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 Nov. 5, 2019
Jamie Pennington was destined to become a field hockey player. How could she not? After all, the Neshaminy senior – daughter of former Neshaminy head hockey coach Lisa Pennington - was all but born on the hockey field. “My mom tells me the story every year on my birthday that she went into labor with me when they were playing Methacton at Methacton,” Pennington said. “The game went into overtime, and she was going into labor with me on the bus ride home from the game.” The following day, Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2001, Jamie was born. She didn’t have a hockey stick in her hand, but it wasn’t long before she did. Her mother, meanwhile, was back on the sidelines that Friday.
It goes without saying – the Penningtons are a field hockey family. During her years at the helm, Lisa – a Neshaminy grad who went on to play at Temple – led the Redskins to seven league titles and a District One championship. Lisa Pennnington, according to Jamie, encouraged her two daughters to pursue whatever they wanted. For siblings Christen and Jamie, it just happened to be field hockey. Christen Pennington – four years Jamie’s senior – had a stellar career at Neshaminy and went on to play at Villanova University, and Jamie will be following in her footsteps. Not because she had to but because she wanted to. “I honestly don’t think there was any pressure at all,” the Neshaminy senior said. “At one point in my childhood, I was a lot more into soccer than I was into field hockey. I kind of thought that was what I was going to continue doing, but I started to love field hockey even more.”
A four-year starter for the Redskins and a first team all-state player, Pennington was a captain of this year’s squad that won the program’s second consecutive SOL National Conference title. “Jamie is a different type of player,” coach Jamie Pinto said. “She’s very skilled, but she’s very smart. She sees the open pass, and her stick skills – honestly, she’s good enough to control a game, but she’s smart enough not to and composed and humble enough not to because she gets everybody else involved. She’s always looking one pass ahead. She always knows what she’s going to do with the ball, but what’s really special is she can turn it on, and when she turns it on, she can truly dominate a game.”
Hockey is just one piece – albeit an important piece – of Pennington’s life. She also excels in the classroom and is in the top five percent of her class. She plans to pursue a finance major at Villanova where she will continue his hockey career, and it’s easy to imagine Pennington landing a job on Wall Street, but trumping the smarts on and off the hockey field, according to her coach, is a personality that made the her such an exemplary leader and teammate. “Everyone respects her,” Pinto said, “She goes out of her way to help people. She’s there for the freshmen, she’s there for the seniors. It doesn’t matter what age they were – she was helping whoever needed her. She’s special because she’s good, and she’s just genuinely a nice person. I think that makes her the great leader she was because people respected her play and they respected her in general because of her personality.”
To read Pennington’s complete profile, please click on the following links: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/jamie-pennington-0088243
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of Nov. 5, 2019
When John Greiner accepted the head football coach position at Council Rock North back in May, he was once again the new kid on the block, returning to the Suburban One after four seasons in charge of the football program at Bristol. Greiner, a former assistant with the mighty Pennsbury Falcons, knew the league well; however, the difficulties in getting the Council Rock North program headed back toward respectability were written in ink on the wall. The Indians had won a single game in each of the three previous seasons, so despite Greiner’s history within the league, the veteran coach was going to need some help with the transition. Enter senior running back and defensive lineman/linebacker Dillon Sheehy, who knows a thing or two about being the new guy in the room.
Sheehy’s father held a job that required the family to move. A lot. The Sheehy family had to pinball around the country so much that Dillon and his two sisters were all born in different states. “Dillon made the transition a lot easier for me, as did all of the seniors, because they bought in right away,” Greiner said. “I didn’t take over until the first week of May and only had a short time to get to know the young men, a process that Dillon helped make a lot smoother. He’s one of those natural-born leaders, on and off the field, and the future of this program is brighter because of his efforts and those of his fellow seniors.”
Sheehy was a jack-of-all-trades player for Greiner. On offense, the 5-foot-6 Sheehy served as the team’s bruising, powerful fullback, rushing for more than 800 yards and five touchdowns. On defense, he was a hybrid linebacker-defensive lineman, leading the Indians in tackles from start to finish as a senior. Additionally, Sheehy was part of kickoff packages on special teams while serving as the team’s long snapper on punts and kicks. “One word you can use to sum up Dillon is versatility,” Greiner said. “I had three-way players at Bristol, but it’s not an easy thing to do in Suburban One. Dillon bought into the philosophy to be wherever he was needed on the field.”
One might come to the conclusion that football is Sheehy’s first and only athletic passion, but hold on just one moment. Sheehy is also a prominent member of the Council Rock North wrestling program, where he was a state qualifier at 152 pounds as a junior. His wrestling prowess caught the eyes of many collegiate coaches, including the staff at the United States Military Academy, who sent Sheehy a handwritten letter congratulating him on his season. Both of his grandfathers served in the army, so once attending school and wrestling at West Point became a possibility, Sheehy was all in, verbally committing this past April.
When he’s not playing football, wrestling or studying, Sheehy relishes be in a position to mentor the young. He does so whenever the opportunity arises, be it with the younger Council Rock North football programs or at Newtown Elementary School, where he mentors two students
To read Sheehy’s complete profile, please click on the following links: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/dillon-sheehy-0088244
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