Soccer, Basketball
Favorite athlete: Maggie Lucas
Favorite team: Villanova Men’s Basketball
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning the District One championship at Temple University
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: When we missed a rebound and Coach Holzer slammed his clipboard on his knee and it broke in half on the bench.
Music on mobile device: Rap
Future plans: Going to Muhlenberg College to continue my academic and athletic career. I plan to get my bachelors in biology, then continue on to grad school to become a Physician’s Assistant
Words to live by: “It’s about the journey, not the destination.”
One goal before turning 30: To be married, start a family, and have a secure and successful job
One thing people don’t know about me: I ate my first peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 18 years’ old
By Mary Jane Souder
Tori Dowd, according to her coach, is first and foremost concerned about points. But not in the usual sense.
“She’s the kind of kid who comes out of a game and asks how many points the player she’s guarding scored, and that just says so much about the kind of player she is,” Souderton coach Lynn Carroll said of her senior point guard. “What a gift for a coach.
“What she does on the defensive end is remarkable. For 32 minutes, she never takes a second off. Ever. I don’t know how she does it night in and night out. She practices that way, and not many kids do that. She is just relentless. Her on-the-ball defense is as good as I’ve seen in a very long time. She has foot speed and she does have the physical tools to defend that way, but most of it is just determination.”
Dowd was a key player in the Indians’ historic run to the SOL Continental Conference championship, the SOL Tournament title and the District One 6A crown. The senior point guard was more than happy to let her teammates bask in the spotlight while she did all the little things that made the Indians so successful. Like protecting the basketball, setting up her teammates and, of course, playing defense.
“I’ve just always loved defense,” Dowd said. “You can’t always control how good your shots are, but you can control how much effort you put in on defense.
“I could always fall back on defense to pick up my game and get my teammates motivated and get us on a run. That’s what I tried to do.”
And few did it better than Dowd, who leaves Souderton as the program’s all-time leader in minutes played.
“That tells you how important she was to us,” Carroll said.
When Dowd arrived on the scene as a freshman, the Indians’ coach immediately identified her as someone she wanted in her starting lineup, and the senior captain remembers stepping into a lineup of all upperclassmen for the season-opening tournament.
“It was definitely nerveracking,” Dowd said. “During the championship game, I was up against a senior point guard from Allentown Central Catholic who was committed to play in college.
“She was strong, aggressive and all up in my face, something I wasn’t used to. I only had one game under my belt and she had three whole seasons under hers. She definitely challenged me to the point where I’ll never forget it.”
These days, it’s a safe bet that opponents use the exact same words to describe the relentless Dowd, who is strong, aggressive and always in her opponent’s face.
“I do believe that one game (against ACCHS) did make me a better player and made me play harder in the years to come,” she said. “That one game taught me what high school basketball is all about.
“There’s always going to be people who are bigger, faster, more experienced and better than you, but you have to work hard and play to the best of your ability.”
And no, one, according to Carroll, works harder or plays harder than Dowd.
“I’ve had this conversation with a lot of kids over the last four years,” Carroll said. “If we don’t think they’re working hard enough, I can say, ‘Are you working as hard as Tori?’
“Most likely the answer is no, no matter who you are. For me as a coach, I can then say, ‘Well, you’re not working hard enough.’ It’s just such a gift to have someone like that.”
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Dowd grew up playing hoops in the driveway with her older sister Stephanie. She also followed her sister to the soccer pitch and began playing both competitively at a young age, joining the AAU basketball circuit when she was eight and playing for Fencor’s U9 team. For soccer, Dowd got her start with Towamencin.
When there was a conflict between the two sports, Dowd had an easy solution.
“Honestly, when there was overlap, whatever weekend was more important,” she said. “If it was states for soccer, I went to soccer, or if it was regionals for basketball, I went to basketball. Whichever weekend was more important, I went there.”
When it came to choosing a favorite, Dowd couldn’t. She loved them both and has the distinction of being a rare four-year varsity starter in both.
“I would never go back in time and not play two sports,” Dowd said. “It was always fun.
“I had two different teams to fall back on, a lot of people around school and the community. They’re both so different and they both were outlets for me that I just enjoyed being there with my friends. It just made it fun.”
The scales began to tip in favor of basketball toward the end of her junior year that saw an upstart Indian squad that had won just eight games the preceding year advance to the PIAA 6A state semifinals. Souderton lost to North Allegheny by one point on a foul shot – after a questionable call just over midcourt – with less than a second remaining in the game.
The Indians entered the 2017-18 season as a heavy favorite to advance to the state title game. They won 23 straight before falling once again in the state semifinals – this time with 2.6 seconds remaining – by a foul shot to eventual state champion Upper Dublin.
“Obviously, the day it happened, that game – it sucked,” Dowd said. “It was like, ‘Two years in a row this happened.’ But two years in a row we competed this much, and even the second year, we didn’t go further in the state tournament, but we accomplished so much more in the postseason, and it was still such a great year for us.”
Dowd will eventually take the ‘still’ out of that sentence and remember everything her team accomplished and realize that what they didn’t was not nearly as important.
“People ask me about the season – only good things come to mind,” Dowd said.
The senior point guard is a much different player than the one that stepped onto the court as a freshman.
“As a freshman and sophomore, we needed her to attack the basket a lot and try to score, and in many circumstances, she was our best chance to get the ball to go into the bucket,” Carroll said.
With the transfer of Kate Connolly from Archbishop Wood and the emergence of Alana Cardona, Megan Walbrandt and Megan Bealer, Dowd no longer had the burden of scoring points on her shoulders.
“Over the last two years, her role changed a lot,” Carroll said. “She was much more of your typical point guard who would set up other people.
“I think a lot of people wouldn’t handle that all that well. Tori is a team-first kid. Whatever we needed her to do, whatever the team needed her to do, she would do. She’s one of the best ball handlers I’ve ever coached. She rarely turns the ball over. We always had so much confidence when the ball was in her hands.”
Playing point guard was a natural fit for Dowd.
“I think it all started because I just saw the court well,” she said. “I was a pretty good ball handler and was good at finding my open teammate. I enjoy playing it because it takes a lot of leadership and I like to fill that position on the court.”
Dowd will be taking her talents to Muhlenberg College this fall.
“Everyone always says when you get to the right campus, you know it, and it just felt right,” she said. “When I met the team, they were all really nice, and I liked the style they play – it’s fast paced, up and down, they press and they like to get the ball down the court as fast as they can. I just like to play with a lot of energy. The coach was extremely nice. It just felt right.”
An excellent student, Dowd, who has taken numerous AP courses, is a member of the National Honor Society. She plans to major in biology with her sights set on a career as a physician’s assistant.
“I’ve always wanted to work with children, so I always thought I’d be a teacher, but after going through all my years of school, I decided I wanted to experience something else,” Dowd said. “I wanted to be a pediatrician, but I didn’t want to go to school until I was 30.
“I decided on physician’s assistant because you can move around to all different parts of hospitals and can do pediatrics or health care.”
Dowd is also part of the LINK Crew, a student organization that helps freshmen acclimate to high school life. She is a member of the Athletic Leadership Council and is involved with Unified Track and Field.
“She’s a fun kid,” Carroll said. “Like many of the girls on the team, she likes to have a good time, she likes to joke around. Her teammates love her.
“A lot of what she does on the basketball court really speaks to the kind of person that she is. It’s part of what made this season ending so tough. Yes, it was tough that we didn’t play for a state championship. That was very disappointing, but it’s just as disappointing that we’re not coaching these kids anymore, and Tori is a big part of that.”
