Lacrosse
Favorite athlete: Paul Rabil
Favorite team: PLL Redwoods
Favorite memory competing in sports: Seeing my dad cheer me on
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Performing crazy/funny celebrations
Music on playlist: Rap
Future plans: Attend Penn State to study Bio Pre-med
Words to live by: “Never give up.”
One goal before turning 30: To be well known for something
One thing people don’t know about me: I have so much love and respect for my friends and family
By Mary Jane Souder
Manny Puente was going down a familiar road. A standout long stick midfielder, the Souderton senior believed that lacrosse was his ticket into the college of his choice.
“My sophomore year is when I decided I wanted to carry lacrosse into school, but the whole goal of playing lacrosse for schools was, ‘Well, I’m going to play to get into a better school than I would be able to get into academically,’” Puente said.
A funny thing happened. Puente found out he didn’t need lacrosse to get into the schools at the top of his list.
“I got into every place I wanted to get into, and I didn’t need to play lacrosse,” he said. “It came down to me choosing do I want to go the academic route or the lacrosse route, and I ended up choosing to go the academic route and play club ball instead.”
This fall, Puente will be heading to Penn State University where he will be majoring in biology in the pre-med track.
“For the longest time, I was trying to get into a smaller liberal arts school and I wanted to play there,” he said. “I ended up getting in without needing to use lacrosse.
“It came down to would I rather go to Penn State where I get a different academic look at a bigger school with a lot more people that I actually know, and that became my preferred schooling method.”
Listening to his coach tell it, lacrosse could certainly have been Puente’s ticket to the next level.
“He’s kind of the unsung hero, if you will, because he shuts down just about any person we put him on, so when we go against teams with really good middies, Manny goes on the best one,” Souderton coach Mark Cornes said. “He’s in on every faceoff, he gets a ton of ground balls, and he’s a shutdown long stick middie. We know when we put him on somebody he’s going to take them out of the game.
“Manny probably has the talent to play Division 1, but he’s going to Penn State and play club. He wants the education.”
Puente has a clear focus and strives to be the best that he can be whether it’s on the lacrosse field or in the classroom. It’s a focus that was redefined last spring when on April 16, one month into the COVID-19 pandemic, he lost his father. Cardiac arrest claimed the life 49-year-old Jason Puente, Manny’s biggest fan and supporter.
In literally a heartbeat, Manny – who has a younger and older sister - became the man of the household.
“It was the hardest time in my life - I’ll never face anything as hard as that hopefully,” said Puente. “It was completely out of nowhere. No one saw it coming. It was like just getting absolutely punched in the face.
“It was right after COVID really hit, the lacrosse season was cancelled and then that happened. It was just down, down, down. It was a mess. COVID meant nothing to me. I went through a really bad state of ‘I just don’t want to do anything.’ I was ready to quit lacrosse, I was about ready to quit everything because I didn’t care.”
That might have been Puente’s first thought, but it certainly wasn’t his last. Instead of quitting, he chose the opposite path.
“My dad never missed a game – he was my sole motivator in sports,” Puente said. “I always kind of saw it as my dad was really into motivating me into sports and my mom was motivating me into academics. He was a really big athlete. He was the biggest inspiration to me. It was a hard downfall and loss of motivation.
“But I ended up transitioning that into another reason to keep playing, another reason to keep pushing toward my dreams. I transitioned to committing everything I had into lacrosse athletics and school.”
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Puente has been competing in sports since he was a youngster. Initially, it was soccer and football.
“I started to play lacrosse for SABLA just to play with some friends,” he said of the Souderton community lacrosse organization. “Eighth grade is when I cut off my other sports and focused heavily into lacrosse, and I started playing summer club league and then transitioned into high school.
“It was just my favorite sport that I most enjoyed playing. I really got into it. I felt I was better at playing that sport. I wanted to focus on the sport I was most comfortable playing, and lacrosse seemed to be the one.”
In ninth grade, Puente was a swing player, but as a sophomore, he was a fixture in the varsity’s starting lineup, playing close defense before moving to his natural position of long stick midfielder.
“I grew up playing as a defender, and that’s where I was most comfortable and best at,” he said.
Puente played for several club teams and last summer – despite missing his junior high school season - was able to see a good amount of game action playing for both the Duke’s and Bandits on the club circuit.
This spring, he is a captain and key piece of a senior-led defense for a Souderton squad that will earn a district berth.
“They’re an interesting group of guys – they know how to have fun, and they also know how to get down to business,” Cornes said. “Everybody loves Manny. He’s just one of those guys. He’s a great leader on the field and off the field, and he loves to have fun.”
“I try to be pretty vocal,” Puente said. “I try to remember when I was a freshman what I would hear from my seniors and what would motivate me, and I would try and replicate that kind of senior leadership and voice to these players so they understand what it means to be a team and what it means to give your all.”
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Puente – who takes honors and AP classes – also excels in the classroom. He is a member of the Engineering Club and also the school’s Athletic Leadership Council.
“We teach the younger players on the team what it means to be a leader,” he said of a council established by athletic director Dennis Stanton. “He does a really, really good job of hosting the club, and it really teaches you a lot how you should lead the team. I’m very supportive of that. I think it’s a big help to the teams and the leaders.”
According to Stanton, Puente has been an integral part of the school’s athletic community.
“His selfless approach to leadership has truly had a positive impact on our team and school,” Stanton said.
Last spring when Puente was at his lowest and the entire country was in a lockdown, his team was part of a procession of close to 100 cars paying their respects to his family with messages of support written on their windows and placards.
“We always treat Souderton athletics – it’s not just a team, it’s a family,” Puente said. “We always try to keep the lacrosse team like a brotherhood, and so we do a lot of stuff with the team, we do a lot of team bonding.
“I think that’s very important because everyone learns this isn’t just intramural play. We aren’t just playing to play. This is a brotherhood, this is a family.”
At no point was that family, that brotherhood more apparent than on April 16 of this year, the one-year anniversary of his father’s passing, when the Indians took on a Pennsbury team that was at the top of the American Conference standings and played the game to honor the memory of Jason Puente.
“For me, it was the most stressful night of my life because the whole week prior to the day – I kept looking at the day and going – ‘I have to leave everything on the field. I can’t play down, and if I do, I’ll regret everything. I’ll never forget it,’” Puente said. “It was one of those nights where – I have to give it 110 percent literally.
“That’s not even a figure of speech at that point, so I was scared out of my mind, super stressed out, but when we started playing, I gave everything I had and I ended up having one of the best games of my life pretty much. I was super proud of that, and every player on the team was super supportive. Even coming up to the day, they were super, super supportive about it.”
Puente and his teammates – wearing JP stickers on their helmets - didn’t just leave it all on the field, they stunned the Falcons with an 8-6 win.
“They all knew how much it meant to me, and it meant a lot to them as well,” he said. “All that combined – everybody had the mindset ‘We are not losing. We won’t.’ I owe a lot of respect to my players for that.”
“The big thing was they played for him,” Cornes said. “Everybody played for him, and it was the best the entire team had ever played. From the first quarter to the last, they were not going to let Manny down.”
And now Manny is living his life with that same determination.
“In the beginning, I had no motivation to do anything,” he said of his father’s sudden passing. “But I turned it around to my biggest motivation.
“I always say – I don’t do it for me, I don’t play for me. I play for him. Even though he’s not with us, it’s how I motivate myself, how I get in the right mindset to give everything I have. That works in everything I do basically.”
