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 23, 2020
“Who’s ready to change the world?” It’s the question North Penn engineering instructor Michael Boyer greeted his students with every day when they entered his classroom. He had a taker in Amanda Greaney. The North Penn senior made “Let’s change the world” the mantra for her final year of high school. “That’s been my motto since the beginning of the year,” Greaney said. “Let’s change the world on the softball field, in the classroom, in the engineering class and out in the world just making people’s lives better.”
Anyone thinking that might be overly ambitious for a high school senior obviously doesn’t know Greaney. Ranked 23rd in her senior class of 1,128, Greaney is a difference maker both on and off the softball field. A co-captain of her softball team, the first team All-SOL Continental Conference and second team all-state catcher hit .417 during the regular season last year for a District One 4A runner-up Knight squad that captured the conference crown and advanced to the state quarterfinals. A dangerous power hitter, she is North Penn’s career leader in home runs and walks and was just eight RBIs shy of the program record.
“She started every game since ninth grade, and she is the best catcher I’ve ever had,” said softball coach Rick Torresani, who has been at the helm at North Penn for 20 years. “She knows every aspect fundamentally of being a catcher, and she’s basically known that since she was in ninth grade.” Numbers, however, tell only part of the story. “She’s very, very intelligent,” Torresani said. “She knows the pitchers. I really give Amanda a lot of credit for how well (pitcher) Mady (Volpe) has done. She’ll go out and calm her down, make her smile. She is a constant in the weight room at Relentless Athletics. She got Mady to go and in one year increased her speed eight miles an hour. Amanda has pretty much led quite a few girls to go and lift weights in the offseason.”
With a pair of all-state players at pitcher and catcher in Volpe and Greaney, the Knights boasted arguably the best battery in the state. Their sights were set on bringing home some serious hardware in a season that ended before it began because of the COVID-19 pandemic The softball diamond isn’t the only place Greaney had unfinished business. As part of her Engineering Design and Development class, Greaney and two classmates were in the midst of a mind-boggling project to generate energy from a most unusual source. “Basically, the whole year is dedicated to just picking a topic of something you want to fix or work on to help improve the human condition in the world,” Greaney said. “We wanted to make tabs that were put in the soles of your shoes, and every time you walk and every step you take they generate electricity, and it stores in your shoe, and you can charge your devices just from walking. It’s better for the environment and promotes exercise. We’ve made the tabs, and we were working on making the circuit.”
Greaney’s team was one of several North Penn teams from her engineering class to participate in Drexel University’s Philly Materials Engineering and Science Day in early February. The event included numerous colleges with North Penn the only high school represented. Unfortunately, the team could not see the project through to completion. Greaney has not ruled out the possibility of continuing the project this fall when she enrolls at Lehigh University where she will major in biomedical engineering. “We’re also trying to plan a virtual symposium, and hopefully online we can do a virtual display of our research and all we’ve accomplished this year even though it’s cut short,” Greaney said.
Greaney, who will continue her softball career at Lehigh, is looking to go into the field of prosthetics. “I want to give (people) a chance at a normal life and make a prosthetic that can change their life,” she said. Torresani is certain his star catcher will be a difference maker. “I just love her to death, and the good thing about her – I know in four, five or six years, she’s going to be somewhere where she’s not only helping herself, but she’s helping a lot of people, no matter where she goes,” the Knights’ coach said.
To read Greaney’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/amanda-greaney-0090249
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of April 23, 2020
Following last season’s dramatic, come-from-behind victory over Souderton in the District One quarterfinals, Chris Manero was already salivating at the prospect of coaching Kevin Reilly in his senior baseball campaign. Sadly, subsisting on the memories will have to suffice for Manero and the Plymouth Whitemarsh baseball program. With no spring 2020 season coming, those memories are all they’ve got left. Oh, but what great ones they are. Reilly, a senior catcher for the Colonials, was still a junior in the final week of May during the 2019 season when he produced the biggest hit of his life. PW trailed Souderton 3-1 in the sixth inning of that quarterfinal contest, with a berth to the state tournament on the line. Reilly strode to the plate with a runner on and quickly fell behind 0-2 before working the count back to full. Then, pandemonium ensued in the form of a majestic, game-tying home run to left-center; the Colonials would go on to defeat the eventual state champion Indians in the seventh. It was a career high point for Reilly, the three-year varsity starter behind the plate who finished last season with a .403 batting average to go with a .506 on-base percentage.
“It was one of the best at bats I’ve ever seen, and the most exciting singular hit that I’ve ever been on the field for,” Manero recalled. “Kevin was named a captain for his senior season and I was really looking forward to him having his best season of all four. These guys put in so much work all year for one reason: to see how good they can be in the spring. Kevin put that work in for his whole life to get to his senior year.”
Unfortunately, that will not come to pass, as the coronavirus pandemic has wiped out spring seasons for deserving seniors like Reilly all over the area, state and country. Like Manero, Reilly will have to get by on what he was able to accomplish in three seasons, which in fact was quite a bit. PW won just three league games Reilly’s freshman season, but he entrenched himself as a starter right away while hitting .297. His average dipped to .232 as a sophomore, but by then he was an elite defensive catcher, adept in both game awareness and limiting the run game in helping the Colonials back to the playoffs. Last season, PW won 11 SOL American games, good for the team’s first league title since 2005 (shared) and first outright crown since 1996.
Even if Reilly is a levelheaded, cool customer who doesn’t let much rattle him, Manero told an anecdote that likely made the cancelation of Reilly’s senior season even harder to swallow. After finishing eighth grade at Colonial Middle School, Reilly enrolled at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, where he repeated eighth grade there before deciding to return to PW. Fast forward to November 2019, the PIAA ruled Reilly ineligible for his senior season, with the main sticking point being whether or not Reilly’s second eighth grade season at SCH should count against his high school eligibility. Though Reilly lost the initial ruling, he and his parents appealed the decision, and a Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas judge ruled in Reilly’s favor. So, in effect, Reilly has had his senior baseball season ripped away from him not once but twice in the span of a couple of months.
Thankfully for Reilly, this story does still have a happy ending, despite the fact that he and his fellow seniors were robbed of the chance to defend their league crown. He may not play baseball this year, but he will again, as Reilly is bound for Binghamton University to continue his playing career. “Baseball is a game of failure,” Reilly said. “If you fail seven out of ten times, you’re still going to the Hall of Fame. Being a catcher has developed me into a stronger, confident person. You have to be. If you’re weak, you’ll get frustrated too easily and won’t last. I was looking forward to getting out there and defending our title. We wanted to improve ourselves and make a run in states. Being together every day with my team and my friends, going out and winning games, it’s the best feeling, and definitely the one I will miss the most.”
To read Reilly’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/kevin-reilly-0090246
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