The following article was posted when Jenna Phillips was selected as a Featured Athlete. The Hatboro-Horsham senior, who has been battling juveniile diabetes since she was 12, recently signed a letter of intent to accept a field hockey scholarship to Drexel, capping an inspiring high school athletic career.
Methacton coach Nicole Dudek Bauer remembers it all too well – the impossible, leaping save by Jenna Phillips on a lift shot by her player into the upper right hand corner of the cage during a second round District One AAA Tournament game.
“She made an amazing play – she punched it up and over the goal,” said Bauer, herself a former All-American at Duke University. “It was a Division One save.“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It was a beautiful shot – something we practice every day, and she just made a save like my goalie at Duke who was with me would have made. It was an amazing save. I have never seen a goalie play like that in high school. She was that good.”
Phillips turned away 17 shots in a performance that propelled the 15th seeded Hatters to a 3-2 overtime win and sent the second-seeded Warriors home for the season.
It was the type of performance fans of Hatters’ field hockey had come to expect from Phillips.
“It was beautiful to watch her play,” Hatboro coach Krista Greene said. “She was just so aggressive, and she’s so confident in goal, but she’s such a quiet spirit outside of goal.”
A first team all-state selection and team MVP, the Hatboro-Horsham senior, who has accepted a hockey scholarship to Drexel University, was named a first team NFHCA High School All-American.
Phillips is also a standout softball player and was a key member of last year’s state championship squad. She’s also an excellent student.
It’s quite an impressive resume for anyone, but Phillips also has had to deal with the not-so-little matter of juvenile diabetes, a disease she has been battling since she was 12 years old.
“I had every symptom in the book,” she said. “I lost 20 pounds in a couple of weeks. I was eating like crazy, drinking water like crazy, going to the bathroom excessively.
“My vision was messed up. I can’t say blurry – that’s usually a symptom, but when I would look at something, it would shrink and then pop back out again. I had dry skin, and my hair was thinning.”
A visit to the doctor confirmed what her mother, a nurse, suspected. Phillips’ blood sugar was 547 – a normal count is 80-110. She was hospitalized for three days and educated on a treatment plan that included insulin shots three times a day.
“It was hard,” she said. “I used to ask myself, ‘Why me? Why me?’ I went through that phase for a year, trying to understand why it had to be me.“It affects your life a lot, but I was told it wouldn’t keep me from doing what I wanted to do, so I wasn’t going to let that happen. I knew I could do whatever I wanted.”
From the outset, Phillips refused to let diabetes define her. The day after she was released from the hospital she played in a soccer game.
“That just goes to show it’s possible,” she said.
After two years of living with insulin shots, Phillips opted to go with an insulin pump instead.
“It was weird getting used to having it attached to me all the time, but I didn’t really think about that,” she said. “It just made my life so much simpler, less complex.”
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The tenacity Phillips displays in fighting diabetes is the same tenacity Hatter hockey coach Marie Schmucker – a teacher in the middle school - saw when she pegged Phillips as her future goalie.“I used to hunt her down in the hallway and say, ‘Jenna, will you play goalie? Will you play goalie?’” Schmucker recalled. “She looked at me like I had three heads.”
Phillips laughs as she remembers Schmucker’s persistence.
“She pounded me every single day in middle school to try the sport,” she said. “I did not want to play at all.”
Schmucker didn’t give up, drawn to the diminutive Phillips by her tenacity, determination and drive.
“Her athleticism is incredible,” Schmucker said. “I watched her on the softball field, and whatever sport she was involved in, she was great at. Whatever she picked up, she excelled at. I knew she was very aggressive, and it was just something I thought she would truly love and have a passion for it.”
Schmucker was right.
“As soon as I tried it during the summer, I loved it,” Phillips said. “I played soccer goalie for four years, so it was kind of similar – the same angles and stuff like that.”
Phillips was a natural in goal, displaying remarkable hand-eye coordination that was developed on the soccer field and softball diamond, and it wasn’t long before hockey vaulted ahead of softball on her list of passions.
“Her progress in the goal has really been remarkable,” said Hatter softball coach Kelly Krier, who was the jayvee hockey coach when Phillips began playing hockey. “For softball becoming her second sport, she still can compete with just about anyone.
“Defensively, she’s solid – she would dive, jump, do anything to get to the ball. She’s quick, and she can hit the ball. She can lift more weights than anyone on the team. She’s a tough cookie.”
Phillips has been a veteran of the travel softball circuit since she was 10.
“I played softball forever,” she said. “I actually thought I would be playing softball in college until last year when I made a decision to play field hockey.
“It was something different, something new. Although softball was always fun, I had a better time playing field hockey. I played softball for such a long time. I needed something different.”
Phillips has been playing club hockey with the Mystx since her sophomore year, and she admits she simply loves to compete.
“I like games where I get a lot of action,” she said. “Games where I’m sitting back when nothing’s coming and I get one or two shots – it’s harder to stay in it.
“I like games where I’m standing on my head and shots are coming at me left and right. It just makes it more fun.”
As a senior, Phillips had over 200 saves with a save percentage in the neighborhood of 90 percent. The war to land her talents never really materialized since Phillips had her heart set on Drexel from the outset.
“I just fell in love with the coaches, with the school, with the area,” she said. “Everything felt right. My heart was set on it.
“I turned down a lot of people early because it felt right. I felt so comfortable with the people there.”
Phillips will pursue a career in nursing with her sights set on becoming a Certified Diabetes Educator. She’s already unofficially filling that capacity at Hatboro where she willingly shares her experience with diabetes with others in the hopes that they will be able to live life as fully as she is.
“Just in our school, there are roughly 10 people with diabetes – the ones I do know,” she said. “Usually their questions get referred to me by the nurse.
“They call me, talk on Facebook, talk in person. I help when I can. I share my past experiences and try to be positive for others.”
Phillips, who has not only done her part to educate people, has raised funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Not surprisingly, she is conscientious when it comes to treating her own diabetes.
“Ten minutes before the game, she leaves and checks her sugar and takes a drink of Gatorade,” Greene said. “She’s on top of it. I don’t have to do anything.”
Except put her in goal and let her do her thing.
“She’s the kind of player who will ask for suggestions, but she’ll also give suggestions,” Greene said. “We had an inexperienced defense last fall, and she was so solid. Any time somebody took a shot, we might have said, ‘That’s going in,’ but it never was going in. Even four, five shots in a row – boom, boom, boom and back out. It was just amazing.
“She’s never been very vocal, but she knows when to attack and when not to. If it’s a 50-50 ball, she’s like, ‘It’s mine.’ She knows her position so well, and she just gets better all the time.”
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On a cold winter’s day in early February, Phillips signed a letter of intent to accept a hockey scholarship to Drexel. Surrounded by the people she loves – teammates, family, friends, coaches and administrators – Phillips was honored by those who know her best.
“Jenna has always given 100 percent,” said athletic director Lou James, who was an assistant coach for the softball team. “It’s true – what you give is what you get, and this is part of what Jenna gets.
“For a lot of different reasons, this is a big success day for Jenna. She has overcome a lot of things in her life. She’s taken what God’s given her and come up aces.”
“She’s just a great kid, a wonderful kid,” Greene said. “Even if she didn’t play hockey, I would still love her to death and have a great relationship with her because that’s the kind of girl she is.
“She’s one of those people everybody calls her friend. The teachers love her. Every time I mention her name to the other teachers, their faces light up. She’s just a good kid.”
And then Greene turned to Phillips.
“Wherever you are, you make everybody around you better – whether it be a coach, a teacher or other students,” she said. “As a person, as a student, as an athlete, we’re so proud of you, and we know you’re going to flourish.”
Phillips will write the next chapter of her story on the Drexel campus. It’s a safe bet it will be every bit as inspiring as the one just completed.
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