Sara Hogan loves to go running in her free time.
Problem is she has very little of that. Lucky for her, she’s always on the run.
Hogan is a junior at Central High School, and she’s best known for being a standout soccer player.
The center midfielder and captain helped guide the Lancers to the Public League championship this year. She’s been All-Public every year of her high school career, and this year she was on the All-State team and the Most Valuable Player of the Public League.
She also stars on the FC Delco Club soccer team. It’s her main sport and something she hopes to continue to do for the foreseeable future.
But it’s far from all she does.
Hogan is also a captain and starting power forward on the Lancers basketball team. In the spring, she plays on the softball team, last year as an outfielder, this year either as a shortstop or a pitcher.
Oh, and she’s also the place kicker on the football team, handling both the kickoff duties, and the field goals and extra points.
“I knew a few of the players and they knew I played soccer so they asked me if I wanted to kick,” said Hogan, who lives in Holmesburg. “Football is fun. I like all the sports.
“I consider myself a soccer player who plays three other sports. Soccer is definitely my favorite and the one I think I’ll be doing for a while. I’ve always played basketball and softball, too. Football was just something I started doing.
“Football was fun. You don’t get that many fans come out for girls sports, but on Thanksgiving, I kicked in front of a lot of people. I made two extra points. I got hit on the first one. It was fun.”
Hogan’s Thanksgiving game was a return for her. She had surgery to remove her gallbladder after the Lancers won the Public League championship. She missed about a month of activity, including when the Lancers won the District 12 championship in soccer and went on to compete in the state playoffs.
But soccer was a memorable one for her. It was the second Public League soccer championship for Hogan, who also won a title in softball last year.
“Winning championships were definitely some of the best memories and I would love to win it again,” Hogan said. “We have really good teams. This year we had 11 seniors (in soccer), but I think two were starters, so we have a really good team coming back.”
In the winter, Hogan is gutting out a strong season for the Lancers. Though she stands just 5 feet 6, she plays power forward and mixes it up with some of the biggest players the Public League has to offer.
For her, it’s just about working a little harder to make up for being smaller.
“When we played Imhotep, I played against a girl who was 6 foot 4,” Hogan said. “You just have to work a little bit harder. I like to drive to the basket, and I’m pretty strong and fast, so I’m able to go against bigger players. And when you box out, it really doesn’t matter how tall you are, you can still fight to get the rebounds. You just have to go up strong and it doesn’t matter how tall you are.”
The Lancers are a young squad. They have no seniors, and with the exception of three juniors and two sophomores, the rest of the team is underclassmen. But what they lack in experience, they make up for with gritty play.
“I try to help everyone because I’ve played before, I try to be a good leader in soccer and basketball,” Hogan said. “I love this team. We are young and some of them never really played basketball before, but they’re good. They’re getting better all the time. And we have a lot of fun working together.”
Basketball hasn’t been a sport Hogan has won a championship in, but she has enjoyed herself.
She also enjoys softball, a sport the Lancers should be among the favorites in.
She doesn’t have much free time thanks to playing four sports, but even when her schedule opens up, she continues to focus on sports.
“I like to go for runs when I’m not playing sports,” Hogan said. “I like hanging out with my friends, too. But usually I’m going right from school to practice and when I don’t have practice for school, I’m going to Conshohocken to practice with my club team.”
She also hopes to stay around sports after her playing days are over.
Ideally, Hogan will play college soccer and she hopes to major in communications and someday be a sports broadcaster.
“That would be a great job because I love sports and I love talking to people, I just love to talk,” Hogan said. “I think I would like to (call) basketball. There’s a lot of action and a lot to talk about. I think that would be my favorite, but I just want to stay involved in sports. That would mix them both. I took some public speaking classes where you’d have to talk and memorize things. I like that and sports and it would be good to mix them together.”
But before that, she wants to continue racking up the championships at Central.
“I love the memories that come with (winning a championship),” said Hogan, who also excels in the classroom. “I’m going to play (all four) next year. I love all the teams.”
