yaiaascores

COLUMN By LARRY HICKS 854-1575 x445 / @ydsports

It’s not your typical “recruited-to-play-Division I-something” story.

It is, however, a story about perseverance, about persistence, about backbone, about grit, about stick-to-itiveness. It’s about a young woman from York County who entered a situation with her eyes wide open, knew it was going to be difficult, and then stepped up to meet the challenge head-on when it became more difficult than she ever could have imagined.

It is the story of Kiyanna Brown, 19, a freshman lacrosse player at Delaware State University.

First a little background: Brown is the daughter of Kenneth Brown and Dawn Trump. Her stepfather is Scott Trump. They live in the Shiloh area of the West York Area School District, from which she graduated high school last year.

Brown played field hockey and lacrosse for the West York High School teams and was selected a York-Adams Division I all-star in both sports. She was recruited to play midfield for the Delaware State University lacrosse team despite having less than three years experience in the sport.

“Field hockey (played in the fall) had always been my primary sport,” Brown said. “I ran track in junior high, but decided I wanted to try something else. So when I was a sophomore, West York started a girls’ lacrosse team (played in the spring). I’d never played before, not even on a traveling or recreation team, but a couple of my friends talked me into it.”

West York did manage a 3-12 record that first season. And “we improved each year after that. In fact, we made the District 3 Tournament my senior year.”

Then the college recruitment started. The lacrosse coaching staff at Delaware State University had an offer like no other program in America. It had no lacrosse team for women, but it intended to start one. And it made Brown one of its top recruits. Brown accepted the offer of an athletic scholarship to go there.

“I knew the deal. I knew from the very start it was going to be difficult,” Brown said. “I knew we’d have to work very hard because we’d be playing experienced teams, full teams with full sets of substitutes.”

DSU had recruited three freshman players, plus one transfer recruit, one graduate student and seven players who participated in a university intramural program the year before. There was not a single player with NCAA Division I college lacrosse experience.

That was tough enough. Then it got tougher.

Lacrosse, for the novice fans among us, is a team game played with 12 players on each side. DSU started the season with exactly 12 players. Other teams had rosters brimming with 24 to 30 players.

Then the injuries, withdrawals and defections set in.

“We started out the season with 12 players, but no substitutes,” Brown said. “A couple games into the season we were playing with seven or eight players against teams with 12 players. It wasn’t always pretty.”

As it turns out, lacrosse isn’t the same as baseball. In baseball, if you don’t have nine players to start the game, you simply forfeit to the other team.

But in lacrosse, Brown said, you can play with as few as two players — one must be the goalie, however. But that’s two players against 12. It quickly becomes a beatdown.

It never came to that, however.

“We always had at least seven players. But we played quite a bit with just seven players,” she said.

That meant being double- and triple-teamed all of the time.

It is a game that features passing, catching and carrying a rubber ball with a netted stick. And it’s run, run, run, especially when you’re shorthanded. It meant a lot of physical play. It meant being tested, physically and mentally every game.

“It meant we had to be more physically fit than the teams we played,” Brown said, “because we had no subs. The coach prepared us pretty well for what we’d face. We really worked on fitness, being able to run for 60 minutes without gasping for air. By the end of the season, I was more fit than I’ve ever been.”

But it was a challenge. Delaware State played 11 games in its fledgling season, against teams such as Colgate, Wilmington University of Delaware, Mount St. Mary’s, St. Bonaventure, Howard, Manhattan, Saint Francis and Niagara.

And it lost every one. In truth, they took a beating most of the time. They lost to Wagner, 21-2; to Liberty, 21-4; to St. Bonaventure, 19-0; to Saint Francis, 20-2.

You get the idea. It’s won-loss record was 0-11, and not a close game in sight. It was brutal.

“But we had our share of small victories,” Brown said. “We managed to overcome some huge disadvantages. We actually scored some goals against more experienced players and teams, even when we were double- and triple-teamed.

“It wasn’t pretty, but it was a great learning experience. I can honestly say I learned more by playing down (seven against 12) than I might have otherwise. I improved my skills as the year went on. I have no complaints. In fact, I enjoyed it.”

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.

Next year, Brown said, will be another year. A better year.

“Hey, we scored eight times in our last game (against Wilmington University) even though we only had seven players on the field. It wasn’t a win, but it almost felt like one.”

A moral victory, perhaps.

Brown was responsible for three of those goals against Wilmington, a team record for goals in a single game. She also had two assists and five points in the game.

And she finished the season tied for the team lead in goals (eight) and points (10), and she led the team in turnovers caused on defense.

Oh, and one more thing — Brown is majoring in sports management. And she’s a dean’s list student.

It’s a different story than we’re used to hearing.

But what a story.

Sports columns by Larry A. Hicks, Dispatch columnist, run Thurs days. E-mail: lhick s@yorkdispatch.com.

York Dispatch Staff Report

York Catholic High School graduate Patrick Albright was honored by the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference for his men’s tennis exploits on Wednesday.

Albright and Casey Snyder earned second-team all-conference honors for their work in the No. 3 doubles flight for Penn State Altoona.

Albright, a freshman, and Snyder, a sophomore, excelled despite no prior experience playing together. The two posted a 6-3 record, including a 4-2 mark in the AMCC. Their only two losses came to the eventual conference tournament finalists, Franciscan University and Penn State Behrend.

York Dispatch Staff Report

Kennard-Dale High School graduate Hana Krechel was named to the All-Commonwealth Conference Women’s Lacrosse First Team on Wednesday.

Krechel will graduate from Lebanon Valley College as a four-time all-conference honoree, including three first-team selections. The senior attacker is LVC’s all-time leading scorer with 262 goals, 129 assists and 391 points, which is tied for sixth all-time in NCAA Division III history. This season she has 52 goals and a career-high 53 assists.

By RYAN VANDERSLOOT 854-1575 x455 / @YAIAAscores

The name Suzi Sutton always seems to come up quickly when there are discussions about the best field hockey player of all-time in York County.

And for good reason.

Sutton was a two-time player of the year in the York-Adams League in 1998 and 1999 at Dallastown. The first freshman to ever start for the Wildcats, she led her team to the PIAA semifinals in 1999. Her 92 career goals and 30 goals during the 1999 season still stand as records today.

Despite all of those exploits, Sutton admitted that she wasn’t very fond of the sport initially. Her mother, Vicki, was also a standout in the sport and took Suzi along with her to numerous tournaments all over the East Coast as a child. It wasn’t until she went along with her mother to the National Field Hockey Festival that her love for the sport started to blossom.

After her successful run at Dallastown, Sutton received a scholarship to play in the Big Ten at Northwestern University. In her sophomore year in 2002 she was named to the All-Big Ten Second Team.

While Sutton was best known for her field hockey exploits, she was also a pretty good basketball player. Learning from her father, Gary, a successful boys’ basketball coach, she led her high-school team to the York-Adams League title in 1999. Sutton scored more than 1,000 points in her career.

Since graduating she’s continued to stay involved in sports as a highly-regarded field hockey official. She’s officiated games at the high school, collegiate and now the international level.

For all of her exploits, Sutton was recently voted into the York Area Sports Hall of Fame. She will officially be inducted on Sunday at Sovereign Bank Stadium before that night’s contest between the York Revolution and the Long Island Ducks.

We caught up with Sutton, who resides near San Francisco, for this edition of Sports Q&A.

How did it make your feel when you found out you were to be inducted into the York Area Sports Hall of Fame?

“I only found out about this a month ago. I was in an airport ready to leave for New Zealand so I was kind of surprised. It’s pretty amazing. There are a lot of great athletes and people to come from York County in sports, so it’s a real honor.”

Is it any bigger of a deal to be inducted considering that your dad, Gary, is already in the hall of fame?

“Well he’s had his successes and I’ve had my successes. Obviously I’ve had some great high school success here and in college and now with my international umpiring career. So it’s different. It’s really not tied together at all. But obviously my parents both did a great job when I was young to get me involved with a lot of different things, and not just sports, in order to become a successful person.”

So how did you ini tially get involved in field hockey?

“My mom played. As a funny side note, I think I was actually potty trained on the side of a field hockey field. She would sit me down and tell me to go play and I would just go up and tell the ref or whoever on the sideline that I have to go to the bathroom and my mom would sub off. So I grew up around the sport. I didn’t particularly like it when I was younger, because we were going on these road trips all over the place. We would go up to New York and down to Virginia for different tournaments and I was brought along. So there’s a thing called the National Field Hockey Festival and one year it was held in Cocoa Beach, Fla. As one of the kids that went along with their parents, I was thrown on a team called the ‘Pick-up Sticks.’ It was just kids like me who were down there with their parents, and I was happy I was in. I enjoyed playing it and that’s how I got my start. I was in maybe fifth or sixth grade. So I got a really younger start than most others because of my mom being involved in field hockey.”

So how did you get your start in basket ball?

“In basketball my dad was a coach for almost my entire childhood. He coached Columbia boys and he won a state championship when I was about 6 years old. I was a manager for his team. So I’ve been around the sport of basketball for a long time. He was a great coach. So I always thought I was going to be a superstar basketball player, but then I kind of got my mom’s height (5-foot-5). I still went on to become a pretty good basketball player, but height is important.”

So who would you say had the biggest role in shaping your athletic career?

“Well both of my parents were coaches, so it would have to be my parents. They created a good foundation, but I’m the one that fell in love with sports. So it wasn’t like they forced me into it. Obviously I was surrounded by many different athletic opportunities, but I really liked it. When I was young the way my parents would punish me was to take my basketball away for a day.”

How tough was that to not have your bas ketball?

“I hated that. I remember one time I was at camp and someone else was practicing and I was not. I slept with my basketball and everything when I was a kid. I was a total goober like that (laughs).”

What was your fa vorite career high light?

“In college, I’d have to say it was college basketball. I don’t know if it was Senior Night or not … I can’t remember. I only played a season of college basketball, but I had been a manager while I was there at Northwestern, which is pretty impressive considering I was a scholarship field hockey athlete, that I would be able to manage my time well enough to stay involved with the basketball team and the coach. So in my senior year she allowed me to walk on the team. I endured an injury during my senior season of field hockey, which really hampered the rest of my athletic career in college. I tore the ligaments in my ankle and I ended up just playing on them because they couldn’t figure out how to get it fixed. So I was already playing through it. So I ended up playing basketball through it as well and it really hindered my ability to be successful, as far as being speedy. So I got the opportunity to go on the court and got a big standing ovation from all of the fellow athletes that were there because they kind of knew my story. It wasn’t a winning attempt by any means for Northwestern, but the place went wild when I went on the court. So that was a cool moment.”

How about in your high-school career? Anything stand out in particular?

“In my junior season in field hockey we made it to the (state) final four. The game was played at Hempfield High School and busloads of people showed up. We ended up losing in that semifinal, but it was an amazing atmosphere. We had a great season. Field hockey isn’t known for its great crowds so the fact that it was packed all the way around the field five to 10 people deep, that’s unheard of.”

– Reach Ryan Vandersloot at sports@yorkdispatch.com.

York Dispatch Staff Report

Eastern York High School graduate Kate Dellinger will receive a postgraduate scholarship from the NCAA over the next two years.

The honor is based on her accomplishments at Widener University in athletics, academics, leadership and community service.

Dellinger is a senior at Widener and was a standout on the women’s basketball team over the past four years. She is a psychology/pre-physical therapy major and is the school’s first winner of an NCAA postgraduate scholarship since 2001 and the university’s first female recipient since 1995.

Among her individual accolades:

—Women’s Basketball Coaches Association NCAA Division III Honorable Mention All-American for two straight years.

—First Team All-Commonwealth Conference pick for three straight seasons.

—Philadelphia Inquirer Women’s Basketball Performer of the Year for two straight seasons.

—Second Team Capital One CoSIDA Academic All-American for two straight seasons.

—Finalist for the Jostens Trophy as the nation’s premier Division III player.

—Last season, Dellinger was eighth in the conference with 11.8 points per game, fourth with 9.2 rebounds per contest, seventh with 2.0 steals per game and fourth with 32.7 minutes per contest. She ends her run sixth in school history with 1,255 points and fourth with 759 rebounds.

—In the community, she has participated in Special Olympics; Hoops From the Heart, which welcomes inner-city kids for a day of basketball clinics; Cradles to Crayons, which provides everyday essentials to homeless and low-income children; and City Team, in which the Widener team adopted a family.

By STEVE HEISER 854-1575 x455 / @ydsports

The York Area Sports Hall of Fame will add three new members in early May.

Suzanne “Suzi” Sutton, William “Bill” Krouse and Malcolm “Beese” Wendt have been selected for induction by the York Area Sports Hall of Fame Committee.

The induction ceremony will be held at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at Sovereign Bank Stadium. The new Hall of Famers, along with the Shipley Distinguished Achievement Award and Special Achievement Award winners, will be honored before the York Revolution take on the Long Island Ducks in a 5 p.m. contest.

The Distinguished Achievement Awards are given to York area amateur athletes, under age 25, who have excelled at the state, regional or national level. The Special Achievement Awards are given to athletes who had previously won Distinguished Achievement Awards, but continued to excel at the state, regional or national level.

Sutton: Sutton will follow her father, Gary, into the Hall of Fame.

Gary Sutton was a successful high school basketball coach in the region, who won a state title with Columbia. He was inducted into the York Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2003 and he’s now a well-known local radio personality.

Suzi Sutton is best known for her exploits as a field hockey player. At Dallastown High School, she was named the York Area League Field Hockey Player of the Year in 1998 and 1999. She led the Wildcats to four league crowns and was the first freshman to start for Dallastown. She set the league record for most career goals with 92.

She also excelled in basketball for Dallastown and was the York Area Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year in 1999. She scored more than 1,000 points with the Wildcats and led them to a league title in 1999.

She earned an athletic scholarship to Northwestern for field hockey. She was chosen to the 2001 Big Ten All-Tournament Team and in 2002 was chosen to the All-Big Ten Second Team. She was the captain of the 2004 Northwestern team.

Sutton also excelled in the classroom and was an Academic All-American from 2002 until 2004.

In 2004, she made the Northwestern women’s basketball team as a point guard and later received the Big Ten Sportsmanship Award for basketball.

Since graduating from college, Sutton has coached and officiated field hockey. She is currently a manager with Fed-Ex in Lewisberry.

Krouse: Krouse was a standout track and field athlete at Red Lion High School and West Chester University.

For 40 years, he held every major sprint record at West Chester.

With the Rams, he ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds and the 220-yard dash in 20.5 seconds.

Krouse led West Chester in scoring at the Middle Atlantic Conference Championships three years in a row. His team won MAC titles in 1969 and 1970.

During his three-year varsity career at West Chester, he was defeated just once each in the 100 and 220 during MAC competition.

He was inducted into the West Chester Hall of Fame in 2012.

After leaving West Chester, he returned to Red Lion as a physical education teacher and coach. His track teams won several county titles and he also founded and coached the Red Lion girls’ softball program. In 1988, he was selected the Pennsylvania Elementary Physical Education Teacher of the Year.

He retired from Red Lion in 2005 after 34 years of service. He and his family currently operate Krouse Travel, which they founded in 1984.

Wendt: Wendt is best known as a standout professional motorcycle hillclimber.

He won seven national championships (four Canadian and three American) in the 1960s in various classes and won more than 50 pro hillclimb competitions.

Wendt raced professionally for 40 years, from 1959 until 1999. He was named the top pro rider eight times in American Motorcycle Association District 6 from 1966 through 1975.

Wendt is a life member of the AMA and the White Rose Motorcycle Club near Jefferson. He has long worked to promote the sport.

He retired from Harley-Davidson in York in 1999 after 35 years of service. He lives in Red Lion.

– Reach Steve Heiser at sheiser@yorkdis patch.com.

York Dispatch Staff Report

Central York High School graduate Megan Lundy has been named the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Women’s Outdoor Track Athlete of the Week.

She is a freshman at Shippensburg University.

She helped her team place fifth in the sprint medley relay with a time of 4 minutes, 10.07 seconds at the Colonial Relays. Lundy also participated in two other events, recording a time of :56.86 in the 400-meter sprint, which ranks first in the conference this season. She also ran a leg of the 1,600 relay, helping her team to a 3:56.54 time, just two seconds off the team’s top PSAC time.

By JOHN WALK 505-5406 / @yorksportsguy

There are no regrets for Kaden Hepler.

Not for the 901/3 innings and countless pitches he tossed for the West York High School baseball team in 2012.

Definitely not for his 0.70 ERA and 14-0 record, including four wins in the PIAA Class AAA Tournament, which led the Bulldogs to a state title.

Not even if all of that wear and tear on his arm may have eventually led to Tommy John surgery last month for Hepler, who is now a freshman at NCAA Division I Winthrop (S.C.) University.

“I don’t have any regrets. It’s what I decided to do,” Hepler said. “This surgery and what happened … God has a plan for what happened. I just have to accept it and trust in him and we’ll see what happens. If I work hard in rehab this upcoming fall, then I should be ready to go next season.”

Hepler said he has always rested him arm when needed during his career. And he understands there is no exact reason as to what led to the ulnar collateral ligament tearing in his right throwing arm. Maybe his time pitching for a travel team and the Central League’s Shiloh club last summer may have played a part, but doctors have told him the injury just happens to some pitchers.

“These things just happen from throwing your whole life,” he said. “Just so much stress on the ligament from throwing. Some people, eventually it just tears for them.”

Injury: Making his first college appearance in Winthrop’s season opener on a Friday evening, Feb. 15, Hepler came out of the bullpen to start the seventh inning against University of Maryland-Eastern Shore.

With his dad and grandfather watching from the stands at Winthrop Ballpark, Hepler got his first batter to fly out to right field and the second batter to go down swinging.

“(Facing) the third batter I felt a pop in my elbow and that was it,” Hepler said. “It was probably 12 pitches (I had thrown). At first I was thinking ‘Oh, crap. This isn’t good.’ That was the one fear I always had in my life, was screwing my arm up.”

Surgery: Hepler visited a doctor in Charlotte the next morning and underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) the following Wednesday.

“The MRI showed it (the ligament) was at least 50-percent torn,” he said. “They gave me two options: surgery or try to rehab it and see how it feels in a couple months and start another throwing program from there.”

Hepler underwent surgery, which revealed the ligament was completely torn, on March 5.

In the midst of this ordeal, Hepler also had to deal with the death of his grandfather, Wayne L. Hepler, who died Feb. 23 at the age of 69. A pastor at many churches during his life, Wayne L. Hepler played a big role in Kaden’s spirituality, according to Kaden’s dad, Wayne D. Hepler.

“We’re really proud in regards to that, because (Kaden) has kept a great, positive attitude,” Wayne D. Hepler said of his son. “He’s willing to do what needs to get done. His faith has not wavered through any of this stuff.”

Good timing: Hepler will have others to lean on for advice in his recovery. Three Winthrop teammates have previously undergone Tommy John surgery. Plus, if he had to get injured, he’s glad it happened now.

“It’s better to happen now than later,” he said of the injury. “If I was a junior or senior in college and looking to play at the next level and I had missed a year recently, a (professional) team might take a pass on me.”

A business administration major, Hepler will sit out this year with a medical redshirt. He then aims to get back to full health in time for the start of the 2014 season. And he has shown what he can do when healthy. He has a state gold medal in his dormitory room as a reminder.

“I don’t let that thing out my sight,” he said.

– Reach John Walk at jwalk@yorkdispatch.com.

York Dispatch Staff Report

Eastern York High School graduate James McBride is fitting right in at his new school.

McBride, a graduate student at Saint Joseph’s, won the 3,000-meter run in 8 minutes, 38.27 seconds at the Lafayette 7-Way Invitational on Saturday. He topped a field of 31 runners.

McBride is competing in his first outdoor season with Saint Joseph’s, which is an NCAA Division I program. He formerly competed for Millersville University, a Division II school, but transferred to Saint Joseph’s after the Marauders dropped their track and field program in a cost-cutting measure.