Softball
Favorite athlete: Mike Trout
Favorite team: Philadelphia Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: Honestly, playing the game with my teammates is always going to be my favorite memory of playing sports, but if I had to choose one particular game it would be when we beat Garnet Valley on our Senior Night last year.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: I was sliding into home on a passed ball, and when I slid home I was on top of the ball. I was trying to be nice and hand the pitcher the ball, but I forgot the play was still live because someone else was on base. The umpire came over to me in the dugout and told me I can’t do that, and I was pretty embarrassed.
Music on iPod: A little bit of everything, Beyonce, Drake, Nicki Minaj, Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton, Carrie Underwood, Twenty One Pilots, Adele
Future plans: Attend the University of Pittsburgh and become a doctor one day.
Words to live by: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
One goal before turning 30: Attend medical school and be working in a hospital as a resident.
One thing people don’t know about me: I played tackle football when I was younger.
By Mary Jane Souder
Joe DiFilippo has a vivid memory of Deanna Moyer’s first varsity softball game as a freshman.
“She was going after a fly ball so hard she fell – I think she outran her body,” the Hatboro-Horsham coach said of his then right fielder.
That play may have been insignificant in the whole scheme of things, but it effectively captured the fierce determination that has been a trademark of the Hatboro-Horsham senior both on and off the athletic field.
“She just has a determination to make herself better,” DiFilippo said. “She takes instruction extremely well. She’s like a sponge – she just soaks everything in.
“She continuously works to make herself better.”
A four-year varsity player, Moyer has earned all-league honors in each of her three years, last year earning first team recognition at shortstop after earning recognition for her play in right field as a freshman and sophomore.
“I moved her to shortstop last year and she went through the whole season with four errors,” DiFilippo said. “She can play any place on the field but pitcher and catcher.”
Moyer would be on the wish list of more than a few college coaches if she opted to pursue it at the next level. As much as she loves softball, the senior captain made the difficult decision to forego playing collegiate softball to focus on a career in the medical field.
“I’ve always played sports my entire life and deciding to not be part of a team is going to be pretty hard,” Moyer said. “I made the decision because I really want to focus on my academics, and I wanted to pursue a career as a doctor.
“I know that takes up a lot of time with interning and getting into research. I wanted to put my effort into that rather than playing on a softball team and not putting as much effort into it.”
The idea of pursuing a career in medicine is not new to Moyer, who always loved animals and initially wanted to be a veterinarian, but eight days at a National Youth Leadership Forum at the University of Pennsylvania the summer before her junior year turned out to be life changing.
“In 10th grade, I started biology, and I only like learning about things when we were learning about the human body,” Moyer said. “During the school year, I received information about applying for a camp over the summer at Penn that focused on careers in medicine.
“I decided to attend to see if I would like it. There we toured hospitals and watched live surgeries and got to interview doctors. That’s when I really fell in love with it, and I realized that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
The knowledge that she wouldn’t be continuing with a sport she loves has made her final high school years even more significant, and it looked as though her senior season would be in jeopardy when – on August 1 while at a tournament in Virginia with her Thunderbirds travel team – she went down with a knee injury.
“I was on second base, and it was a bunt,” Moyer recalled “(DiFilippo) had me stealing too, so I took off real fast, and the girl popped up the bunt.
“I realized when I was halfway between second and third that it was in the air and the catcher caught it, so I tried stopping myself and I put all my weight on my right leg. I heard a pop and was in excruciating pain. I just went down.”
Initially, Moyer didn’t realize the severity of her injury.
“I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I went to the emergency room the day after it happened.
“I didn’t really have any clue what it was at this point. The doctor didn’t seem very worried about it. He was like, ‘I think it’s a meniscus tear,’ so the whole time before I saw my orthopedic doctor I was thinking ‘Oh, it’s just a meniscus tear.’ (The ER doctor) did all the tests, but he never really gave me any indication that it was my ACL or anything.”
Several weeks later, Moyer – who was managing to get around despite the knee discomfort – saw her orthopedic doctor.
“She read the MRI and said it was my ACL,” Moyer said. “I was pretty shocked.”
The following Friday – August 21 – she underwent surgery. Her next order of business was getting healthy in time for her final high school softball season, no small feat since rehab can take up to a year.
“She promised me she would be back on the field when we started our season, and you know what – she’s back on the field,” said DiFillipo. “She has worked so hard to get back.
“She was going to rehab three times a week. She did not want to miss her senior season. I would say she’s probably 85-90 percent, but having her 85-90 percent is better than a lot of kids at 100 percent.
“She worked her tail off. She worked so hard that we were worried she had other parts of her leg too strong, and she was going to have problems. She hasn’t. She did everything they asked, and it worked.”
Moyer received the green light to resume activities on Feb. 23, just six months after surgery.
“I was sometimes doubtful,” she said of coming back so quickly. “My doctor seemed pretty confident I would be able to be back in time, but I also know my friend who tore her ACL, and it took her a year to come back. I was worried about the variability in the time frame, but I was confident I would get back.”
Moyer threw herself into rehab.
“The worst part of it – it was more painful than anything,” she said. “It just made everything harder.
“It was a lot of work and time put into it. You really had to dedicate yourself to coming back, and I was all for it because I knew it could get me back for my senior season.”
The injury has given Moyer a new perspective.
“It makes me more grateful that I could play sports,” she said. “I don’t really take sports for granted any more.
“It makes me realize how much I do truly love sports. Taking me out of sports for six months was pretty rough, and I’m grateful now for all the physical activity I can do.”
*****
Deanna Moyer grew up playing a wide variety of sports. There was softball, basketball and soccer, and she even played football for three years for the Horsham Hawks, including one year of tackle football when she was nine.
Coming as no surprise, Moyer – who played quarterback all three years as well as cornerback on defense – didn’t back down when she was on the gridiron with the boys.
“Playing tackle football was actually really fun,” she said. “They didn’t treat me differently than anyone else, and they took me seriously as an athlete as well.”
When high school arrived, Moyer narrowed her sports down to just softball.
“That was what I was most passionate about, and I wanted to focus on that the most,” she said.
Travel softball entered the picture in sixth grade. After three years with the Blue Thunder, Moyer moved to the Harleysville Thunderbirds where DiFilippo was the coach. She is a leader on both squads, most notably this year’s high school team.
“I have so many ninth graders, and they just really look up to her,” DiFilippo said. “There’s an air about her. Number one – you can’t not like her, and number two – you look up to her.
“Between Dee and Kaeli Simmons – whenever I need something done, it’s them I go to and they really accomplish whatever I need.”
Softball is just one piece of Moyer’s busy life. An outstanding student, she is a member of the National Honor Society and carries a course load in her final semester that includes a pair of AP classes. She is also a member of the advisory board that plans class events.
As she comes down the home stretch of her final high school season, Moyer says it is not the wins and losses she will remember but rather the experiences she shared with her teammates.
“All the memories you made with them,” she said. “Being part of a team is special because you have all these bonds and connections with them, and you’re not really going to have the same thing when you’re not on a team any more.
“This year I’m making the most out of things, embracing all the memories - whether it’s practices I enjoy more or games I feel more passionate about. It makes everything more fun because you know this is it, this is the last time you get to do this. It’s just making me take it all in and embrace it.”
Moyer has not ruled out the possibility of playing club softball when she enrolls at the University of Pittsburgh next year.
Next year is something DiFilippo doesn’t want to think about just yet.
“I’m going to tell you – what’s going to be very hard for me is next year not being able to write her name in the lineup,” the Hatters’ coach said.
It’s the ultimate compliment for an athlete who played four years with the same determination and hustle she displayed going for a fly ball in right field in her first varsity game.
