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 for week of May 12, 2019
Alexa Brodie. Mention the Central Bucks South senior’s name to followers of high school basketball, and they’ll recall the 2018 District 1 6A final at Temple’s Liacouras Center when the then junior point guard willed her team into triple overtime by nailing one big shot after another before the Titans fell to a favored Souderton squad. Or they’ll smile and talk about the all-state point guard’s remarkable court savvy and how she makes everyone around her better. Others will mention her fiercely competitive drive to win. “She very well could be a once-in-a-coaching-career kind of player, and it’s not just her play on the court,” South coach Beth Mattern said. “It’s her whole package as an individual.”Alyssa D’Orazio had a chance to see Brodie in a different set of circumstances this past winter, and the South freshman puts her own spin on the senior captain. “It’s really hard to put into words what she meant to me and this team,” D’Orazio said. “She was such a big role model on and off the court. She was so dedicated to all of us, and she had so much patience, and that was something that was really inspiring.”
Brodie was the lone returning starter from last year’s district and state runner-up squad. Only Sofia Sonnet, a reserve as a junior, had any varsity experience. The senior captain led the inexperienced Titans to a 12-11 record (7-5 SOL) and a district berth where they extended Pennsbury to overtime before falling. The Titans’ unexpected success has Brodie’s thumbprint all over it. Listening to D’Orazio tell it – none of it happens without the senior point guard. “She had such a positive attitude the whole time, and that had to be hard for her – coming from going so far with so many people she spent so much time with that were close to her age and then coming in and having a bunch of young girls who were completely inexperienced,” D’Orazio said. “Taking that and making it something really special is so amazing.”
Colgate University will be inheriting Brodie’s talents next year. Brodie is going in undecided but is leaning towards a mathematics or statistics major and a possible career in teaching. It’s a safe bet coaching will be part of her future. “Even when I’m not the person that’s putting on her shoes and going in between the lines, basketball is always going to be a part of my life and I truly believe that,” Brodie said. “Whether it’s coaching or training or whatever it is – I love it too much to give it up at any part of my life.” Off the basketball court, Brodie is an officer for Athletes Helping Athletes at South, she is a member of the National Honor Society, and she is secretary of South’s athletic leadership council. When all is said and done, Brodie’s legacy will certainly include her accomplishments – she leaves South as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,302 points, and she was a two-time all-state and three-time first team All-SOL Continental selection, but it’s about much more than that. “I feel grateful that I was her coach,” Mattern said. “It’s really hard to imagine high school basketball without her. When I look at the things we’ve accomplished and just so many items we’ve wanted to do as a team and we’ve had goals for so long – they occurred when she was on the roster. It’s not a coincidence.”
To read Brodie’s complete profile, please click on the following link: http://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/alexa-brodie-0085046
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of May 12, 2019
This weekend, Andrew Tran will participate in his final state tournament as a high school tennis player. Regardless of how that turns out, Tran will be able to hang his hat on the fact that he made history by accomplishing something nobody else in the SOL American Conference is believed to have done. Last month, he became the first tennis player in conference history to win four consecutive league singles titles. Not only that, but he has been Wissahickon High School’s No. 1 singles player since he was a freshman, maintaining a four-year level of consistency and excellence that few others attain. “I think I’m still absorbing that fact,” Tran said when asked about his accomplishment. “I guess it goes to show that I’ve continued to put the work in and never took my foot off the gas. I really wanted to do well for myself, and the only way to do that is to put in the time to continue improving. It’s funny, when I won my first singles title freshman year, my coach and one of my teammates said, ‘Oh, you won it as a freshman, maybe you can win all four.’ I just laughed it off, because it wasn’t in my head until this year’s tournament when I realized that it could finally happen.”
As a freshman, Tran found instant success on a very strong team, earning the top singles spot and bumping an incumbent senior to the second slot. Tran maintained his spot as a freshman, resulting in Wissahickon’s best season — the Trojans qualified for the state tournament as a team, in addition to Tran making it himself as a singles player — a defining moment in his life. “Us doing that as a team, I’ll take that with me for the rest of my life,” Tran said. “As a school, Wissahickon hadn’t made it to states in a long time. When we finally realized we were going after districts, I never felt so happy about something, and I think it was because it was an accomplishment that wasn’t only about me. It was for our group. One of my teammates won the clinching match, and we were successful in accomplishing a goal we had been chasing for months. That will go with me forever.”
At the close of his sophomore season, coach Mark Daniels asked Tran to serve as a captain.“Some players at his level, they don’t even go out for the high school team,” the Trojans’ coach said. “At the district tournament when he lost in the state qualifying round, we were talking, and he asked me if I knew who was going to be captain next year. I told him I was hoping he would step up. He said, ‘I’m not a senior,’ and I told him that didn’t matter. He said, ‘Could I be a captain? I’d love that.’ He’s been such a great leader, a coach’s dream. The other kids respect him for his tennis ability, and when he says something, they listen. He’s really grown as a person. Being a captain helped him not only for the tennis, but also the leadership aspect. It’s neat seeing him develop as a person. He’s the kind of kid where a couple of times at practice this year he was helping the jayvee kids who are way down in the lineup. What a nice person.”
Tran’s continued excellence on the tennis court, both at Wissahickon and on the tournament circuit in which he competes year-round, have paid immense dividends. Not only will he continue his career at the collegiate level, but he will do so at one of the world’s most-renowned academic institutions in Johns Hopkins University. Tran, whose mother is a doctor and his father works in the medical field, has his eyes set on medical school and becoming a doctor as well.
To read Tran’s complete profile, please click on the following link: http://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/andrew-tran-0085047
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