Thanks to our continued partnership with Univest Financial, SuburbanOneSports.com will once again recognize a male and female featured athlete each week. The recognition is given to seniors of high character who are students in good standing that have made significant contributions to their teams or who have overcome adversity. Selections are based on nominations received from coaches, athletic directors and administrators.
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Female Athlete (Week of Oct. 28, 2024)
Meet Ava Zebert. Softball is and has always been the Quakertown senior’s passion. A natural middle infielder, Zebert is preparing to fill a new and important role this spring for the defending SOL Liberty Division co-champs. “Our team lost Abbey Wagner (to graduation),” Zebert said of the all-state pitcher. “We’re kind of at a shortage of pitchers right now. I’ve started pitching and plan to hopefully pitch for our team this season. I pitched a little bit during my early travel days, but I hadn’t really done pitching seriously in a while.”
Coach Rich Scott calls Zebert his ‘secret weapon.’ “I told her that when we first started,” the Panthers’ coach said. “Last week when I saw her pitch, I said, ‘Ava, I have a lot of confidence in you. I know you can do it’. I can see it in her. It’s the competitor in her – they don’t want to be mediocre, they want to be the best. She has a great attitude, and she’s doing pretty darn good, and she hasn’t been able to do anything for a couple of years.” In fact, Zebert has not played an inning of softball in more than two years. During that time, she’s been fighting the battle of her young life.
Roll back the calendar to the summer of 2022. It was like every other summer for Ava Zebert. Packed with softball from beginning to end. Or at least that was the plan. It was business as usual at an early season tournament at Veterans Park on Father’s Day weekend. Until Zebert cut her knee on Saturday of the two-day tournament. “I dove for a ball and scraped my knee,” she said. “My mom kept telling me, ‘Wash it out, wash it out,’ but it was just another scrape. I didn’t think much of it.” While scratches and scrapes happen regularly in the world of fast pitch softball, Zebert also experienced pain in her knee. She took Tylenol and didn’t miss any of the weekend’s action, playing four more games on Sunday and ultimately winning the championship with her Lehigh Valley Phantoms travel squad.
“That night I got a fever (that spiked at 103) and had to go to the hospital. The next day the doctors determined that it was an infection and started me on antibiotics for left knee cellulitis,” Zebert said. “They kept me overnight because my bloodwork was abnormal. They thought the abnormal bloodwork was just from the infection. They sent me home and had me get follow-up bloodwork. My primary care doctor told me it was still abnormal a few days later, which is something to be concerned about, I guess. They weren’t really sure exactly what it was – there was a bunch of things it could have been.”
Additional bloodwork, a trip to CHOP and a bone marrow biopsy confirmed their worst fears. Zebert had leukemia. “It was so surreal just hearing the word cancer,” her mother, Lorena Zebert, said. “She looked at my face. I kept saying, ‘They’re wrong, they’re wrong. There’s absolutely no way. She’s an athlete, she eats healthy. There’s just no way.’ Even after the bone marrow biopsy, I kept saying, ‘They’re going to come back, they misdiagnosed you.’ But July 1 – we transferred to Lehigh Valley Hospital Pediatric Oncology and sat in a room with the oncology team, the best oncology team you could want your child to be part of. Ava kept saying, ‘Don’t worry mom, we’ve got this.’ Ava was just so positive. She’s an inspiration. You just keep going, you just get it done. I think that’s the mentality of an athlete. God bless her.”
Zebert underwent treatment at Lehigh Valley Hospital Pediatric Oncology (Cedar Crest) for what was confirmed as T-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia. “I was in the hospital for 30 days straight on intense chemotherapy and steroids, which I do have to say are the worst,” Zebert said. “The steroids affected me hormonally, and I wanted to eat everything – and the weight gain. The chemo itself- I didn’t have a terrible amount of side effects, but I lost my hair. At first, I was kind of numb to everything. It definitely affected me, I didn’t really go out much because I was immunocompromised. It was like another quarantine for a year-and-a-half. Not 100 percent, but for a good year I was immunocompromised from the treatment. The extent of getting out of my house was taking a ride to the grocery store with my mom but staying in the car.”
Fast forward to the fall of 2024. Zebert took up golf, made the team and advanced to the SOL Tournament. She is focused on her new role for the softball team, and life is returning to normal. “I tell you what – she just keeps getting stronger and stronger,” Quakertown softball coach Rich Scott said. “She hasn’t pitched in a game, so I don’t know what she can do, but she’s very determined and very eager. I can tell you now – she’s not going to fail.
To read Zebert’s complete story, please click on the following link: https://suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/ava-zebert-00115750
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete (Week of Oct. 28, 2024).
In an era of fantasy sports and betting apps, it is easy to get bogged down in statistics. However, as any coach will tell you, statistics don’t really measure what an athlete can mean to a team. A perfect example is Central Bucks West senior midfielder Luca Testani. In ice hockey, he would be the guy working the corners and coming out with the puck. In basketball, he would be the guy setting picks so someone else gets a better look at the basket. In football, he is the lead blocker for the star running back. In baseball, he is making contact and hitting behind the runners. In soccer, Testani’s lifetime sport of choice, it is harder to quantify, but second-year coach John Adair was able to put it into words.
“Luca is someone who has always stood out for his character and for his positive energy,” he said. “This year, he was a consistent starter. He had an impact in almost every game, even if it was not always on the scoresheet. The way that he plays matches his personality. He plays with a ton of energy and ton of intensity, but he also plays with a smile on his face.” Adair, who runs the Buckingham United soccer club, has been
associated with Testani’s family for a while. He knew that Testani was not happy about not being a full-time starter before this year, but he appreciates how much he made up for lost time as a senior leader. “From our conversations postseason and going into this season, he handled everything with incredible maturity in the right way to put himself in the position to have the kind of season that he had this year,” Adair said. “With all the ups and downs, he was one of those kids that it was impossible to not root for and to be happy for with the impact he had during his senior year.”
Those ups and downs included starting the season 1-5-1 and just missing the playoffs at the tail end of the season. It is not the way he would have liked for it to have end, but Testani is able to see the larger picture. “I’m very grateful, even though some of the games didn’t go in our favor,” he said. “It was really just full circle to end that way. It’s really just indescribable to even think about where I was last year and then performing at my best this year. My last season just flew by in the blink of an eye. I’m just looking back now, and I’m very grateful for having that in my senior year of playing soccer, but it’s very real. I’m going to remember my senior season forever.”
A large reason for Testani’s wisdom was the way he was able to battle from adversity when his older brother of three years, Dominic, was killed in a boating accident when Testani was a 15-year-old sophomore. “The grieving process was kind of strange to me,” he said. “I didn’t really know what to do. It’s actually what I wrote my college essay on. I found that you don’t really get over things, you can only get through them.” He explained that he dealt with grief in a positive way. “I have found it most beneficial to find some little things that I can do for myself, getting through this last year-and-a-half without him,” he said. “I just ran track, played soccer. I got into filmmaking and playing the guitar. It was all stuff where I could, more or less, isolate myself in a way that I could grieve by myself but also fulfill myself with some sort of happiness and push through. Although I was never in a depressed state in my life, there were just moments of grief that were harder than others. I just had to distract myself and enjoy myself with others.”
And there was no more enjoyment, Testani said, than being on the soccer field with friends and teammates. “Whenever I’m around my teammates, I really am happy,” he said. “I loved being around my team this year. I was always happy.”
And, when Senior Night came around, Testani was honored to be there with his parents. “Senior Night was everything to me,” he said. “My family just always had my back.” Whether he does or doesn’t play in college, Testani will no longer be suiting up for the Bucks. “He’s a kid that is tough replace, more so from just the leadership qualities and selfless than anything else,” said Adair. “He’s a strong soccer player, but he’s not one of our most talented on paper, but he has been the engine and driving force in a lot of the dirty work for some of the other guys who are maybe a little more gifted with the ball. Finding someone who is that selfless and is willing to run, and without really any expectation of recognition, is something that is really hard to find nowadays in a young kid.”
To read Testani’s complete story, please click on the following link: https://suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/luca-testani-00115740
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