an all-league forward in basketball, admits that she has invested more time in basketball than any other sport.
Still, she wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on playing the other two.
“I think that’s what helps me not get sick of any sport,” she said. “It’s always changing, and I’m changing my mindset.
“I think the girls that stick with one sport start to lose their passion for it. That’s why I love playing three sports. It just keeps me interested and motivated.”
Ridgeway played a key role in the success of her Viking volleyball squad that captured the school’s first ever District One AAA title last fall. A first team all-league, all-district and all-state selection, the Vikings’ middle hitter routinely stymied players who were much taller than she was.
“She’s a multi-talented athlete, but one of her biggest strengths besides her athletic ability is she competes hard,” Viking volleyball coach Tony Funston said. “She maximizes her athletic ability, and not all athletes do that. She maximizes her talents by playing extremely hard at whatever she does.
“Hard doesn’t always translate in success, but when she makes mistakes, she learns from them. What she did for us more than anything was when there was a great hitter on the other team – she would control them enough so that that person would not win the game by themselves, and she was positive enough and confident enough in her own abilities to make the players around her better.”
The Vikings, who captured the SOL American Conference crown, did not lose a game during a remarkable district title run.
“I have been waiting for a team like that,” Ridgeway said. “It was a special season. I loved all the girls. We had so much fun with everything.
“It started off my year right. Now for the rest of the year I can look back on that and be optimistic and know it’s possible – we can have a team that’s that good.”
Ridgeway is taking that mindset onto the basketball court.
“For the past couple of years, we struggled a little bit,” she said. “We didn’t really play as a team. We had a lot of things to work on, but this year we have a little bit more experience even though we have a lot of juniors.
“I think we realize we need the confidence to win, and we’re finally coming together as a team and having fun like we should.
“We were in the locker room after we won (the tournament title), and one of the girls said, ‘We’re like good.’ For the first time, it kind of sunk in we can beat teams and we can compete rather than struggle to put up points.”
Soccer is also part of the equation for Ridgeway, who plays defense for a Viking squad that advanced to districts last year.
“We have 13 or 14 seniors on the team,” she said. “We’re all the same girls that played club soccer together since we were U-8s.”
As for next year, Ridgeway isn’t sure exactly where she’ll end up, but it most certainly will be at a highly regarded academic school where she plans to major in biology and continue her athletic career.
“I know I want to play something,” she said. “I’m leaning towards basketball.
“I’m can’t imagine life without sports, but I’m looking at academics first because I’m not going to play in the WNBA or anything like that. Establishing the right steps to get my career is the first step when I’m looking at colleges.”
And taking Ridgeway’s schedule of the past four years into account, it’s not hard to imagine somewhere down road the Upper Merion senior making the combination of pediatrician and collegiate coach not only manageable but easy.
