Basketball
Favorite athletes: Magic Johnson (even though I never got to watch him play live), Kobe Bryant, and Arike Ogunbowale
Favorite team: Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating CB West for the first time in five years in the final seconds of my last East-West game
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: I tried to take a charge in one of our recent games and ended up doing a slow motion backwards somersault on the floor… the pictures and film of it are very embarrassing. Also, last season, I was just standing at half court, and my leg completely gave out; I fell over absolutely nothing.
Music on mobile device: Hip Hop/Rap, Classic Rock, A Star is Born soundtrack
Future plans: To study marketing in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame
Words to live by: “Get busy living or get busy dying”
One goal before turning 30: Travel to Greece
One thing people don’t know about me: I’m half Cuban
By Mary Jane Souder
Fierce. Tenacious. Competitive. Fearless.
All strong words and all words coach Liz Potash uses to describe point guard Caroline Pla. At first glance, it might seem like a stretch to use such powerful words to describe the diminutive Central Bucks East senior. After all, Pla measures in at just 5-2 and is hardly an imposing figure.
But don’t be fooled – Pla is one tough customer, something Potash discovered when the now senior captain attended her basketball camp as a seventh grader.
“I just remember her toughness,” the Patriots’ coach said. “Caroline’s team was in the championship game. She got elbowed and had a bloody nose.
“She went into the bathroom by herself, didn’t make a scene, and I went in after her and said, ‘All right, we should call your mom.” She’s like, ‘No, I’m good,’ got it to stop bleeding and went right back on the court. I was like, ‘Man, this is a tough kid.’”
A bloody nose was just a minor inconvenience to an athlete who’d spent most of her growing up years playing football. So committed was she to the sport that when she discovered in sixth grade – her final year with Our Lady of Mount Carmel CYO Romans jayvee squad - that the rules would prevent her from continuing, Pla decided to do something about it.
“My parents found out about the rule at the beginning of the season, and I had no idea about it,” she said. “My parents, the coach and the archdiocese were involved, and they decided to let me finish out that year with the Romans, but after that, they said I was done.
“So when the season was over, my parents told me about it. I was devastated. I was like – football is the one thing I really love, so I knew I wanted to fight the rule.”
Pla wrote to the archdiocese but didn’t receive an immediate response.
“So we went to the news and they picked it up,” she said. “That’s when we started the petition and everybody started supporting us on change.org.”
That’s also when the national media coverage began. The story was picked up by Good Morning America among other national shows, and one day when Pla was home with the flu, The Ellen DeGeneres Show came calling.
“I remember my mom hung up the phone and said, ‘That was Ellen’s people,’” she recalled. “I couldn’t even fathom that.”
Pla remembers the experience well. And if she didn’t, she could always watch the five-minute YouTube video entitled “Ellen Meets a Young Footballer” (which has close to 1.4 million views) of a precocious and remarkably well-spoken 11-year-old Pla explaining her plight.
She insists she was nervous, although it certainly didn’t show.
“I was standing backstage and they were like, ‘Okay, you’re going to go on before Nikki Minaj,’” Pla recalled. “In the dressing room, they told me some questions they were going to ask me, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m ready,’ and then I got onstage, and (Ellen) didn’t ask me a single one of those questions. They were all different, the audience was so much bigger than I thought it would be. I couldn’t find my mom in the audience, but I found her eventually.”
DeGeneres was one of the more than 11,000 who signed Pla’s petition, and the rule prohibiting girls from playing football for the Romans CYO varsity was overturned.
“At the end of my sixth grade season, I was kind of iffy if I was going to go on to the varsity level because all the boys were starting to grow more and I wasn’t - I pretty much knew I was done growing,” she said. “But when I found out they weren’t going to let me play, I was like, ‘No one is going to tell me I can’t play. I’m going to decide when I’m not going to play anymore.’
“That gave me an urgency to fight the rule. When it was overturned, I was like, ‘I went through all this trouble for this experience. There’s no way I’m not going to do it.’ I just had such a great appreciation for it after that. I really just lived in the moment the next two years because I knew it was something I shouldn’t take for granted.”
That ‘young footballer’
So how did football enter the picture in the first place? Credit for that goes to Pla’s older brother George, now a junior at Penn State University.
“He played basketball, football and baseball,” said Pla, whose twin sister Alexandra didn’t follow Caroline to the gridiron. “He would play Pop Warner Football for Lenape Valley, and I would go to all of his games.
“I remember I told his coach that I wanted to play football for him one day, so when I was five or six years old, my mom was like, ‘Do you want to sign up for football?’ I said ‘Yes,’ and that’s how the whole football thing started.”
Pla turned out to be the only girl in the league.
“The first practice I was a little nervous,” she said. “It wasn’t anything different for me. I liked playing sports with boys. It’s a different atmosphere, and I really liked it.”
Pla played Pop Warner from kindergarten through fourth grade. In fifth grade, she moved on to Our Lady of Mount Carmel CYO Romans.
“You sign up on line, and when my parents signed me up, they got a call asking if we checked the wrong sport accidentally because they were a little bit confused,” Pla said. “My parents were like, ‘She’s playing football.’”
By this time, Pla had moved from playing flag football her first two years to playing tackle. She played for the jayvee team in fifth and sixth grades and then – after earning the right to continue – was a contributing member of the varsity in seventh and eighth grades.
“I played a lot of defensive end when I was little, but by the time I got to varsity, I just focused more on offensive line,” she said. “By the time I was in seventh and eighth grade, I was significantly smaller than everyone else.
“In seventh grade, I did earn a starting spot on offensive line for some of the games. In eighth grade, I earned my starting spot and started every game. My offensive line coach – he’s an amazing coach, coach Carty. He really taught me great form, technique. I’m pretty fast so just that combination of technique and speed – size didn’t really matter because I had all the fundamentals down.”
Pla never struggled to fit in – as a matter of fact, she was embraced by her teammates.
“They’re all my friends, even to this day,” she said. “I haven’t played football with them in four years, but they’re still my brothers, so the team aspect was really good.
“The other teams couldn’t even tell I was a girl because I had my helmet on. Sometimes people would say mean things to me on the field, but my teammates would always back me up. It was never a big deal or an issue that had to be dealt with. It was just smack talk on the field.”
Football has remained a part of Pla’s life – for the past four years, she has been the offensive line coach for the Romans.
“I can’t do it next year because I’ll be in college – I’m really upset about that,” she said. “I loved staying involved.”
Basketball is number one
Football – thanks to Pla’s fight to play it – may have been in the spotlight, but basketball is the East senior’s sport of choice. She’s been playing it for as long as she can remember, and Pla is described by her coach as a program kid.
“We were always very well aware of Caroline – she’s tough, she’s athletic,” Potash said. “For her first two years in the program, we were in the period where Bridget Birkheard, Bri Talbot and Grace Stewart were at their height. It was a big senior class, and there just wasn’t a spot for her yet. To her credit, she did what she needed to do.
“(This senior class) came in as freshmen and played jayvee. They all had the exact same road. All three of them (Pla, Skylar Krause and Elyse Shine) played jayvee together through their sophomore year, got better and better, had big roles for us on the varsity last year and stepped into huge roles this year. You don’t see a lot of kids come up anymore the way the three seniors did. They paid their dues, they put their time in, they got better every year and now they’re totally reaping the benefits of the work they put in to get us to where we are now as they’re seniors.”
Pla acknowledges there were advantages to playing jayvee the additional year as sophomores.
“We were a little bit disappointed, but we just took full advantage on the opportunity that we had,” she said. “We pretty much played all game every game. We took every game as an opportunity to get better because we were always on the court.
“I’m glad how it worked out. I’d rather be on jayvee playing 32 minutes a game than being on the varsity sitting at the end of the bench and getting them water.”
Pla’s final varsity season didn’t look all that promising when – in addition to losing Jefferson University-bound Shine for the season to a torn ACL – the Patriots won only three of their first 10 games. They rebounded, however, to win 10 of their next 12.
“I think the adversity we faced in the beginning really helped shape us,” Pla said. “We played Upper Dublin, Neshaminy and (CB) West, we played Garnet Valley. Playing those teams really got us ready to get the wins we needed throughout the rest of the season, which was really good.
“After those tough losses, we didn’t hang our heads, we didn’t think the season was over after the first 10 games. We knew we had a long way ahead and we just had to stay confident. Especially the younger kids – when we started 3-7, those were their first 10 varsity games. They just had to build on their experience. We learned to play together better, and we’re so close off the court, which definitely translated onto the court.”
Pla – the team’s floor general at point guard - played a major role in the Patriots’ turnaround.
“She’s small but she plays big,” Potash said. “She’s just so tough. You can’t find a kid tougher than Caroline, and she’ll do whatever she needs to do.
“She’s someone we never want off the floor. She’s shooting the ball really well, she’s defending the best guard or sometimes the best player, and the ball’s in her hands probably 80 percent of the time. There are times when she’s the leading scorer, there are times when she’s not, but her scoring doesn’t really make a difference in terms of if we want her on the floor because she does so many other things for us.”
Notre Dame: The Next Chapter
Pla has been a Notre Dame fan since her earliest recollection.
“My dad’s dad, my grandpa, was born in Cuba, and my dad was born in Cuba,” she said. “My dad went to college in the United States, but my grandpa didn’t. He’s a big Notre Dame fan.
“I never really understood why, but they told me it’s because they really appreciate the way student-athletes are treated, and they like how it’s centered around Catholicism and the sports and the great education.
“When I was six years old, my grandpa – I couldn’t even grasp the concept – told me if I would go to Notre Dame he would pay for my tuition. I was like, ‘All right, that’s it. I’m a Notre Dame fan.’ My brother was already a Notre Dame fan, so I just started cheering for their sports. As I got older, I realized how great a school it is.”
Word of Pla’s love for Notre Dame found its way to Ellen DeGeneres, who presented Pla with a large gift basket of Notre Dame paraphernalia that included tickets to the following season opener against Temple University. So it made perfect sense that when it came time to apply to a college, Notre Dame topped Pla’s wish list.
“I want to study business, and they have one of the top business programs in the country, so it just became my dream,” she said. “Not just because of the sports but because it’s an amazing school.
“It has pretty much everything I’m looking for. People don’t know that it’s only 8,000 undergrads, but it is. It’s a really tight-knit community. I’ve been there on campus and everyone is just so nice, so genuine, and I love it.”
Pla applied and knew she’d receive word one way or another on Dec. 14, the night of East’s rivalry game with CB West.
“I was so nervous the night before because I had that and the East/West game,” she said. “It comes out at 6:42 p.m. because Notre Dame was founded in 1842, so that’s military time for 6:42.
“My game was at 5:30, so I was playing. That’s the game Elyse (Shine) went down, and we lost Elyse. We gave West a good fight, but we lost the game, so I’m in the stands after the game, and my mom comes up and says, ‘Are you going to check to see if you got in?’ I was like, ‘You know what – we lost the game, Elyse is hurt. How much worse could the night get? I’m either going to make it so much better or I’m going to ride with how bad it is,’ so we went into the back hallway during the boys’ game, and I checked on my phone.
“I opened it up and I just started bawling my eyes out and screaming. The whole community is in the main gym at the basketball game, and my mom and I are in the back hall just screaming our heads off.”
Pla’s father and brother had just left the game, so she gave them a call.
“That whole day my dad was like, ‘It’s okay Caroline, a rejection is okay,’” she said. “I knew I could get in, but I did not think I was going to get in. I was expecting a deferral at best.
“So when I called him, I said, ‘Dad.’ He said, ‘What happened? Are you okay?’ I’m bawling my eyes out, and I said, ‘Dad, I got in.’ My dad and my brother – they’re screaming at the top of their lungs. It was just such a rush of emotions all at once. It was insane.”
Pla plans to study marketing in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
“My whole life has revolved around sports, so I want to work for either a sports team or organization or a company like Nike, and I want to be a marketing manager,” she said. “I’d love to work for a sports team someday.”
She plans to play intramural basketball next year and will look into becoming a manager for Notre Dame’s football team, a highly sought after position.
“My best friend and teammate, Skylar Krause, is going to Penn State next year, and we jokingly promised each other that we would go to walk-on tryouts for our women’s basketball teams,” Pla said, acknowledging she’s aware that Notre Dame is the defending NCAA Division I national champion. “If there are walk-on tryouts, I’d definitely go for the experience. Why not?
“Notre Dame’s interhall sports are very popular, and I will definitely be playing flag football for my dorm. Hopefully, I’ll be able to lead my team to the championship game, which is played in the football stadium. I’m really excited to continue to stay active at Notre Dame and try a lot of new things.”
Although sports are Pla’s passion, she’s hardly one-dimensional. She chaired East’s highly successful Coaches vs. Cancer event that raised over $30,000. She is a member of the National Honor Society, and she and her mother are involved with the National Charity League.
“She’s a really caring person, she’s a kind person, and she’s a great teammate,” Potash said. “Caroline is very goal-driven. She’s very mature, very well-spoken.
“She’s great with the kids, she’s great with the coaches. We’ve always seen that. That’s who she is. She’s got great parents, and I’m sure that’s a huge piece of all of this. They’ve done something right. She’s a good kid, and she’s going to be successful in whatever she does the rest of her life.”
