Football, Basketball
Favorite athlete: Jerry Jeudy
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Making it to the state championship for basketball last year.
Funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Having in-depth conversations with my opponent during a football game.
Music on mobile device: Rap
Words to live by: “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
One goal before turning 30: Travel to foreign countries on my own/with friends.
One thing people don’t know about me: If I tell you, then you’ll know.
By Mary Jane Souder
Connor Pleibel, a two-sport athlete, has an interesting perspective.
“High school sports is the high school experience, for me at least,” the Pennridge senior said. “That’s what I base everything around.
“The academics is an important part, but I’m always thinking about how I’m going to do at practice after school or how that game’s going to go this week.”
If it sounds as though academics might take a backseat, guess again. Pleibel excels in the classroom and was named the scholar-athlete for the football team last fall and also for his basketball team this winter.
“High school sports is a big commitment, especially with the time piece because you’re going to school for seven hours and then you have a three-hour practice after school,” he said. “Handling both isn’t easy, but I’ve tried to stick to it as much as I can and keep working hard. The grades just come with it. It’s all about putting in the work.”
Pleibel has put in the work, and he’s found the perfect mix of academics and athletics. His coaches in both sports are eager to talk about him.
“He’s very coachable, a great teammate, great with his peers, great with his teachers, excellent student,” Pennridge basketball coach Dean Behrens said. “You can’t not like Connor, I’ll tell you that. All the teachers like him, everyone likes Connor.”
“Connor is overall a great kid character-wise as well as athletically,” Pennridge football coach Cody Muller said. “He was a captain for us this year, a true lead-by-example kid.
“You never had to worry about what he was doing because it was always the right thing. He’s a very coachable kid, a guy that you like to build a team around.”
Pleibel was a two-year starter for the football team and a captain as a senior. His journey on the basketball court was a little different.
“I remember Connor as an eighth grader,” Behrens said. “He had good size then, he was a good athlete. We were like, ‘This guy could be a good fit with our program.’
“He really started to blossom in football a little earlier than he did in basketball, and I always kept thinking, ‘He might decide he just wants to play football.’ Luckily for us, he didn’t get discouraged as a 10th grader, and I could have seen why he would have been discouraged.
“I remember he didn’t get a lot of minutes as a sophomore, he wasn’t on the varsity bench. Last year he got a lot of minutes on jayvee. He was on the varsity bench but wasn’t a guy we got in too much. He never complained, he comes to practice every day and works hard. It shows what kind of kid he is.”
Pleibel was coming back from a broken leg his sophomore season, and playing jayvee as a junior - it never fazed him.
“It was understandable because of the strength of our team,” Pleibel said. “I love the sport, so I wasn’t just going to give up on it because of one little thing. I was going to keep going through. My goal was to play my senior year and I proved myself.”
Pleibel was inserted into the starting lineup after the Christmas break, and he has never left.
“We put him in the starting lineup against CB South, the first game back from the break, and he gave us a little shot in the arm offensively,” Behrens said. “He’s just been a steady guy.”
Despite significant losses to graduation, including all-state point guard Sean Yoder, from last year’s successful squad, the Rams repeated as SOL Continental Conference champions and – for the first time ever – won the SOL Tournament title.
“From our perspective, I don’t know if I would say we would win the division or be favored to win it,” Behrens said. “I think it’s been great for him to be on a team with this kind of success, especially for him now as a starter whereas the last two years for football they didn’t make the playoffs.”
Although Behrens might not have predicted it, Pleibel and his fellow seniors had every intention of keeping the winning tradition alive.
“Pennridge – we’re a very hardworking team,” he said. “Coach Behrens works us every day – we never take days off.
“We have the attitude that we’re winning. Especially after last year, we don’t want to bump down from doing so well to doing so bad. We’re living up to the guys from last year.”
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Pleibel got a late start in both football and basketball. Baseball was actually his first sport.
“Tackle (football) didn’t start for me until sixth grade because my parents were worried about injuries,” he said. “Basketball didn’t start for me until fifth grade.
“I just wasn’t a big fan of baseball. I fell in love immediately with football and basketball.”
As a sophomore, Pleibel played jayvee football but was getting some reps with the varsity.
“It was usually at the end of games,” he said. “I was getting excited, but four games into the season I broke my leg. I made a big catch, I turned, a guy brought me down, and it just snapped. It was against Souderton.
“It was very difficult for me. Sophomore year is a big year because that’s when you develop a lot. I had to wait a whole another year to get back into the groove and get my leg back into it.”
For the past two years, Pleibel was a starter at wide receiver for the Rams.
“He’s a very smart kid, and that translates on the field and on the court,” Muller said. “He picks up on things very quickly, he has a high IQ.
“He was a return man for us as well. He was very sure-handed. He was just an overall good kid and good football player.”
Muller credited his tri-captains – Pleibel, Joe Muntz and Shane Hartzell – for providing positive leadership during a 3-8 season this past fall.
“That was very rough,” Pleibel said. “Keeping the team together was tough because no one likes to lose. People start to break apart when you start losing, but I think the group of captains was able to keep everyone in check, and even if we weren’t winning games, we were still a team, and we were still tight.
“It definitely isn’t fun, but we just had to keep fighting through it, do what we can and work our hardest.”
A Thanksgiving Day win over Quakertown was the happy ending the team needed.
“That’s always great – beating Quakertown on Thanksgiving Day,” Pleibel said. “That’s the only way you can go out. There’s no other way.”
Pleibel’s basketball career got off to a slow start as a sophomore coming back from a broken leg. A year later, a healthy Pleibel had a successful jayvee season and travelled with the varsity during it’s magical run to the state title game last year.
“It was unbelievable – I’ll never forget that,” he said. “Even if I’m not on the floor, it’s amazing just to be part of it.”
This year Pleibel is in the middle of the action for a Rams’ basketball squad that secured its coveted berth in the PIAA 6A state tournament.
“We’ve all been playing together since middle school, elementary school,” Pleibel said. “Winning SOL and conference champions – it was very exciting, but I don’t think it was as hyped because we wanted the next step, the next goal – win a playoff game, get to states, do what we can.”
An excellent student, Pleibel, who takes two AP courses, is a member of the National Honor Society. Next fall, he plans to major in engineering, focusing on either civil or mechanical engineering. He is deciding between Temple, Penn State and Delaware and will not play collegiate sports, but he plans to stay involved in sports in some way.
Although he wasn’t a headliner, the Pennridge senior has been an important contributor on two major sports teams, including a basketball team that is bound for states.
“I’m happy for Connor,” Behrens said. “I know the expectation was going to playoffs for football, and it didn’t happen, but he has a chance to go to playoffs for basketball. I said to him, ‘What a great opportunity for you to really enjoy this.’ He’s an awesome kid.”
