Basketball
Favorite athlete: Doug Collins
Favorite team: 76ers
Favorite memory competing in sports: Hitting the three-pointer to tie the game last year against Quakertown with three seconds left that led to the buzzer beater by Kyle Peters for the league title.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Watching how close my best friend Andrew Lyons can get to dunking without actually being able to do it. It’s impressive.
Music on iPod: Meek Mill, Drake, etc.
Future plans: Take life one day at a time.
Words to live by: ‘An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.’
One goal before turning 30: Have a college degree and a good paying job.
One thing people don’t know about me: I bowled for about nine years before I gave it up because it got in the way of basketball in the winter.
Tim Abruzzo is the new standard bearer for future basketball players at Pennridge.
In truth, the senior standout is the first standard bearer for a basketball program that has not had an especially storied past.
“He set the bar high,” coach Dean Behrens said. “Now everyone is talking about him as the next guy they’re going to shoot for. You hear people say, ‘He’s as good as Tim.’ We never had that before.”
Abruzzo has rewritten the school’s record books. The Pennridge senior not only surpassed the 1,000-point mark, he also broke the school’s career scoring record, closing out his career with 1,118 points. He also holds the school record for career three-point baskets with 193 and also the single season mark for treys (73).
Making those numbers especially impressive is the fact that Abruzzo accumulated those career totals in just three years, averaging 16.5 points a game during that span. He put the finishing touches on a brilliant high school career by scoring 470 points this season, averaging 21.3 points a game – the highest average ever by a Pennridge player.
“I remember watching Tim playing in seventh and eighth grades, and you never imagined him turning out this way because Tim wasn’t very tall,” Behrens said. “I have a picture of him in ninth grade, and he was probably 110 pounds.
“Obviously, he got so much better each year. Now he can dunk the ball, he’s playing above the rim. You don’t know how much a kid is going to grow, you don’t know how much a kid is going to put into it.”
Abruzzo put a whole lot into his sport, playing for two AAU teams and seizing every opportunity to play. He never tired of basketball, not only because of his love of the game but also because of the people who shared his passion for basketball with him.
“Honestly, I can say that being able to play with all my friends I’ve played with – all the guys from last year and Andrew Lyons, who has been my best friend for all four years – it’s my favorite sport, and it’s their favorite sport,” Abruzzo said. “That’s been huge for me.
“I have no problem going to practice every day. I have no problem going to the park to play with them. It has made me so much better because all we want to do is play and practice and shoot.
“I think that’s been the biggest thing for me. If you’re playing with kids you don’t like, it’s going to make you not want to play and do something else. I’ve been playing with my best friends for four years. There’s nothing I would rather do than play basketball.”
Abruzzo has parlayed his talents into an invitation to attend the prestigious Naval Academy.
“I always said I was hoping basketball would take me somewhere where I couldn’t go without it,” he said. “My grades are good but not Naval Academy good.
“They just came through with an offer last week. They want me to go to their prep school for a year and then I’ll move on to their academy the following year. The Naval Academy is tough to pass up.”
Although the Naval Academy is Abruzzo’s number one choice, he plans to take another trip to Annapolis within the next several weeks before he finalizes his decision.
“It’s definitely an awesome opportunity, and even if I choose against it and don’t go down, it’s nice knowing I did have the option,” he said.
Abruzzo has been playing basketball for as long as he can remember. He also played baseball and football. By the time he was a freshman, baseball and football were no longer part of the equation as basketball moved to the forefront.
Interestingly, his first coach in the Deep Run Valley Sports Association was Jim Groff, whose longstanding career scoring record at Pennridge was broken by Abruzzo this year.
“He actually texted me the night I was going to break it,” Abruzzo said. “He told me how proud he was.
“He said it was bittersweet because obviously the record had been around 24 years, but he was happy it was me and was really happy for me.”
Although he has re-written the record books at Pennridge, Abruzzo has little regard for individual achievements. Mention his records, and he’ll talk about his team’s accomplishments instead, most notably Pennridge’s first ever conference championship season when he was a junior.
“Last year was an amazing season,” Abruzzo said. “It was an amazing run. It started when I was a sophomore because we didn’t have any seniors that year. We all built a relationship. We learned what each other liked to do on the court, and then going into my junior year, we were ready to make a run.
“We knew we had the parts in place that we could do something in the league and kind of surprise people. The seven of us who played and the nine on the team – we were really close. We all hung out together. Aside from all the wins, it was just a really fun year with the team. It was a great group of guys to accomplish it with. I wouldn’t want it to be with anyone else.”
That title, according to Behrens, wouldn’t have happened without Abruzzo.
“We wouldn’t have even been .500 this year if it wasn’t for Tim,” the Rams’ coach said. “He meant a lot in that regard, and he’s obviously going to be missed.”
Behrens marvels at Abruzzo’s improvement over the years.
“Every year he got better,” the Rams’ coach said. “A lot of people can be good in eighth or ninth grades, but how much are they going to work to get better when they’re seniors.
“He put a lot of effort into getting better. Tim worked on some of the weaknesses he had and made those better. That’s what I think made him the player he is today. He didn’t just work on things he was good at – he got better at the things he wasn’t so good at maybe as a sophomore and junior, and this year it really showed.
“He became a better ball handler, he was shooting off the dribble. Those things don’t come naturally all the time, but all the things he needed to do to get better he did.”
Abruzzo was one of three senior captains of a young squad that lost the nucleus of last year’s championship to graduation.
“It was a lot different,” Abruzzo said. “Last year we all knew each other’s roles.
“This year myself, Andrew Lyons and Colin McIntyre had to really teach these guys what it was like to play varsity basketball.
“We had to make sure these guys knew that last year wasn’t a fluke. That it didn’t just happen. We worked hard for that, and we needed everybody to realize that if we wanted to do that again we had to play hard. The guys really bought into it.”
The Rams came on strong and found themselves battling for a district berth. They came up just short, but according to Behrens, the squad couldn’t have had better leaders.
“They did a great job of helping our freshmen along, and they treated them great,” he said. “Tim really helped them on the floor. That was neat.”
Making Abruzzo’s journey on the basketball court even more special was the fact his family and extended family shared it with him.
“My sister and I are really close – she is my best friend,” Abruzzo said of his sister Lauren, a student at Duesquene. “I talk to her about anything. She was there when I scored my thousandth point.
“She wasn’t able to be there when I broke the record, but I had a lot of family there – my parents, my aunt and uncle, my grandparents. Win or lose, no matter what, they were always my biggest fans, and they were always there cheering me on. That was huge for me. I didn’t feel as though I was going through it alone.”
An excellent student, Abruzzo – who takes AP Statistics and all honors classes - has narrowed his college choices to the Naval Academy and West Chester where he will continue his basketball career.
“Basketball can only take you so far,” Abruzzo said. “If you don’t have the grades to get into the schools that want you, it doesn’t mean anything. They can’t fudge numbers. You have to do the work in the classroom.”
Abruzzo has done the work in the classroom and on the basketball court, and he is reaping the rewards for his efforts.
“Tim is real polite and respectful in the classroom,” Behrens said. “I get a lot of compliments from teachers.
“I don’t think I’ve had anyone say anything negative about Tim in his four years here. He’s a good kid.”
