Soccer, Swimming
Favorite athlete: Abby Wambach
Favorite team: Philadelphia Independence
Favorite memory competing in sports: Scoring my first soccer goal from the sweeper position, and winning two of my heats at league championships for swimming this year!
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: I completely slipped and wiped out when trying to cross a ball…I’ve done it multiple times, but the worst (and most embarrassing) time was during a travel soccer playoff game!
Music on iPod: Songs by ABBA, Carrie Underwood, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Lady Antebellum, Maroon 5, Paramore, Shania Twain, 3 Doors Down, and more. Plus, some music in German and some theater soundtracks from shows I’ve been in or seen…
Future plans: I will attend the United State Naval Academy to major in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations and minor in German and Russian. I want to become a lawyer in the JAG Corps and work in international and military law. I would love to travel the world!
Words to live by: ‘Be who you are and say what you feel because those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter.’ –Dr. Seuss
One goal before turning 30: To have visited all five continents.
One thing people don’t know about me: I performed as a bass drummer at a Philadelphia Soul AFL game and met several players, several cheerleaders, and owner Bon Jovi in person!
By Alex Frazier
Mediocre isn’t a word in Amanda Assenmacher’s vocabulary.
“She’s an over-achiever in every sense of the word,” said Norristown girls soccer coach Jared Elias. “She doesn’t know what it means to go halfway. Not many kids can handle what she does.”
What she does would fill a large tome.
Just to name a few—soccer, swimming, DECA, Mock Trial, school newspaper, German Club, student government, drama club, National Honor Society, Reading Olympics Team, concert band.
“I love to learn,” she said. “I love to figure out stuff and expand my knowledge base.”
When she was young, her grandmother instilled in her a love of reading.
“I love to absorb as much as I can get a hold of,” she said. “I was always reading and I still am. Once the doors were open to all the different information, I just kept trying to get through everything I could get a hold of.”
With today’s Internet, that’s sometimes a problem.
“That has led to endless Google searches,” she said. “When I have a question, I start searching Google. Basically an hour or two reading link after link has been many a time my downfall when doing research for a project. All of a sudden it’s 10 o’clock and I have a paper due tomorrow.”
“I don’t know how the girl ever sleeps with everything she does,” said her swimming coach Beth O’Neill.
Assenmacher was a four-year varsity soccer player. For the past two years she played center back.
“She’s a natural leader,” said Elias. “She works hard and always gives her all. She was the most reliable and dependable.”
On a team that struggled to win games, she was a standout.
“If she was surrounded by a field of better players, she would have benefitted from that,” said Elias. “But on a team that doesn’t get that many wins, she was good at it.”
She was named to the SOL Third Team this year.
Assenmacher also lettered in swimming for three years. She started as a diver in her sophomore year but switched over to swimming as a junior and senior.
“It got to the point where there were certain dives she couldn’t do,” said O’Neill.
Realizing that she might not be able to compete in meets, she decided to swim instead.
Although basically a freestyler/breaststroker, Assenmacher would swim in any event she was asked to. Once she swam the 200 individual medley, one of swimming’s most grueling events.
“She wasn’t one of the girls that scored a whole lot of points, but she was there when we needed her,” said O’Neill. “She never questioned what I put her in to swim.”
Because she was involved in so many activities, she couldn’t always make every practice on time, and she sometimes missed Saturdays and Christmas practices. But she was there whenever it was possible.
“She has a great work ethic,” said O’Neill. “When she decides to do something, it’s not going to be anything less than 100 percent. She was never lackadaisical in finishing a workout.”
Assenmacher even took time to help the new kids in the program.
“She became friends with quite a few girls on the team even outside of swimming, which was lacking seriously in our program for a couple of years,” said O’Neill. “She was a great team leader even though she wasn’t a team captain. She had some great ideas, and a lot of girls got together on their own and did social activities as well. When she fit that in, I don’t know, but she did.
“She always cheered on the new swimmers. She never has a negative thing to say about anybody. She’s very uplifting and a role model to a lot of girls.”
Although not one of the top swimmers on the team, Assenmacher showed just what diligence could do by dropping a whopping three seconds in the 50 freestyle and nine seconds in the 100 freestyle to win both her heats at the Suburban One League Championships, which earned her the team’s Best Performance Award.
“The time drop was startling,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. I felt really good getting out of the pool the day before the meet. I really think my determination to beat my times and to be at my peak performance at championships really put me over the edge. I came back from a harsh illness at the beginning of the year.”
She received the Norristown Area High School athletic award for each of the sports she participated in.
Elias has also been Assenmacher’s mock trial coach for the past three years.
“She was a player-coach,” said Elias. “She worked with the kids and worked out how to ask questions and what you’re trying to get out of them. She really acted like a mentor to some of the kids that hadn’t done it before.”
In statewide mock trial competitions, she has won awards for best advocate and witness.
“I loved it,” she said. “It’s exactly where I want to be in the future. It was a perfect setup for me.”
Assenmacher has been a member of DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) for four years, serving as vice president her senior year and was responsible for organizing fundraising events for local charities and the DECA National charity.
DECA is an organization that promotes future leaders and entrepreneurs in various marketing and management fields.
“I was looking for ways to get involved freshman year,” she said. “I was interested in the idea of competition and about learning about business. I fell in love with the idea of the competition and the further pursuit of knowledge. I was surprised how well I did first year and challenged myself to do better the next year and the next and the next.”
After going to nationals for four years, she finally hit pay dirt this year when she made finals at the international competition in Salt Lake City, and placed fifth in the world.
Academically, Assenmacher has no peer at Norristown. She is ranked No. 1 in her class of 422, and she scored an 800 in her written and math SATs and a 770 in her verbal SAT.
In her last three years of high school, she has taken 10 advanced placement courses, including five this year. In 2011 she was named AP Scholar with Distinction. This year she was a National Merit Scholarship finalist.
When it came to college decisions, it wasn’t which one could she get into but which one would she choose.
Assenmacher was accepted at nine colleges, which included the United States Naval Academy, Harvard, Jacobs University (Bremen, Germany), American, Rochester, Pittsburgh, New Haven, Virginia Tech and Roanoke.
“I applied to some of them because they were reach schools, and I really wanted to show myself that I was competitive in the field of college applicants across the globe, and I knew they were places I could get a really good education,” she said. “Other schools I applied as part of the Naval ROTC program. I looked for schools with a political science program with a soccer team. I also looked at location.”
She was offered a full or partial scholarship to all but Harvard, which doesn’t give scholarships.
Assenmacher had been considering Naval ROTC and finally decided that was a direction she wanted to go midway through her junior year.
She applied for a summer program at the Naval Academy, which was designed to give applicants a week’s view of what it was like attending the Naval Academy.
“It tries to combine a full year at the Naval Academy in one week,” she said, including classes, sports and indoctrination.”
She was convinced.
“I loved everything I did there,” she said.
As soon as she returned, she turned her attention to the application and completed it before school began.
Her acceptance came as a late Christmas present in the second week of January.
She plans on majoring in political science with a focus on international relations. If possible she will minor in German and Russian.
“That’s quite a hefty course load for any student let alone a student at the Naval Academy because the curriculum is so heavily weighted toward math and science,” she said, “but I’m going to try and make it work.”
Her career goal is to pursue international military law as part of the Judge Advocate General Corps.
As she looks back on her high school career, there are certain highlights that she will always remember.
Academically she pointed to this year’s philosophy class. “It has been revolutionary in how I think and how I see the world,” she said. “I want to be a political scientist so that’s changed how I think.”
She is also indebted to several English teachers that have helped her with her writing.
“That’s been really important for me because I know I’ll be writing a lot in college,” she said.
As a freshman she went on an exchange to a sister school in Germany.
“That was a fantastic experience with direct immersion in the culture,” she said. “It was great getting to know people from a different culture and lifestyle.”
It was her second trip to Germany after visiting relatives in fourth grade.
This year’s DECA competition two weeks ago in Salt Lake City ranks high on her high school highlights list.
“That was a huge accomplishment for me,” she said. “To make it on stage for my last one was really great. I was stunned I did that well.”
Only the top 20 of about 150 make finals.
Her event was hotel marketing management.
She had to answer 100 multiple-choice questions, on which she scored the highest, and perform two role-plays before a judge with only 10 minutes to prepare and 10 minutes to present each.
“In the scenarios, you might be some kind of employee or sales manager or a consultant and you’re presenting to a judge who would be your boss or your CEO or the owner of your hotel, and you have some kind of task,” she explained. “You might be dealing with some kind of complaint or present a new promotional plan.”
June 28 is D-Day for Assenmacher, the day she reports to the Naval Academy.
She said she is ready for the next chapter of her life. With a Pulitzer Prize work already behind her, what’s in the future?
A Nobel Prize?
“She’ll be somebody some day, that’s for sure,” said Elias, “because of her work ethic and how determined she is.”
