SuburbanOneSports.com recognizes a male and female featured athlete each week. The awards, sponsored by Univest, are given to seniors of good character who are students in good standing that have made significant contributions to their teams. Selections are based on nominations received from coaches, athletic directors and administrators.
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Female Athlete for week of April 19, 2022.
Trinity Lucas is part of a very rare breed of athletes who somehow manage to squeeze four sports into three seasons. There’s no denying the Quakertown senior’s athletic ability, but talk to any one of her coaches, and that’s not the first thing they’ll mention when her name comes up in conversation. “Trinity is just one of the coolest kids I’ve ever coached and probably the most liked player by virtually everyone in the program,” Quakertown softball coach Dave Scott said. “She’s the ultimate team player and is a great team leader who is liked but also respected by the younger players. Trinity is a great role model for the younger players in the program.” Quakertown soccer coach Mike Koch added, “Trinity is a great kid. She has a care and concern for other people that really shows through, and that’s what makes her really likable, and she just has that kind of easygoing attitude with it.”
“She’s a neat kid,” Quakertown track coach Jason Anderson said. “She’s definitely someone who’s enjoying life and doing whatever she can to get everything out of it.” Anderson goes on to recount a scene he witnessed at the Haverford Invitational when Lucas was waiting to compete in her event – the shot put - earlier this spring. “We were at the shot put circle, and this little girl comes up and said, ‘Does anyone have any lip balm?’” the Panthers’ track coach said. “Trinity takes out her lip balm and says, ‘Here you go.’ They’re joking around, the girl takes a little bit, and I was like, ‘My gosh, I’d never be that easygoing.’ Here’s Trinity who’s about to win the event, and here’s this little girl who’s going to throw half the distance. I would think someone of Trinity’s caliber might (not in so many words) be like, ‘Yeah, get away from me,’ but no, she’s very helpful, very nice, very accommodating. First of all, to approach someone to ask someone balm – Trinity is not huge, but she’s definitely a formidable athlete, so the vibe she gives off is worth mentioning. She’s accessible, she’s very coachable.”
And she’s also very organized because it’s in the spring that Lucas somehow manages to handle two sports – softball and track and field. “I literally have this whiteboard calendar I’ve written out my games and my track meets and days I’m able to split up practice,” Lucas said. “I have my own shot put, so if I can’t make it to practice that day, I’ll still take the time to go out and throw on my own time.” Lucas, who has already qualified for districts in shot put, is coming off an indoor track and field season that saw her finish eighth at the indoor state meet at Penn State. Her softball coach is more than happy to make sure things work out for both sports. “If she said, ‘Hey listen, I have a meet coming up or a qualifier for districts, I’m good with that,” Scott said. “She does what she needs to do, and that’s how she’s able to do it. If you asked her, I bet she would say ‘I love all three.’ She loves soccer, she loves track, she loves softball. I don’t know if she considers one over the other.”
Trinity Lucas is a military kid. She never spent a whole lot of time in one place until her family landed in Quakertown when Lucas was in eighth grade. She was born in California and – before Pennsylvania - lived in North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina and New York. “I feel like it was a good thing for me because it made me open up more,” Lucas said. “I was really shy growing up. I moved every three years, so I would have to make new friends, join new teams. It made me become more of an open and outgoing person. It kind of helped me in life because I was able to adapt to things quickly.”
Lucas – in addition to competing in sports - is involved in numerous clubs, including Mini-THON, Best Buddies, Q Rock and class council. An excellent student, her course load includes three AP classes. She also competes in club soccer and softball outside of school and plays several instruments. At Temple, Lucas will major in communication and media studies with her sights set on becoming a sports broadcaster. She has not ruled out playing soccer at the collegiate level and will be attending a soccer camp at Temple later this month, but competing in shot put seems to be within her grasp. “We know a couple of (Temple) coaches, and we’re like, ‘Gosh, you really could be a D-1 athlete,’” Anderson said. “I’m super hopeful. She went to states last year for softball and then made it to states again this year by herself in shot put for track. She’s been fantastic. She’s already deep into the district rankings, so she’s made districts and dares to dream what could happen later on.”
To read Lucas’ complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/trinity-lucas-00100090
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of April 19, 2022.
Like anybody about to start a brand new job, Mike Guido was unsure of his surroundings and probably a little nervous. As soon as Guido, the first-year head baseball coach at Lower Moreland, checked his newly set up school email inbox this past December, he noticed a message from one of his players who he hadn’t even met in person yet. “I saw that an Aiden Stepansky had emailed me when he found out I was going to be the new head coach,” Guido recalled. “He was the first to reach out and introduce himself. He told me congratulations on the job, said what positions he played and that he couldn’t wait to get started. I’ve learned that it’s kind of who he is. He’s so excited to play baseball all the time, and he stops by my room in between periods to talk. The kid can’t get enough baseball, and he’s always asking questions trying to learn and coming up with suggestions for me to implement. When we started our winter workouts, Aiden was always the first to show up and the last one out. He even brought some drills on his own, and I could tell right away this kid was a captain and quiet leader. It was evident the first day I met him. I couldn’t have asked to have a better kid as I transitioned into my first year.”
Stepansky also played soccer at Lower Moreland and was a valuable member of that program, but at the end of the day, he is a baseball junkie. Stepansky is absolutely passionate about the game and can talk about and watch it all day long. Considering how much he loves the game, Stepansky had no problem stepping up as a leader; he may be naturally introverted, but when it comes to his favorite sport, he just wanted to help behind the scenes as much as he could. The Lower Moreland baseball program means that much to Stepansky, who as a senior now serves as the Lions’ leadoff hitter, where he has become a menace on the basepaths in the season’s early chapters, as well as its starting shortstop who is also more than capable of playing second and third, which he has done in his time in the program.
In soccer, Stepansky mostly played jayvee and got to be a leader on that team as a freshman. He didn’t start at first as a sophomore, but injuries changed that, and once he got in the lineup, Stepansky stuck. He said he started every game as a junior, and probably expected to as a senior as well. However, the plan changed when Lower Moreland head coach Bob Barnhart, who didn’t coach the team Stepansky’s junior year due to COVID concerns, returned to the sideline and switched the Lions’ typical four-back defense to three, opting for an extra body up top. So, as a senior, Stepansky lost his starting spot, which could be a bruise to the ego of any young student-athlete. But Stepansky? “He would play five minutes one game and 75 the next, and he never complained,” Barnhart said. “Even though he didn’t get as many minutes as a senior, he was fully engaged during the game, talking to my assistant and asking questions. He became known as the Brad Lidge of our team, because I’d put him in the last 15 to 20 minutes of a game when we needed to shut down an offensive threat. He really embraced his role wholeheartedly. He provided an extra layer of support, someone we relied on to close out 2-1 or 1-0 games. He made sacrifices to play soccer, and even when he wasn’t getting a ton of minutes, there were no hard feelings. Aiden always had a positive outlook.”
From Lower Moreland, Stepansky will be bound for upstate New York, heading to Syracuse University to major in magazine, news and digital journalism. Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications is widely known as the undisputed best of its kind, with countless journalism luminaries having graduated from there. Stepansky said he figured out around seventh or eighth grade that he wanted to be a baseball writer; after all, he loves the sport so much, so why not? It just made sense to him. Once he got to Lower Moreland, he joined the school newspaper and wrote sports articles, mainly about the Lions basketball team, and also handled sports assignments for the yearbook. The major of magazine, news and digital journalism will allow Stepansky different paths to explore over the next four years, but if you ask a baseball-obsessed kid his dream writing job, the answer is expected. “I hope to narrow it down as I get more experience writing, but Phillies beat writer for a newspaper or website,” he said.
To read Stepansky’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/aiden-stepansky-00100084
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