Soccer, Lacrosse
Favorite athlete: Walter Payton
Favorite team: Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: First varsity start in high school soccer.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Getting the wind knocked out of me when going for a head ball to score…couldn’t breathe and the ball didn’t go in the net.
Music on iPod: Hip Hop/Rap
Future plans: Attend a United States Service Academy
Words to live by: “Never Die Easy”
One goal before turning 30: Commission as an officer in the United States Military.
One thing people don’t know about me: I conduct science research which involves observing the magnetic properties of iron at the nanoscale and comparing those properties to bulk iron.
By Gordon Glantz
Last season, the Central Bucks West soccer team was blessed with size and experience.
This season, it’s a whole new ball game.
A case in point is the stopper position – referred to as the “destroyer” role by coach Stefan Szygiel –on the defensive end.
Replacing 6-3, 200-pounder Kyle Schechter is Shane Hensel, the Univest Featured Male Athlete of the Week who is quickly carving out a place for himself as a first-year starter at the varsity level.
At minimum, Szygiel would like his line of defense to stand 6-2.
“(Hensel) is not 6-2, at most – at most – he is 5-11, but he has to play like he is 6-2,” said Szygiel.
To that extent, Hensel has been coming up big for the Bucks, as they refine themselves in the 2014 season.
“Shane is a big-time ball winner,” said Szygiel. “We can rely on him. He gets it.
“He’s very smart out there. He processes the game and holds down the fort. We called the position he plays ‘protector’ or ‘destroyer’ and that’s what he does. He protects the back line. He protects, destroys and distributes. He plays that role well for us.”
Like Father, Like Son
That Hensel “gets it” and “holds down the fort” – or plays his role to perfection -- should not come as a surprise, particularly to Szygiel.
Back when he was a student at Unami Middle School in the late 1990s, Szygiel had a science teacher that helped him “get it” at a crucial point when a lot of students are prone to fall through the cracks.
That teacher was Brian Hensel, who is Shane’s father and currently the fourth head football coach at Central Bucks West since legendary taskmaster Mike Pettine Sr. hung up his whistle.
“He was one of my favorite teachers,” said Szygiel. “He was always fair.
“I can see those same aspects (in Shane). He’s disciplined. He follows instructions. He’s very unselfish. He’s everything a coach wants in a player, and he’s everything you would want as a teammate. He was the junior varsity captain last year, and I didn’t get him much varsity time. He knew that it was going to be an open competition for a starting spot (this year), and it was all him. He earned it.”
Szygiel, like any high school coach in any sport, has had his share of super-talented players who sometimes don’t stick to the script and work within the team framework.
No worries with a player like Hensel.
“I’ll take a player like Shane every time,” said Szygiel. “He’s a good athlete, don’t get me wrong, but he has all the intangibles – the toughness, the desire to compete, the desire to win.”
Although he is not a captain, like he was on the junior varsity level, he sets a template for others to follow.
“He’s the consummate teammate,” said Szygiel. “He’s quick rising as a leader.”
And the saying about it all starting at home seems to apply here, given the values that Szygiel’s old middle school science teacher instilled in his own kids.
“We use sports for all lessons in teaching,” said Brian Hensel. “Sports are a great microcosm. It’s not what you say, though, but how you live it. Academics have to come first. We tell all our kids (on the football team) to think about what would happen if their sport went away because, one day, sports goes away.”
Hard Lessons
If Hensel brings a level of maturity to everything he does, he may because of some life experiences that he has witnessed – and processed – along the way.
“He has had to deal with some adult-like situations,” said Brian Hensel. “Looking at it objectively, he has had to make some adult-like decisions.”
Shane vividly remembers that day in second grade when the principal gathered the students together and said that one of Hensel’s friends and classmates, Robert Sablich, had passed away.
“It was tough for me to handle,” he said. “There have been a lot of deaths. They are hard to cope with, but you learn from it. They have prepared me for other situations.”
His cousin, Nicky Pisano, was murdered in South Philadelphia during a 2008 robbery. Another cousin, Paulie Pisano, died from an overdose of heroine.
“That’s something I’ll never do,” he said of drug use. “Not only is it going to kill me, but it’s going to kill my family, too.
“I loved them all, and they will be missed, but those experiences helped me in my own life. You look at other people and realize that it’s not a position you want to be in.”
Hensel said that CB West has a positive environment. Nonetheless, if he were to see bullying or drug use and could intervene, he would.
“I haven’t been in that position, and I’m happy about that,” he said. “But if it ever happens, you want to help out a friend. Sometimes, it’s better to hear it from another student.”
A Call To Serve
Hensel will likely be playing soccer after high school.
And it’s not like he will have a choice in the matter.
All the military academies – and he is applying to them all, with the Air Force and Naval academies at the top of the list – require midshipmen or cadets to play a sport.
So if that means at the club level or intramural, it will be at a service academy – pending acceptance.
“It’s doesn’t surprise me,” said Szygiel of Hensel’s military aspirations. “That’s the right setting for him. He thrives on structure. He’s mentally and physically tough. Some people are one or the other, but he is both.”
Playing more soccer, or maybe lacrosse, is a far cry from why Hensel is zeroing in on becoming an engineering officer with a focus on aerospace engineering.
“My family, going back to my grandfather, has a lot of military service,” he said. “This is really what I want to do. I prefer the Air Force or Navy, but I am applying to West Point and the Coast Guard (Academy), too.”
His cousin, Bobby Winther, is a 2014 graduate of Neshaminy High and is currently in training to be a Navy Seal, and his brother, Stephen Winther, is in the Marines.
His grandfather, Lt. Robert Hensel, was a veteran of the Korean Conflict.
“I think I started figuring it out by the end of ninth grade,” said Shane. “My cousin, Bobby, is in training to become a SEAL. He has always been a role model, a person I look up to, and I decided that was a route I wanted to take.”
Although Shane is on the CB West football team as a kickoff specialist, he chose soccer over football as a boy, just as he is choosing a military lifestyle over that of a typical college setting.
“It all started when I was a kid,” said Shane, whose older brother, Ryan, was a slot receiver at CB West and also played second base on the baseball team before moving on Virginia Teach to major in civil engineering. “I just had a passion for soccer.”
His father’s reaction?
“I told him that it wasn’t about me, it was about pursuing your career and your passions,” said the coach, who added that it has been “great” to just be a “dad in the stands” at Shane’s soccer and lacrosse games. “He has applied that to all the things he has done.
“His mother (Dana) and I are so proud of him. He’s a good kid. I think we’re going to keep him.”
Those sentiments didn’t change when Shane’s passion turned to the military academies.
“He came to us about 16 months ago,” said Brian Hensel. “I turned my wife and said, ‘OK, let’s see how long this lasts.’ But he didn’t drop his interest.
“He has run with it a little bit. He has set a lofty goal for himself, but he can have some great opportunities with it.”
A Very Busy Kid
Asked to describe himself, Hensel doesn’t hesitate.
“I’m a very busy kid,” said Hensel, who holds down a 3.8 grade-point average, with three AP classes, that he describes as “climbing,” while pointing out that his younger sister, Danielle, a ninth-grader who is a manager for the football team is “the smartest in the family.”
Hensel says that he is non-stop, Monday to Friday, with academics and sports – with maybe a break to watch Monday Night Football. He tries to cut loose a bit on the weekends.
“The way I see it, you have to make room to have some fun,” he said. “But I keep trying to set my goals high.”
Which comes back to being a self-described “busy kid.”
So busy, in fact, you would wonder how he finds time to sleep.
Aside from soccer and football in the fall, there is lacrosse – a game he “regrets not starting earlier” – in the spring season.
A member of the Cadet Civil Air Patrol for the Doylestown Composite Squadron 907 outside of the school realm, Shane has plenty to keep him busy at school.
“I’m learning how to be a good follower,” he said of the pursuit that sometimes has him taking instruction from younger cadets. “To be a good follower, you have to learn how to lead.”
To that end, he is taking the lead in another noble project.
He is also organizing the High School Military Bowl.
“This fall, around Veteran's Day, I am organizing a series of bowl games amongst teams within Bucks County,” he explained. “The (Military Bowl) will consist of six teams who play one game against another opponent in the bowl series. The event was made to honor the fallen and those who are active duty in US military. CB West football has at least five players pursuing a military lifestyle; these players are assisting me in organizing the event.
“I am currently attempting to make contacts with the Travis Manion Foundation, Wounded Warriors Foundation, USO, and the American Legion to assist with the event. The goal is to generate a fun and interactive day remembering those who have fallen and honor the active duty service members.
“In between the games, I am hoping to have a drill conducted by my Civil Air Patrol Squadron as well as the Travis Manion Sea Cadets Battalion. I am working with multiple kids on my team who are enlisting, applying to a service academy, or applying for R.O.T.C. scholarships. Things are in motion, but we have not made an official date or announced the teams participating. November 1 is the target date, but it will either be the Saturday before or after Veteran's Day.”
Mad About Science
A jock, Shane breaks the stereotype as a proud science geek.
He serves as an officer in the Science Research Club and Science Olympiad, where he scratches his competitive itch as much as he does in athletics.
He rattles off his list of countless Science Fair accolades. Last year, he captured first place in Physics at both the Bucks County Science Fair and the Delaware Valley Science Fair. He attained a perfect score and first place award in Chemistry at the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science Regional Meeting, and that's just the tip of the iceburg. This year, he’s hoping to take it a step further.
His research title is Identifying the Magnetic Properties of Iron at the Nanoscale, which is determining the thickness at which iron portrays varying magnetic properties at the nanoscale compared to bulk iron.
He has already earned academic scholarships to Penn State, Drexel and the University of the Sciences. He says he would enroll in the ROTC program at those schools, but his heart is set on one of the military academies.
From soccer to science, the common thread is the same.
Whenever Shane Hensel sets his heart on something, his head follows and he finds a way to stand tall.
