Basketball
Favorite athlete: Russell Westbrook
Favorite team: Portland Trail Blazers
Favorite memory competing in sports: Sinking two last-second free throws to ice the win over rival CB West last year in our Coaches vs. Cancer game
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: When I was in eighth grade, I was playing for the ninth grade basketball team. On the day of our first game, I was so anxious and nervous that I completely forgot to get on the bus, so I had to call my dad and have him drive me separately to the game.
Music on iPod: Anything acoustic or mellow—big fan of Bon Iver (if you don’t know them, look them up)
Future plans: Studying Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill and having a loving family
Words to live by: “I think in life, we sometimes forget to tell each other just how remarkable we are, even when we don’t feel remarkable at all. And I think that’s sad; that we let those who we love most sit on the edge of possibility, where they are stuck wondering if they ‘could be’ something better, something great, something remarkable.” -My sister, Kendall Brodie
One goal before turning 30: To be living in the city of Chicago with a pet dog, preferably a Husky.
One thing people don’t know about me: I sleep with a basketball at night.
By GORDON GLANTZ
From the time his father first handed him the family baton, that being a basketball, Josh Brodie – even as a 6-year-old working on his ball-handling in their Chalfont cul-de-sac - was well on his path to being the quintessential point guard.
That involves a certain measure of leadership and selflessness, an intuitive need to give more than receive.
For Brodie, now a senior second-year starter, that mentality extends beyond the hardwood.
As a stellar student involved in a myriad of extracurricular activities, the Univest Featured Male Athlete of the Week has a tendency to be attracted and enriched by those that involve community service.
Helping others made him feel a sense of satisfaction, the type he has when he finds an open Titans’ teammate for an easy hoop.
He has found this working in the Sheppard’s Project, providing toys for Christmas for grade-schoolers at the Isaac A. Sheppard School in Philadelphia.
And little did he know that one particular experience, the Athletes Helping Athletes program, would change his life.
Call it the ultimate assist.
The experience stayed with him to the extent that when it came time to write an essay for admission to Pitt about a challenging scenario, he chose this without hesitation.
It came when the basketball team was at a Northeast Philadelphia rec center.
Brodie spotted one of the special needs children, a seven-year-old named Ryan, so reluctant to join the others that he literally clung to his parents on the other side of the hockey boards that surrounded the basketball/floor hockey court.
“Ryan lacked social skills, making it tremendously difficult to communicate with him,” Brodie wrote in his essay. “It was clear that he would much rather isolate himself from the rest of the group, but it was my job to not let that happen. I set a goal for myself from the beginning. Ryan was about to have a great day.”
Like Claude Giroux ready to take a shift, Brodie cleared the boards and approached, but got nowhere with attempts to lure the uncommunicative boy into the action.
After coaxing didn’t work, Brodie grabbed a basketball – the family baton – and tried dribbling circles around Ryan, playfully bouncing the ball off his head, and still got nothing.
Brodie admits to “feeling lost” and “almost guilty at my initial failure.” But he did not give up.
“We both glanced at each other. I stood up, dribbling directly in front of him, enticing him to steal the ball from me,” Brodie wrote. “He swung his arms out as I took the ball out of reach and smiled at him. For a short second – an instant – his eyes glimmered. This was his way of opening up. When I handed the ball to him, he started dribbling along the baseline, back and forth. He was giggling with a typical little-kid laugh, soft and carefree.”
And then, the next step. Going onto the court where Brodie made a makeshift hoop with arms until the moment of truth. Ryan made a shot.
Brodie wrote of what felt like a game-winning buzzer-beater for both: “He froze. Slowly, gradually, a smile began forming on his face. It was evident how thrilled he was. He ran around dribbling with power, elated to feel such a sense of accomplishment. I spun around to see his parents grinning at the sight of Ryan legitimately having a fun experience.”
Ryan never joined the others, but it didn’t matter. He and Brodie spent the next hour working alone and enriching each other.
“In 18 years on this planet, many kids haven’t been faced with a real challenge yet,” Brodie concluded. “We’ve faced the challenge of a big math test or a friend group predicament or a family argument. But few have been immersed in a problem involving the absence of verbal communication.
“Ryan was a seven-year-old kid. Ryan couldn’t speak. Ryan couldn’t communicate. Ryan had a difficult time connecting to others. But to this point in my short life, Ryan has taught me more about myself than anyone else. Ryan is a good person, and he helped make me a better one.”
The best moment for Brodie may have been the interaction with Ryan’s parents at the end of the session.
“When his parents came up and thanked me, that just meant the world to me,” he said.
The experience also made an impression on Titans’ coach Jason Campbell, who recalls offering a relief pitcher for Brodie in the situation. If he didn’t already know that he had the right type of individual to run his team, he knew it by the end of the session.
“To see one guy, as a junior, take one kid and spend the entire time with that person, just shows his maturity,” said the coach. “He’s just a really good, humble kid. He’s friendly and outgoing and takes pride in taking people under his wing.”
The Final Push
Another person taken under Brodie’s wing is junior small forward and first-year starter Tim Waddington.
Seeing the finish line to his high school career and knowing he was going to be asked to step up more into a scoring role to fill the void left by the graduation of Matt Scamuffo and Bryce Dobisch, Brodie and Waddington put in a hard summer of work.
It wasn’t like he didn’t dedicate himself to hoops before, as he always played AAU, but this was different. There was a sudden sense of urgency.
“As senior, I know it’s my last time around,” said Brodie, who ranks ninth of 635 students in his senior class. “I really worked on things I knew would help me for the season – such as strength training, shooting and dribbling drills.”
He found the perfect training partner in Waddington, who lived close enough that a simple phone call or text message turned into a shoot-around.
“We formed a great friendship,” said Brodie. “We really pushed each other in the offseason.”
The Titans finished in a four-way tie for first place last year and then fell in the first round of districts. Brodie said taking the league title – while enjoying the rivalries against the likes of Central Bucks East and West, North Penn and Pennridge – is the primary focus.
“We really want to break that tie,” he said. “We all look up at that banner. We want sole possession of the conference.”
And it’s not only for the team, he says, but the school community – epitomized by the Titan Terror cheering section – at home games.
“I have a lot of friends in the Titan Terror,” said Brodie, who said he would match his home gym’s faithful against any in the conference. “They make the games fun.”
Hoops IQ
It is said that IQs can’t be taught, but that does not extend to basketball IQs, which Campbell sees as Brodie’s best strength on the court.
“He has a high basketball IQ, and you can see that he is the son of a coach,” said Campbell. “He is our leader. He’s just a fundamentally sound point guard. He is our guy on the court. He tells guys where to go and takes control of the team.”
The source would be Brodie’s dad, Todd, who played high school basketball at George Washington High in Northeast Philly and was then a longtime assistant coach at Wissahickon High School.
In addition to the drills beginning at age six and organized basketball soon thereafter, he brought young Josh along to many a Saturday morning practice, and it was there that he himself was taken under the wing of several Trojans’ players – namely Ryan Washington and Bruce Kennedy.
“Even though I was young, they treated me like I was one of them,” said Brodie. “Watching those two guys taught me how to play.
“Going to those practices, just watching, made me understand how to be coachable and how to lead my teammates by example.”
Although he used his hoops IQ to secure a spot on the varsity roster as a sophomore, the learning curve continued.
“As a sophomore, I played behind some outstanding players,” he said. “Just from practicing, it taught me what a true point guard needed to do.”
Last year, as a starter, he shied away from doing too much on the offensive end.
“As a junior, while I stepped in a leadership role, my confidence was still not 100 percent there yet,” he said. “With Scamuffo and Dobisch on the team, I didn’t feel the need to shoot as much.”
This year, the need is a want.
“We only have two returning starters,” he said. “My coach made it known. The assistant coaches made it known. My dad made it known. Everyone made it known that I have to look to score.”
The Letter
Brodie has learned from his experiences in community service that plenty of people in the world are dealing with more adversity than he will likely ever know, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had to deal with some.
A serious student who admittedly puts academics first, Brodie found himself with three challenging AP classes that were getting intense just as basketball season kicked into high gear. Additionally, the historically cold and snowy winter wreaked havoc with his routine.
“Last year, I went through a bit of a slump,” he said, recalling late nights studying, sometimes after games. “We were playing three games a week. Everything just didn’t fall into place. I was feeling down.”
His sister, Kendall, who was home from Penn State on spring break, changed that with a letter she wrote to him before leaving.
“She wrote me the best letter,” he said. “After that, it changed my whole outlook.”
Pitt is not the only school on Brodie’s radar screen. He is also looking at Penn State, South Carolina, North Carolina, Northeastern and Michigan and is most interested in a career in bio-medical or chemical engineering.
There remains a wild card, should he want to go the Division III basketball route, as Brodie is currently gauging interest from the much more intimate Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J.
He currently carries a 4.24 GPA and boasts a 34 ACT score (36 is perfect). While he is taking four AP classes this year, he feels less pressured.
“Academics were always my top priority before athletics,” he said. “It’s not that my parents are constantly on my back, either. They always made it known that even if I get a C, it’s OK if I gave my best effort. I’m fortunate my best effort is getting As.”
But make no bones about it, this is a basketball family, with mom, Karen, leading the cheering section.
“She’s my No. 1 fan,” he said. “You got to love her. She doesn’t really always know what’s going on, but she has always been there supporting me.”
The baton has been passed down to Alexa Brodie, an eighth grader at Unami Middle School who Josh says is a “tremendous” basketball player because “she learned everything from me.”
While he is half-joking, one would seriously hope he has taught her about the power found in compassion for others.
“He is just one of those good-natured kids,” said Campbell. “He goes out of his way to be kind and helpful.”
