Field Hockey
Favorite athlete: Roger Torres
Favorite team: The Union
Favorite memory competing in sports: Scoring the tying goal in the District One playoffs with 1:55 left. Unfortunately, Spring-Ford came back and scored with seven seconds left to win.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Banging heads with Rachel and getting 15 stitches!
Music on iPod: Music to dance to like LMFAO
Future plans: Become an occupational therapist
Words to live by: ‘Life is short, live it to the fullest and have fun along the way.’
One goal before turning 30: Have a career, a house and a family
One thing people don’t know about me: I really love to dance.
Bryn Frankhouser wasn’t a headliner for the Plymouth Whitemarsh field hockey team this past fall, but talk to coach Marianne Paparone, and it’s clear the veteran coach would take an entire team of Bryn Frankhousers.
“She’s very quiet on the field and is a kid that tends to fall through the cracks a little bit because she’s not very vocal and she doesn’t demand a lot of attention,” Paparone said. “But she’s a kid who is every coach’s dream because she listens, she works hard, she’s respectful, and she’s responsible.”
Frankhouser also happens to be very good. The senior left outside scored 15 goals for the Colonials this fall and earned third team all-league recognition.
“Her skill level has improved each year,” Paparone said. “She scored 15 goals for us, and we definitely needed that because we lost our right outside – who was one of our top players – for the whole season with an injury. Bryn picked up the slack.”
Frankhouser welcomed the challenge.
“I knew Pap needed someone to step up and score as many goals as possible,” the senior forward said. “Some of the other players were sophomores, and I didn’t know how much experience they had, so I thought I should step up because I was a senior.”
Making Frankhouser’s success on the hockey field this fall even more impressive is the fact that she played the entire season at less than 100 percent.
“During the preseason, I spent every day with the trainers,” she said. “It started as a shin splint and went up to – they think - nerve damage to my hip flexor just from overuse of my legs.
“It was rough because I missed the first 20 minutes of practice every day because I would be with the trainer having to ice it, heat it and stretch it, but I got through it.”
Frankhouser overcame her battle with shin splints but played through the hip flexor pain the entire season. That, however, didn’t slow her down as she had a standout season.
“Bryn is more a leader by example,” Paparone said. “She’s a hard worker, and she was very consistent this year. She has good speed, good endurance and is just a good all-around kid.
“She was a positive kid and not just this year but all four years. I don’t think she’s ever missed a practice. She plays hurt, and she’s always in a good mood and gets along with everyone.”
Ask Frankhouser what she’ll remember most about her high school hockey days, and she has an immediate answer.
“I think all of the friendships I made with everyone on the team and how close everyone got,” she said. “The first day of our freshman year there was 18 of us, and by the end of four years, we were down to 10 of us.
“We were always so close, and we always had each other’s backs, and we knew how to play with each other. I think that was the best experience about it.”
Frankhouser has been playing field hockey since she and her neighbor signed up for the sport in second grade with the Whitpain Recreation Association. Back then, soccer was her number one sport, and she played soccer through her sophomore year of high school. She didn’t play school hockey until her freshman year, and by the time she was a sophomore, she was a member of the varsity.
When soccer moved to the fall in 2010, Frankhouser was forced to choose between two sports she loved. She opted for hockey.
“I liked the coach, and I liked the girls on the team,” she said. “It was probably the hardest decision I made in high school, but I definitely made the right decision picking hockey over soccer.”
Frankhouser leaves PW with many special memories, but one of her personal highlights came last year when the Colonials advanced to the second round of the District One AAA Tournament.
“That was the highlight because Pap hadn’t won a playoff game in six or seven years until then, so it was exciting,” Frankhouser said.
The senior forward points to her coach as a reason she developed such a love for the game.
“She’s probably my favorite coach out of anyone that has ever coached me,” Frankhouser said of Paparone. “She always knew exactly what to say to us, she never let us quit.
“She was always there for us. If we wanted to call her in the middle of the night because we needed something, she would answer the phone. She was more than just a coach.”
Frankhouser, who plays indoor hockey during the winter months with her high school team, is hoping to play at the collegiate level. She is talking to both Elizabethtown and Scranton.
An academic all-state selection this year, Frankhouser also excels in the classroom where she takes AP math and is enrolled in all honors classes. In addition to working two jobs, she is a member of the National Honor Society as well as the Anti-Defamation League. She is an orientation leader, a member of the steering committee for her senior class and is a member of student council.
Frankhouser is presently doing an internship every Wednesday afternoon at an elementary school with a speech therapist and every Sunday with an occupational therapist at Totally Sensational.
Her plans are to pursue a career as an occupational therapist.
“One of the girls who was a senior last year was an intern at an OT place, so one day me and another girl on the team decided to go with her to see what it was all about, and we both just fell in love with it,” Frankhouser said. “I always knew I wanted to do something where I help people, and I really like special needs kids.
“I was looking into physical therapy, but occupational therapy is helping people do everyday things and getting them back to their everyday lives. That seems more appealing to me than physical therapy.”
An eagerness to help others is undoubtedly yet another reason why Frankhouser would fit the bill as ‘every coach’s dream’ player.
