School: Pennridge
Brandon Cope
Football, Track & Field
Favorite athlete: John Elway
Favorite team: Denver Broncos
Favorite memory competing in sports: Playing in the Quakertown game last year and seeing the game winning field goal.
Music on iPod: All genres except country
Future plans: Graduate high school and go to college
Words to live by: “Be a leader!”
One goal before turning 30: Have a family
One thing people don’t know about me: I enjoy skiing during the offseason.
Brandon Cope, according to coach Randy Cuthbert, is an ‘All-American kid.’
In truth, the Pennridge senior is a whole lot more than that.
Cope was the defensive MVP of the Rams’ varsity squad as both a sophomore and junior. He was a first team all-SOL linebacker last season and second team all-SOL tight end and also was named an All-Southeastern Pa. linebacker. A two-year captain for the football squad, Cope went out for track to stay in shape and ended up winning the SOL Continental Conference title in javelin last spring.
And that’s just the beginning.
Cope takes all honors and AP classes and is ranked in the top five percent of his class with a GPA of 4.296. He is recruited by a list of schools that includes Princeton, Penn and Lehigh among others for his excellence in the classroom as well as the gridiron.
“He’s a great kid,” Cuthbert said. “He’s one of the top kids in his class academically, which is rare because he’s also an unbelievable athlete.
“You get spoiled when you have someone like him because he can do so many things. He’s literally like another coach on the field.”
And that is not just lip service from Cuthbert. Cope is a student of the game, and when he steps onto the field for games, he is armed with information that precious few athletes have, thanks to defensive coordinator Bob Rosenberger.
“Ever since 10th grade, he’s really just worked with me, told me things he doesn’t tell everyone else,” Cope said. “He tells me the reason why we do things.
“Because of what coach Rosenberger has said over and over, I go into a game, and I’m almost understanding why the other team is doing what they’re doing. Now I have an inside look, so when the guards are doing this or that or when the guy I’m guarding on offense is doing something, I can almost be like, ‘Oh, they must be doing this’ and aggressively go and do something about it.”
What Cope has done about it is nothing short of remarkable. Last year, he was involved in 102 tackles – 87 solo and 15 assists. He had 15 tackles for a loss, three pass break-ups, one fumble recovery and two caused fumbles. He also had seven receptions for 68 yards and two touchdowns.
“He’s just a great athlete on both sides of the ball,” Cuthbert said. “He’s really consistent.
“Teams have to account for him all the time. They have to change their blocking schemes to block him. They have to put more than one guy on him. It’s very rare that he gets single blocked by a guy.”
Interestingly, Cope doesn’t boast the experience of some of his peers. He went through the Pop Warner ranks but didn’t play in middle school since he attended a private school that did not have a football squad.
Cope transferred to Pennridge as a ninth grader and immediately joined the freshman football team, seeing time at both linebacker and tight end.
“We had a real good freshman year,” he said. “My 10th grade year came around, and I wasn’t really highly thought of.
“I was probably 5-10 around 185 pounds – I was still maturing. I was on the look team, and I did well on defense and caught the eye of the coaches.”
The day before Pennridge’s early season game against Archbishop Wood, the player ahead of Cope on the depth chart went down with an injury.
“I was second string then, and my coach said, ‘Hey, Brandon, you’re going to be playing tomorrow. Bring your ‘A’ game,’” Cope recalled. “That was the first game I started.
“I didn’t do great, but I was okay. I was kind of star struck – I was in awe of just being out there on a Friday night.”
Once he was in the starting lineup, Cope never left.
“There aren’t too many 10th graders that can step on the field and play,” Cuthbert said. “He was our defensive MVP as a 10th grader, and that’s very unusual.
“He’s smart, he’s fast, he’s tough, and he just has great instincts. He has a nose for the ball on defense.”
Cope went on to consistently excel on both sides of the football.
“I’ve just worked hard, put in a lot of hours in the offseason and just tried to make the team the best it can be,” he said. “Both on and off the field, I try not to make stupid decisions.”
Playing a role in Cope’s decision making is his strong faith, and at the top of his list of people he credits for his success is Jesus Christ.
“I’m a strong believer,” he said. “I don’t know how people do it who aren’t.
“Before every game, you have the anxiety, you’ve got the Friday night lights you see in the movie theatre, and it’s almost a reality. It’s amazing, and before every game, I just pray because I have to calm down.”
As he was growing up, Cope also had played soccer, baseball and basketball.
“But I kind of lost interest as my love for football increased,” he said. “I just liked hitting kids.
“I liked being able to tackle kids and finding the ball. This is so much different from baseball and basketball where you can’t touch people. If you touch someone, it’s against the rules.”
A two-year captain, Cope, who has moved from tight end to fullback, takes his leadership role seriously.
“When I was younger, I was the ball boy,” he said. “The Rams were really good.
“I forget the names of the guys, but there were guys on the team – even though I was just the ball boy, yet they would give me the time of day at football games. That showed me that no one is too cool for the little kids. That was shown to me, and I just try to be nice to people.”
Cope shares captain duties with seniors Cory Cowdery, Jesse Knepp and Kyle Peters.
“I’m very high on all of our captains,” he said. “Cory and I have been together since 10th grade. He’s been a defensive tackle, and I’ve been a linebacker. If he doesn’t do well, I don’t do well. We have this good relationship - the same with Jesse and Kyle. We have a really great group of senior guys.
“We have a closer team than we had other years. It’s a cliché, but we’re like a family. We’re like brothers out there.”
Cope is a member of the National Honor Society and the Stand Tall program, which encourages young students to steer clear of drugs. He has found a way to manage his time to keep his performance on the field and in the classroom at an optimum level.
“It definitely is hard,” he said. “There are times after I’m lifting that I don’t get home until 7:45, and I want to be in bed by 10, so I only have two hours to do what I need to do for my classes.
“It’s not that you just have to divvy out your time, you have to not waste time and focus on each thing. If you give it 30 minutes, you’ll be shocked – ‘Oh wow, I’m almost done with this,’ instead of beating yourself and staying up until one or two like some of my friends are doing.
“It’s hard because we have all this stuff around us, but I just try as hard as I can and use my time wisely.”
When it comes time to select a college, football and academics will both play a role in Cope’s final decision. He is keeping his options open and would listen closely if a highly prestigiously Division IAA program came calling and offered him a scholarship.
“That’s what my overall goal is,” he said. “If I can get into an Ivy League school and scholarship offers don’t come up, I might do that also.
“I’m trying to weigh the pros and cons of each.”
Cope is considering majoring in biology and has not ruled out the possibility of following in the footsteps of his father, Trey Cope, an orthopaedic surgeon with Upper Bucks Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine.
“He means a lot to me, and I’ve looked into what he’s doing,” Cope said. “I’m thinking biology, maybe chemistry. That would open a lot of doors.”
