Soccer
Favorite athlete: Allen Iverson
Favorite teams: Philadelphia Eagles/76ers
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating Hatboro-Horsham this year in soccer after getting blown out by them twice last year.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Taking off my warm-up for an AAU basketball game and realizing I had the wrong jersey, and then had to wear a pinnie with my number taped on the back.
Music on mobile device: Rap and 90s Alternative Rock
Future plans: To become an Aerospace Engineer after college
Words to live by: “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up.” –Jim Valvano
One goal before turning 30: To go visit Hawaii
One thing people don’t know about me: I taught myself how to play guitar.
By Ed Morrone
As one of the smallest schools in the league, Upper Moreland tends to be classified as the little brother of Suburban One. And, like a little brother, the Golden Bears get picked on by bigger sibling schools, or, in some cases, even by other teams inside their own school hallways.
Chris O’Donnell gets it, especially after his soccer squad endured a 1-15-1 season a year ago during O’Donnell’s junior campaign. But that doesn’t mean the two-sport athlete — O’Donnell is also a captain for the basketball team — is happy about it, and he’s doing everything he can to buck the perception that Upper Moreland can’t hang with the big boys.
Sept. 12 was a turning point for O’Donnell and the Bears’ soccer program. After being outscored 11-0 over the course of two games last season by neighboring Hatboro-Horsham, Upper Moreland was tired of being pushed around. The team dug in its heels, scratched and clawed for every loose ball, and found themselves tied at zero late in the game. That is, until O’Donnell, as he is wont to do, found himself near the ball in the right place at the right time and won a 50/50 ball with the Hatters’ goalkeeper. The goal gave the Bears an enthralling 1-0 win, one O’Donnell lists as his favorite moment ever while playing competitive sports.
“A school like that, we’ve always been treated like the little brother,” O’Donnell said. “We’re right next to them, and they’re so much bigger and always beating on us. When it was 0-0 in the second half, we all realized we could play with them. A goal like that, a win like that, was so awesome for our team.
“They put up 11 goals on us the year before, and for us to get that win, it shows we can make a run this year. We aren’t just the little brother. A win like that makes you feel like you can beat a team like PW or Wissahickon or Upper Dublin. It just gives you a feeling that you can make it back to the top after being at the bottom for so long.”
O’Donnell is a big reason why the Bears already have four times as many wins as they did a season ago, sitting at 4-5-3 overall and 3-5-1 in the SOL American Conference. The striker has scored 11 goals in 12 games and, in addition to the win over the Hatters, has helped Upper Moreland pick up victories over Cheltenham, Springfield Township and Springfield Delco.
He began playing soccer around six years old for a Hatboro-Horsham youth team. Basketball was always O’Donnell’s top sport of interest, but considering soccer season took place right before basketball began, he stuck with soccer as a means of staying in peak physical condition. Once he got to Upper Moreland, O’Donnell decided to stick with both, as many students at the school play multiple sports simply out of necessity. After a year with the freshman team, O’Donnell has been a staple of the soccer program since his sophomore year.
“I figured, why not keep at it and try to be the best that I can be?” O’Donnell said. “This season has been a great one for the team, just a lot of fun. I’m so glad I stuck with it and kept playing, even if it’s not my favorite sport.
“It’s always tough to keep a team together at UM, so many kids are playing two or three sports because we need them to. It hasn’t been great the last few years, and when you go 1-15, the other teams in the school pick on you and mess around with you. That always stinks, and this year we just got tired of it. All the seniors got together and decided let’s try to do something here that hasn’t been done in awhile, and that’s make a playoff run.”
At least as of this moment, a run to the postseason seems much more likely than in years past for a Golden Bear squad that competes at the Class 3A level, and a lot of that has to do with O’Donnell’s play. Matt Duffey is in his second year as the school’s head soccer coach, and is left continuously amazed by how O’Donnell uses his intelligence and soccer IQ to compensate for any deficiencies that exist in his game.
“He doesn’t have blazing speed, and he’s not a big kid who will physically dominate you,” Duffey said. “He’s not going to amaze you with a super powerful shot that some kids have, either. What he does extremely well is put himself in spots at the right time, and he reads the game really well for somebody who isn’t especially physically dominant. He uses his body very well to get into position to get to the ball and put it in the net.”
For his part, O’Donnell is accustomed to having to work for everything he gets out on the field. At just 5-foot-9, O’Donnell is diminutive in his preferred sport of basketball, and he’s learned to apply the same types of lessons he’s learned on the court on the soccer pitch.
“Basketball has definitely helped me with soccer,” he said. “I’m always the smallest kid when I walk on the court, so I need to use my mind instead of brute strength or skill. I’ve always approached sports differently, more tactically.
“I know I’m not going to go out there and dribble through eight guys and score a goal, so I focus on trying to put myself in the best positions to help the team. I can’t thank my midfielders enough. They’ve done so much for me to put the ball in the right spots, so all I have to focus on is finishing.”
Speaking of finishing, O’Donnell and the soccer team have some business to tend to before all is said and done.
“Making the playoffs would be a great start,” he said. “At the beginning of the year it was our top goal, but now we look at the standings and we’d like to get a home game, maybe win a game or two. Why not? We’ve been in a lot of these games. We’ve gone into every one thinking we could win. We didn’t worry about our record last year. We forgot about it and just focused, and that’s paid off. After a lot of rough seasons, the playoffs would be a completely validating ending to my high school career.”
O’Donnell said he hopes to play basketball in college, most likely at the Division III level, at a school where he can pursue his goal of becoming an aerospace engineer. Because Division III athletic scholarships are not fully funded as they are in some at the Division I level, O’Donnell has always known he has to keep his grades up. He’s happy with where he’s at academically, and is laser-focused on achieving his goal of becoming a collegiate student-athlete.
When he’s not playing soccer or basketball, or hitting the books, O’Donnell said he’s become passionate about music in the last two years, and even taught himself to play the guitar. He’s also involved with Upper Moreland’s Bear Cub Buddy Program where he and other students work with younger kids with special needs, getting to build relationships and embark on fun field trips together.
“It makes me feel better than I’m making a difference and helping out, instead of just being known as an athlete,” O’Donnell said. “Just developing relationships, saying hi, asking them about their days, that makes a difference to them and makes them happy, which in turn makes me happy.”
Though Upper Moreland still has some time before the soccer season is over, Duffey is already starting to think about how difficult life without O’Donnell will be next year.
“My favorite aspect of Chris is just the optimism he has,” Duffey said. “Even during the low points of last season, he was always positive and believed we were going to fix it and get better, to where we want to be. Chris isn’t going to play soccer in college, so I want him to enjoy these final memories. Upper Moreland soccer hasn’t had a meaningful game in awhile, and he’s helping us fight back toward that goal. I want him to be able to come back later in life and be proud of what he was able to accomplish here.”
O’Donnell will always remember that 1-15-1 season, but not as vividly as he’ll remember the way he and his teammates refused to be defined by it.
“We had some rough ones, but we stayed together,” he said. “Because of that, it will mean so much more to me when we do have that one season where we make a run, because of how hard we had to work for it. Hopefully, this is that year where everything connects.”
