Matt Mammarella, baseball
Matt Mammarella has been a man of all seasons at Geibel Catholic, having played soccer, football, basketball and baseball for the Gators.
Forgive him, though, if he is partial to soccer. He really didn’t have a choice.
“Soccer is probably my favorite sport,” Mammarella said. “It’s just the one I’ve been around the most my entire life. My brother (Marc) and sister (Megan) have played and my dad (Mark) was the coach. Soccer’s always been pounded into my head.”
In fact, more than just soccer had been pounded into Mammarella’s head at Geibel Catholic. As a senior, he has plans to study and play soccer at Wheeling Jesuit.
“I’m going to Wheeling Jesuit,” Mammarella said. “I will study biology toward a degree somewhere in the medical field. I’m thinking of being a dentist, but I’m not sure yet.”
The youngest son of Mark and Nancy Mammarella of Brownsville has become Geibel Catholic’s male spring sports selection in the Centennial Chevrolet Scholar/Athlete Spotlight program.
Actually, it’s not entirely fair to say Mammarella was forced into playing soccer. Success had something to do with it.
“Sophomore year, I played football,” he said. “I was supposed to be just the kicker, but that was when we only had 12 or 13 guys on the team, so I played receiver and safety. I actually scored like half of the touchdowns.
“Our soccer team improved from sophomore to junior year, so soccer became more important to me and I didn’t want to get hurt for soccer.”
Mammarella lists his entire senior season of soccer as his most memorable sports moment of high school.
“We actually finished fourth in WPIAL,” he said. “That was the furthest a Geibel soccer team had ever gone. We actually won two playoff games, but it was the first soccer playoff game a Geibel team had ever won.”
Mammarella chose the medical field because he has always enjoyed a fascination with the human body and how it operates.
“Science and math are always the two big subjects. I’ve never really liked math that much,” Mammarella said. “I mean, I’m not bad at it, I just don’t like it as much as I like the sciences. Coming here, whenever they split up biology and chemistry, I was leaning more toward the biology and right now I really like the way Mrs. Colcombe teaches anatomy. Freshman year, we had Biology I, then sophomore year, we took Chemistry I, then junior year, it was whichever one we wanted to go into. I actually did both and right now a lot of us are in anatomy and physics. I’ve always liked learning about the body.”
So much so, he’ll apparently keep learning about the body — and likely playing soccer — in college.