Cross Country, Track
Favorite athlete: Lopez Lomong
Favorite memory competing in sports: Running at the XC state championship last year
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: I got lapped during a 3k my freshman year at Council Rock. It was the last two meters of the race.
Music on iPod: Variety rap and rock
Future plans: Running in college and eventually working with athletes
Words to live by: “Hard work and determination pay off.”
One goal before turning 30: To surf in Hawaii
One thing people don’t know about me: I enjoy cooking
By Craig Ostroff
Central Bucks West boys cross country coach Greg Wetzel has the kind of problem most coaches would love to have. Trying to figure out a single athlete who stands out among a successful team filled with an extraordinarily talented senior class who are also top-notch leaders, students, and citizens is not exactly easy.
Still, if there’s one team member who exemplifies all those characteristics … who represents the heart and soul of the squad while standing head and shoulders above the rest … there’s no doubt who Wetzel would choose.
“You talk about a quality athlete, student, citizen, and Declan McDonald is all of those things,” Wetzel said. “We have so many great seniors who are outstanding athletically and academically, who are wonderful citizens, but Declan stood out the most to us as coaches. He’s someone we really wanted to highlight and who is incredibly capable as an athlete and a student.
“It’s hard to say Declan is an ‘unsung hero,’ because he usually comes in anywhere between third and fifth on a really good team. But I don’t know where we’d be without his effort and his leadership this whole time. He has stood out the most.”
The depth points that McDonald has contributed throughout the season have been a large part of the Bucks’ undefeated dual-meet season, and his times – particularly as the postseason has loomed – have been a shining example of how hard work and dedication pay off.
McDonald ran the course at the William Tennent Invitational in mid-October in 16 minutes, 10.1 seconds, good for a 12th-place finish in a race featuring 23 teams. Last week at the SOL Championship Meet at Lehigh University, McDonald finished eighth in the Continental Conference with a time of 16 minutes, 14 seconds.
Looking ahead to Districts, McDonald’s primary goal is to help his team challenge for the District Championship. Of course, if he happens to shave 14-plus seconds off his time in doing so, he’d be more than pleased with that.
“It’s mostly about making sure the team succeeds,” McDonald said. “I really want to see the team do well and I’m going to do what I can to help the team out. I’m looking to see if I can go under 16. It’s probably going to be my last opportunity to do so, since Hershey (the State Championship Meet is at Hersheypark) is a much tougher course.”
Wetzel has no doubts about the effort and the results he will get from McDonald. He’s just hoping that others will start to see what he’s known for years – that McDonald is as consistent and dependable an athlete as you’re likely to find.
“We’re really happy to be in the position of counting on a guy like Declan,” Wetzel said. “When you get into the postseason, someone having a good race or a bad race could be a difference for us at districts. For someone like Declan who might be our third or fourth or fifth, where he places could be the difference, and we couldn’t be happier or have more confidence to be in a position of counting on him.
“I get so excited for this part of the season, when people really show what they’re made of. Declan is a guy who shows it every time.”
For McDonald, who will be making this third appearance at districts, the postseason is the culmination of three years of varsity cross country and the journey he and his senior classmates have made together.
“We’ve had a really good run this year,” McDonald said. “It’s all been coming together the last couple years, and this is the end of that. We had a good year last year, this year we’ve been fine-tuning everything, and I think we’re all more prepared this year. For me, personally, I feel like I’ve really been improving and I’ve become a better, smarter runner.
“I know what I have to do for the team. We’re all pretty close, we always practice together, and we know that on any given day, someone could finish ahead of someone else. I just want to see everyone else to do their best, and if I finish behind them, I know it’s because they worked really hard to be the best they can be, too.”
Wetzel points to that selfless attitude as part of what makes McDonald such a solid leader and role model for the younger runners on the team. And as large and talented as the senior class is, McDonald said it’s been important for him and his classmates to lead the underclassmen so that the future can be as bright as the present.
“Our goal is not to just have a good team each year, but to have a good program,” Wetzel said. “Declan and our other seniors really do buy into that. They want to leave the program in a better position than it was when they came in.”
“It’s been really important to us to be good leaders for the younger guys,” McDonald said. “When you have someone who’s been to districts and states before, it’s important to help the younger guys to prepare, to get them ready for what they’re going to have to do.
“I think every senior has their own way of leading. For me, I try to give the guys someone to talk to if they need to, and I try and make sure they are all putting in everything they can.”
McDonald, who also runs indoor and outdoor track, takes that hard work into the classroom with him as well. With a GPA floating near the 4.0 mark, he’s not letting up in his senior year. He’s taking one AP and one Honors course this semester, with two more AP courses and several Honors classes in the spring.
In addition, McDonald is a member of the National Honor Society and the French Honor Society. He’s also a member of his church youth group, and he spends time as part of all three organizations participating in public service activities.
“I really like it,” said McDonald, who has, among other public service activities, volunteered at local 5K runs and school functions. “I do like being able to give back to people and share with people. It’s a nice feeling to be able to put a smile on people’s faces.”
Working hard is nothing new to McDonald. Neither is overcoming obstacles. While in first grade, McDonald suffered from a sudden but severe illness that confined him to a wheelchair for several weeks and resulted in him having to re-learn many basic motor functions.
“The doctors were never really able to diagnose it,” McDonald said. “One day at school, I was kind of out of it and really tired, and I went home and went up to my room and slept. I was pretty young, so I didn’t really understand it at the time, and I don’t remember it happening, but I had a seizure when I was asleep, and the next thing I know I was in the hospital.
“It lasted a little over a month. It was the kind of thing that happened and it was getting progressively worse, then it started to get a little better. It all happened relatively quickly, but I do remember there was a recovery stage.”
That recovery stage included relearning how to walk and handwrite.
“The doctors cleared me, I haven’t had any problems since it happened,” McDonald said. “Sometimes I forget about it. But I do remember learning how to walk again, using the parallel bars to learn how to walk again, and that does kind of drive me a little bit, knowing I had to overcome something like that.”
Wetzel knows that McDonald can overcome anything that might be put in front of him in the future and will be successful in any endeavor with which he challenges himself. Perhaps the biggest challenge on the horizon will be taking his running to the next level. McDonald plans to run cross country in college and is looking to major in exercise science. He’s spoken with several coaches and is in the process of visiting several schools as he narrows down his choices.
Wherever McDonald ends up, he’ll bring with him the work ethic and dependability that has made him such a crucial member of the Central Bucks West squad.
“Declan comes from a great family and he is a really solid kid you hope other kids want to be like,” Wetzel said. “It makes you really proud to have a kid like that.
“He’s rock solid. It’s been wonderful to have him in the program and have him to help to push to it the next level. Declan is the kind of kid you build a program around. And I’ll tell that to anyone who wants to recruit him.”
