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Penecale's early-season decision key to Abington's title hopes

03/15/2014, 7:15pm EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Matt Penecale couldn’t have known how big of an impact his decision would have.

A few weeks before the start of his junior season at Abington, the 6-foot-3 combo guard hurt his ankle in a fall league game. Though it was originally diagnosed as a Grade 3 sprain, by December and the start of the season, the pain still hadn’t gone away.

That was when Penecale went to get an MRI and found out that it wasn’t a sprain. Instead, he’d suffered torn ligaments in his right ankle.

So he had a decision to make.

Option one: have surgery and miss his junior season, with the plan to rehab and prepare to be fully healthy for an important summer on the AAU circuit.

Option two: wear an ankle brace, rehab the ankle and play through the pain.

Never one to put himself before the team, Penecale chose to stick it out.

“This is a family,” he said. “We’re all just good friends in general, not just on the court, and I didn’t want to let them down like that.”

Instead of letting his teammates down, Penecale has helped take the Galloping Ghosts higher than they’ve been in quite a long time. On Saturday, Abington topped Martin Luther King, 56-52, to advance to the PIAA Class AAAA state semifinal.

The last time Abington had even won a single state playoff game was in 1988. The last time they made the semifinals was 1975.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Penecale, who had 13 points and eight assists in the win. “To be a part of this feels good.

“Especially coming off of last year, we lose seven, eight seniors, picked fourth in our league…to be in this position today, it feels something special.”

He’s been one of several key players for head coach Charles Grasty all year long, as it’s been a team effort for the Galloping Ghosts to get to this point. Fellow junior Amir Hinton has gone from unknown to a Division I prospect, scoring in double figures during eight straight playoff games. Senior Anthony Lee, another potential D-I prospect, led the team in scoring in their win over Martin Luther King, and others have all had their moments.

But without their starting point guard, it would have certainly been difficult for them to beat the teams they’ve beaten–District 11 runner-up Emmaus, District 3 champions York and now Martin Luther King, the champions of the ultra-tough Public League.

“He made a decision, played through it, struggled earlier in the year and now he’s healthy and he’s just playing great for us,” Grasty said. “It just speaks for his character, the type of person that he is. He’s sacrificed his body for the betterment of the team.”

The payoff for Penecale’s unselfish decision wasn’t obvious at first.

Playing on torn ankle ligaments is no easy task, and it certainly bothered him at first. Usually the first one done during sprints and drills as a freshman and sophomore, Penecale had to turn back his motor on sprints, trying to stay in shape while avoiding further injury.

“Earlier in the year when his ankle was really bothering him he would sit out some scrimmaging, he would sit out when we ran hard,” Grasty said. “And it hurt him to sit out, I could see it there.”

Eventually, though, the physical therapy sessions and stretching exercises began to pay off.

Mother Nature also played a part. They heavy snow that the Philadelphia area saw frequently in January and February allowed Penecale to get a few extra days’ rest, and now in the most important time of the high school season he’s playing pain-free.

“In the morning it’s stiff, but once I stretch it out, lace the ankle brace up, on the court it’s 100 percent, I don’t even think about it out there,” he said. “That’s that, it feels good.”

Even more importantly, he can practice at full speed, too, which as he noted “is great, because it helps me get better.”

For this is indeed a big summer for Penecale, whose PA Renegades AAU squad is sure to have a number of Division I coaches following it throughout the April and July recruiting periods. Like many of his AAU teammates–Germantown Academy’s Tim Guers and Sam Lindgren, Abington teammate Hinton and others–he’s hearing from a number of coaches in the Ivy and Patriot Leagues, but is still waiting on that first offer.

The grind of the AAU season can be brutal, with as many as three games in a single day and six or seven over the course of a weekend–not exactly something you want to be doing with any sort of injury, much less what Penecale had. But the junior put the team before himself, put the present over the future, and gave his team a chance to make history.

“We have three goals every year–win the league, districts and states,” Penecale said. “You don’t want to come expecting to not win, or else you won’t win. Those were our realistic goals, to win everything we could, and it’s paid off.”

Two more wins would make his decision worth it all.