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 April 9, 2020
Tough, tenacious, fearless. Take your pick. Bensalem wrestling coach Donovin Williams uses all of them to describe this past season’s 106-pound wrestler. Tough is a word that comes up repeatedly, which is hardly surprising since wrestlers are typically tough, and they better be tenacious if they want to succeed. Fearless – that’s a definite plus. In this case, however, the Bensalem wrestling coach is describing Lauren Bordone, a 4-11, 96-pound dynamo. Two years ago, Bordone, a manager of the wrestling team, made an unexpected debut. “What happened was we needed a 106-pounder,” said Williams, an assistant at the time. “We couldn’t find anybody. Another kid got hurt, and we already threw the idea out there to Lauren.” Two days later, in the Owls’ season-opening match at Academy Park, Bordone took the mat.
Williams remembers it like it was yesterday. “At the time, it was her raw ignorance that made her so successful,” the Owls’ coach said. “They start the match, and it starts out just a little rough. Lauren doesn’t do anything else except what she’s been told. She gets kind of snapped and thrown around for a second, and you see her battle back. You see the competitor in her come out. She gets this fiery look in her eyes, and this kid takes a bad shot.” Bordone made her opponent pay, notching a pin in 50 seconds. “The kid started smacking me in my face, pushing my headgear, and I did one of the moves they taught me, and I ended up pinning him,” she said. “I jumped up in the air so high. I was so happy. I was jumping up and down.”
It was a moment that underscored Bordone’s toughness and also her fiercely competitive nature, but listening to Dan Schram tell it, that’s just one piece of the senior’s personality. The Owls’ softball coach recalls teaching her as a sophomore in his senior psychology class. “Bensalem switched the elective process where they started giving senior electives to sophomores,” Schram said. “I could see she was a very, very unique kid because she’s very mature and very worldly. She and her sister (Rachael) are known for being two of the toughest kids at Bensalem – as far as the girls. She’s not afraid – she’ll stick up for somebody. She’s just a good advocate, and she’s well spoken. She has a good head on her shoulders.”
Bordone’s rookie wrestling season came to an end in January when she underwent surgery to correct a serious case of scoliosis that – despite two previous surgeries – was worsening. “I had a 12-hour spinal fusion,” Bordone said. “I wasn’t supposed to come back to school after January. They recommended I do home school.” Two weeks after surgery, Bordone – with her doctor’s permission – returned to school. She played jayvee softball, and the winter of her junior year was the manager of the wrestling team. The following spring she played mainly jayvee softball and then returned to the mat for her senior season. “Lauren’s a ray of sunshine, she’s a little fireball, she’s infectious,” Williams said. “When she’s in the room, she is not just one of the guys, she’s looked up to. Everyone likes hanging out with her because she can be funny, she works hard, she’ll push herself, she’ll do whatever she has to do. She’ll take responsibility for her own actions when she feels like she’s messed up.”
Bordone entered her senior softball season in the best shape of her young career. “If there’s one kid who my heart breaks for that we’re not having a season, it’s her,” Schram said. “The kids that play travel – they come softball ready. This kid came push-up ready. She just came game ready because she’d been wrestling all year. You could just see this kid was a rising force. She’s just a tenacious kid. She’d make a very big impact on our season.” The senior infielder was excited for the opportunity to play varsity. “It would be my first year playing full-time varsity,” Bordone said. “In wrestling, I already had a full-time varsity spot whether I liked it or not, but softball I worked as hard as I could to get there just to have it taken away.” Looking ahead, Bordone has her sights set on becoming a math teacher. She is not certain of where she will be attending college, but she has been accepted at Holy Family and lists it with Temple at the top her wish list.
To read Bordone’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/lauren-bordone-0090215
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of April 9, 2020
Nick Guerieri refused to give up. This despite trying and failing to make the Pennsbury varsity baseball team for three consecutive years. He had one more shot at it heading into his senior season, and so long as he had runway left, Guerieri wasn’t prepared to ground the plane for good. Although he didn’t make it on to the Falcons’ roster as a junior, Guerieri did play for the Bucks County Generals over the summer, and the high level competition allowed the right-handed pitcher to play with and against players hoping to showcase themselves into collegiate programs. In the end, Guerieri accomplished both. When Guerieri showed up to tryouts as a senior, Pennsbury head coach Joe Pesci and his staff noticed a different pitcher, both in terms of his pitching arsenal and Guerieri’s overall confidence level.
When tryouts were over, Pesci called Guerieri into a meeting; however, unlike the previous three attempts, Pesci had a different message for the player who had continued to work at his craft while refusing to let rejection force him into waving the white flag. “Every year, we don’t just post a list of who made the team,” Pesci said. “We have meetings with every kid and tell them if they made it or didn’t, and it would be very easy for a kid who was told he didn’t make the team to stop playing and working. This year, Nick came to tryouts and he looked incredible. He came into that meeting and I told him he made the team. I said, ‘You’re the story now. I can use your story to tell every kid that if they get cut, just work harder in the offseason and give yourself the opportunity to make the team.’ Nick did that for three years. It’s almost like a ‘Rudy’ feel good story, because now we can use his name to every kid who we tell that it’s not in the cards this year. It just stinks for him that he reached his dream, he finally was able to overcome the hurdle, and now…”
Unfortunately, Guerieri’s story doesn’t have a completely happy ending. Due to the global coronavirus pandemic, schools across the state are closed for the remainder of the school year, and after four years of trying to make the team and finally doing so, he will never step on to the field in a Pennsbury varsity game. “Of course, I’m bummed out,” Guerieri said. “I would love to be able to play and help that team succeed.” Make no mistake about it, Pesci didn’t put Guerieri on his final roster as a means to reward him for all his hard work the past three years. Numbers wise, Pennsbury is one of the top teams in District One and the entire state, and the program’s track record of success shows that you only make the varsity squad if you have earned it.
Guerieri’s presence was not going to be ceremonial or symbolic; Pesci fully expected the pitcher to carve out a bullpen role and was looking forward to counting on Guerieri to get high-leverage outs in relief once his top starters were spent. “We were looking for guys to bring in to get us out of innings,” Pesci said. “Nick has that demeanor and attitude that he just steps on the mound and goes after it. He would have seen a lot of innings in relief. If the bases are loaded with one out, could he come in and get the job done? It was too early to tell, but Nick seemed to have that. In tryouts, he competed against our top hitters and was effective.”
Despite the fact that Guerieri never played an inning of high school baseball, his performance with the Bucks County Generals last summer got the attention of several college programs at the Division II and Division III levels. He whittled his final three down to Arcadia, University of the Sciences and Lebanon Valley College, ultimately choosing to play his collegiate ball at Lebanon Valley. As far as career fields, Guerieri initially was going to pursue Psychology before changing his mind and focusing on getting a doctorate in Physical Therapy.
To read Guerieri’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/nick-guerieri-0090211
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