Why You Play

When she was seven years old, Chanell Britten was playing on a soccer team with eleven boys and one other girl. Instead of letting the boys push her around, or using it as an excuse to not play well, Britten used it as motivation to get better. “If they ran, I ran faster,” Britten said. “If they shot the ball, I shot the ball harder. It gave me the motivation to push harder and keep going.” Now, a sophomore at Brockway Area High School, Britten is showing people from all over the area what she and her family saw when she was seven years old playing with the boys. Britten currently has 66 goals in two seasons. She finished her freshman year with a team high 24 goals, including one in the last 20 minutes of the District 9 Championship game. While she usually puts her goals behind her after they happen, Britten remembers that one. After receiving a pass from her teammate, Britten made a move on her defender and was able to take the ball to the 30-yard-line where...

It’s another Sunday morning in North Philadelphia and Santonio Hill is getting ready to go to the Newman Center, Temple’s Catholic Center on campus, for Sunday mass. If you were to ask Hill seven years ago how he would be spending his Sunday mornings when he was 25 years old, he would have told you that he would be getting ready to play in an NFL game for whatever team drafted him. That was his goal, and as a senior in high school he was on the path to make it a reality.   Then he had a dream. Going into his senior year, Hill only had one year of high school football experience after having to sit out his sophomore and junior years because of injuries. He was coming back to a team that hadn’t won a game the previous year; things weren’t looking very promising. But Hill wanted to change that, and he did. With Hill back on the roster, Great Mills High School started its season 3-0 and sparked interest from everyone in the area, including Townson University...

Going into her senior year in high school, Jordy Frank had broken school records, was named the Pennsylvania Class A Player of the Year and District 9 MVP, led her softball team to its second District 9 title in three years and to the state semi-final game, but she still hadn’t gotten looked at by any Division I colleges or universities. “It was actually very stressful because I wasn’t getting looked at by anyone besides division III schools,” Frank said. “I went to some division II camps and I got letters from a lot of division III’s. Personally, I didn’t think division I was going to be suitable for me.” When those doubts would creep into her mind, Frank would think back to six years earlier, the summer before her sixth grade year. She was sitting at a desk during sixth grade move up day. The new middle schoolers were getting a look as to what they could expect for the next three years. During that time, each one of the students had to write down their future goals an...