Golf
Favorite athlete: Nick Foles
Favorite team: Philadelphia Flyers
Favorite memory competing in sports: Shooting a 41 to win our opening match at Lookaway sophomore year
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Wearing the wrong jersey to an away match
Music on playlist: Country
Future plans: Go to college for finance
Words to live by: “Everything happens for a reason.”
One goal before turning 30: Break 80 shots in a round of golf
One thing people don’t know about me: I love skiing, fishing, and hunting
By GORDON GLANTZ
If it seems like Central Bucks senior Patrick O’Brien is more mature than most of his peers, it is not by happenstance.
His family has been confronted with major adversity, as his younger brother, Dawson, suffers from a rare disorder, MHE (Multiple Hereditary Exostoses), which affects just one in 50,000 people (more information at the MHE Research Foundation, www.mherf.org). He was diagnosed on his third birthday.
Dawson basically grows extra bones and tumors that need to be removed.
He is now 11, and the brothers - sons of Jackie and Chris - share a special bond as the family battles the adversity of surgeries.
Said O’Brien: “We go down (to Florida) every summer for surgeries for him. Some of them are minor, and some are major surgeries.”
The most recent surgery left Dawson in a wheel chair for three months.
“He was down and out,” said O’Brien. “It was hard for him. He is doing a lot better now. We both had PT at the same time while we were down there (Patrick required PT for a knee injury sustained playing ice hockey). That was encouraging for him, just for him to see me go through something similar.”
It's hardly a surprise that CB East golf coach Matt Wolf has become emotionally invested in the situation.
“That dedication and support of his brother has given Patrick a level of maturity that most students and young people his age don’t have unless they have to deal with something like that,” Wolf said. “I can tell how passionate he is about helping his brother out.”
Because of the rarity of MHE, the research is not exactly robust.
That is why the O’Brien family – which also includes sister, Carmyn, a club soccer player and volleyball player at CB East who is about to turn 16 -- began hosting annual tournaments at Talamore Country Club to raise funds and awareness.
“They’re working on a cure for it,” said O’Brien. “Somebody just found out that there could be a cure for it, so there are more clinics starting up again. Hopefully, there could be something there, but they still need a ton of money to start it up.”
A year ago, the entire CB East team gladly participated.
“It’s definitely something that we, as a program, will continue to support after Patrick’s graduation,” said Wolf. “His little brother is an absolute trooper. The things that he has had to overcome in his short life are incredible. Every time I see him, he’s smiling. He’s super positive.”
According to O’Brien, there is some hope for the future, as the condition could lessen in severity after adolescence and into adulthood.
“Once he is done growing, the (extra) bones will also stop,” said O’Brien. “It’s just that while he’s growing, they want to remove bones so they don’t interfere with his normal bones.”
Building a Bond
For high school seniors applying to colleges, deciding which teachers to ask to write them a letter of recommendation could seem like one of the biggest decisions on the planet.
But not for O’Brien.
He turned to Matt Wolf, who was not only his golf coach but also his calculus teacher.
“He was a great coach and a great teacher,” said O’Brien. “I don’t think there was anybody better to coach me than him. He is so involved with the program and with the players. He is just a great guy.”
For Wolf, it was not difficult to tout O’Brien to prospective colleges.
“It was my pleasure to write that for him,” said Wolf. “It was a very easy letter to write. He was one of the higher achieving students in my class.
“I knew him not only as an athlete but as a student in my class, and he shows the same high integrity characteristics in the classroom as he does on the golf course.”
The relationship between the two went back to O’Brien’s sophomore year, which is when he transferred in from Plumstead Christian.
He showed promise on the golf team as a sophomore, riding the seesaw from JV to varsity, and he began to blossom as a junior.
However, a knee injury playing ice hockey limited what O’Brien could truly do as a senior.
However, there was more to O’Brien than shooting for par on the golf course. In an individual sport, O’Brien was the ultimate team player.
“What separated him in the three years he was in our program wasn’t so much the golf accolades,” said Wolf. “It was more the character and the integrity and the type of person that he is that really impacted our program the most.
“His contributions to the team went beyond the golf course with the leadership that he brought.”
Scholastic golfers are expected to follow certain guidelines, all the while being gentlemen with opponents.
“In golf, we rely on our players to police themselves – not only out on the course, but in preparation – and in practicing and things like that,” said Wolf. “Patrick has always been important in terms of playing a significant role and making sure that everybody on the team is held accountable.”
Inspirational Leader
A leader by example as a sophomore, Wolf said O’Brien became more vocal as a junior and an inspiration as he wrapped up his high school career this fall.
“This year, as a senior – even though we knew he wouldn’t be able to contribute the kind of scores he is capable of because of the injury – we knew that he would still be an asset to the team,” said Wolf. “He was providing a model for the underclassmen and making sure that everyone was doing the right thing at the right time.
“Even with the hardship of having the injury, it never brought him down. He always had a positive outlook. Just the hard work he exhibited throughout the season to try and overcome the injury and do everything he could to help the team was just huge.”
O’Brien added that it was a matter of being present in the moment in time.
“This year, with my knee, I knew that I might not be able to contribute as much with my scores and stuff,” said O’Brien, who wanted to give specific shoutouts to teammates A.J. Molnar, Donato Striddachio and Tyler Adair. “I was just out there trying to make it through nine holes. I was trying to step up vocally with the underclassmen on our team.
“I just pushed that a lot. I figured that if I can’t do it, maybe I can push up the confidence of some of the underclassmen.”
While the Patriots had three golfers headed to districts, O’Brien’s injury bumped him off course from getting there.
That didn’t prevent him from being a major source of inspiration.
Said Wolf: “Throughout the season, Patrick has really supported those top three or four players to help them to prepare.”
What that means is that O’Brien’s presence will reverberate in the program as it annually battles it out with league rivals Souderton, CB West and CB South.
“I feel like we are going to feel the impact of Patrick being on the team long beyond his graduation,” said Wolf. “The underclassmen will now know the way to do it because Patrick has provided such a good model.
“Seeing the way he carries himself on and off the golf course has given them a template to emulate and follow.”
Fatherly Advice
Struggling to come back from his knee injury this fall, and worrying about his brother at the same time, it was admittedly a lot for O’Brien to handle.
He gives a lot of credit to his father for lifting his spirits.
“My dad was always checking in with me,” said O’Brien. “There was almost a sadness, I guess you could say. I just wasn’t doing as well as I thought I was should be. He was checking in with me to make sure that I was doing OK, and he was reminding me that being out on the golf course is more of a blessing than actually shooting well.
“I didn’t even think I’d be golfing this year at all. He said to just always stay grateful. He was very encouraging through the whole thing.”
That father-son relationship is an extension of a family that has managed to become more unified.
“(When) we go down (to Florida) in the summers, that’s kind of tough,” O’Brien said. “We don’t split up, but my mom and Dawson will go down to Florida a month before surgery and stay down there for three months while my dad is working and me and my sister are finishing school.
“The last two summers have been kind of weird because we spent time apart from each other.”
The Next Shift
O’Brien skated a full season for the CB East ice hockey team but then sustained his injury playing club hockey for the Philadelphia Revolution in April.
While he plans to hit the ice again this season, he is unsure about the collegiate level.
Academics are the primary concern, but he would consider club level hockey at the right school – while continuing golf as a lifelong recreational pursuit.
“I have a lot of Southern schools in mind,” said O’Brien, who is listed on IR until Jan. 1 with the prestigious Black Bear National Academy, which is a Tier 1 AAA club ice hockey program. “My No. 1, it’s not down South. It’s Penn State. My dad went there. My aunt played lacrosse there. My uncle played ice hockey there, so there is the family pool at Penn State.
“I also like the University of Tennessee and Tampa, too. I have a lot of schools down South. I’m reaching out to some club (ice hockey) coaches. Georgia and Tennessee have club teams. Georgia has a really nice facility. They just built a new rink, so it would be really cool to play there.”
Making the Grade
O’Brien has put himself in position to end up a top-notch college because he has done well in the classroom.
For example, he is currently taking three AP courses this year and has always taken honors classes and maintained a weighted GPA in the 3.8-3.9 range.
“I switched over (to CB East) more for academics,” said O’Brien. “I loved Plumstead and everything about it. The teachers and the whole community were awesome there. It was just that, academically, I wanted to pursue business courses.
“There are business electives. The way the schedule is set up, with block scheduling, it allowed me to excel with science and math classes, which help with my transcripts.”
And it didn’t hurt that CB East had ice hockey and golf teams, which Plumstead did not.
“That was part of the draw, too,” he said.
While going from a small private school to a large public school could be a culture shock, it was not for O’Brien, who is in the ski club and is also active in Pulse Ministries at Calvary Chapel Central Bucks.
“I went to Buckingham Elementary, so I knew a lot of the kids at East,” he said. “I already had friends and relationships established before I went to East.
“Going there, I met a lot of new kids. Everybody is really nice and inviting. I love it. I wouldn’t change what I did at all.”
