SuburbanOneSports.com recognizes a male and female featured athlete each week. The awards, sponsored by Univest, are given to seniors of good character who are students in good standing that have made significant contributions to their teams. Selections are based on nominations received from coaches, athletic directors and administrators.
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Female Athlete (Week of Oct. 27, 2016)
Marykate Dugan doesn’t fit the mold of your typical field hockey player. Although the Council Rock North senior – affectionately known as MK – has been an important contributor to an Indian squad that earned a berth in the postseason, she is perhaps even more comfortable in her role as president of Mathletes, a group of students that competes in math competitions against other schools. “As nerdy as it sounds, Mathletes is my favorite thing,” Dugan said. “It’s really fun and relaxed. You go to a math competition, solve a couple of problems and get food.” Dugan has seamlessly found a way to combine passion for academics with field hockey and has been a breath of fresh air on this year’s squad. “She cracks jokes all the time, but they’re intellectual jokes,” coach Heather Whalin said. “She was telling physics jokes the other day. I turned around like, ‘Seriously?’ She has a contagious smile that makes everyone she comes in contact with better for just having known her.”
On the hockey field, Dugan has labored in anonymity as the team’s reliable right defensive back. “MK is someone on my team that you probably would never notice, but she’s an invaluable member of the team,” Whalin said. “She never asks for recognition, she never looks at stats. She just plays every moment for her teammates who she considers her sisters. She is the ‘mom’ of the team, and she is beloved by each and every player on the team. If you ask any player, teacher or student at North about Marykate Dugan, they would have nothing but glowing things to say about this remarkable young woman.”
Remarkable might be the perfect word to describe the senior defensive back who is ranked in the top 20 of her senior class and takes a full course load of AP classes as well as Accelerated English. As much as Dugan enjoys academics, she wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on being part of North’s field hockey squad. “More than the games, I’m going to remember funny things that happened at practice,” she said. “So much of our time was spent laughing. Every practice is really enjoyable, and we always walk off the field laughing, no matter what. I’m not going to remember the scores of games.”
Off the field, Dugan is a member of the National Honor Society, the Spanish Honor Society and Science Honor Society. She is an officer in the school’s volunteer organization SHARE (Students Helping Area Residents Effectively). Dugan plans to study engineering, and her list of colleges includes Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Drexel and Penn State.
To read Dugan’s complete profile, please click on the following link: http://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/marykate-dugan-0065900
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete (Week of Oct. 27, 2016)
There was no doubting Mike Schoenleber’s value to the Wissahickon football team on the field. Described by coach Randy Cuthbert as a “hard-nosed, old-school football player” who lined up at quarterback and linebacker and rarely left the field, the Wissahickon senior embodied the running quarterback, able to make things happen with his feet as well as his arm. As a result of his talents and work ethic, Schoenleber’s senior campaign saw him set the Trojans’ single-season passing record. But that’s barely scratching the surface of what Schoenleber has meant to the football team. Schoenleber served as a steadying influence and a strong leader for a team that has been through more than a bit of turmoil in recent years. “Mike was critical in helping turn the attitude of the team around,” said Cuthbert, who inherited a team that went 1-9 during a tumultuous 2015 season. “He was already a team leader last year, and having gone through that, coming from last year, the number one thing we wanted to do was to change the culture and get competitive. Obviously, we wanted to win more games, and we were close in a bunch of them, but the team made some strides that didn’t show up in wins and losses. And Mike was a key guy. He was our quarterback, one of our best defensive players and certainly one of our leaders.”
Come spring, Schoenleber will suit up for his final season on the baseball field for a Trojan squad that has seen much success in recent years. In the classroom, he has five honors classes on his docket for his senior year. He is a member of the National Honor Society, the Senior Class Committee and the FANS Cub. While he’s undecided where he’ll end up after he graduates in June, Schoenleber said he’s leaning toward a major in either criminal justice or physical education, and he plans on playing either football or baseball in college.
Wherever he goes, his presence in the Wissahickon locker room and on the football field will be missed. “We had a lot of work to do in terms of changing the attitudes, starting things like a weight program,” Cuthbert said. “Mike was always at everything. He’s a guy you could always look to as an example.”
To read Schoenleber’s complete profile, please click on the following link: http://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/mike-schoenleber-0065901
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