THE GAZETTE
Wednesday, April 9, 2014 s
Page B-3
Identical twins take different baseball paths n
Paint Branch graduates stay together, but are different BY
KENT ZAKOUR STAFF WRITER
When Nick and Jeremy Ponafala joined the Montgomery College baseball team last year, coach Dan Rascher had a hard time figuring out which 2012 Paint Branch High School graduate went with each name. The 5-foot-11 Ponafala brothers, 19, are identical twins and the only visible distinguishing characteristics between the two are that Jeremy Ponafala has longer hair and a Samoan tattoo on his arm. Their taste in music also may be slightly different. Jeremy Ponafala says he would choose House of Pain’s “Jump Around” for his walk-up introduction music while Nick Ponafala says he’d pick Run DMC’s “It’s Tricky.” “I had trouble knowing who was who,” Rascher said with a laugh and a smile during an interview on Saturday at batting
APPROACH
Continued from Page B-1 he has brain cancer. In May 2009, when Rolle was just a 4-foot-8, 75-pound child, he had heard those words. “Before you know what cancer is, I guess I thought everybody who has cancer dies,” he said. “I didn’t know how my life was going to be but I guess with the support of all my family and friends it was a lot easier than it could have been.” Nick Rolle said he never allowed the thought of losing his little brother cross his mind. While still young enough to understand the severity of the situation when Jack was diagnosed, he was old enough, 13, to realize that cancer could be treated. “Honestly, it’s a different perspective as an older brother,” said Nick, a senior at Prep. “You’re sort of — obviously it’s not happening to you so the way I kind of dealt with it was, I was like, ‘He’s gonna be fine.’ As an older brother you kind of, I don’t know, you’re a figure of strength.” It’s impossible to tell now, as the 15-year-old Jack Rolle stood next to a pile of yellow range balls, hitting 20-yard chip shots before a match with Calvert Hall, that doctors once discovered a peasized tumor in his brain called Germinoma, which affects less than one in a million children. Any scars he has from surgery are covered up by a PING hat drawn low over his light blue eyes. His tight, compact swing is a spitting image of his older brother’s, reflecting zero signs of reduced
YOUTH
Continued from Page B-1 Levitt said. “We’d take boxes of cleats and footballs and basically just toss them in the dumpster. Some of the stuff hadn’t been touched yet, stuff like game balls had been used 12 times.” This likely happens everywhere, Levitt said, because NCAA regulations make it difficult for colleges to make donations on their own unless approached by an organization. With the programs’ logo on the equipment, universities are not allowed to donate to youth programs where athletes have recruitment eligibility, Levitt said. The waste of perfectly good sporting equipment did not sit well with Levitt. In order to combat that, he founded Leveling the Playing Field, Inc., a Montgomery County-based non-profit organization that aims to provide at-risk children living in the Washington Metropolitan area with sporting equipment in an effort to increase their athletic involvement opportunities. “I did a lot of volunteer work with the Jewish Federation growing up and I’ve gone into areas in D.C. and Montgomery County where a lot of kids would kill for [what we were throwing away at Syracuse],” said Levitt, who added that sports were a major factor in his upbringing. “I started looking deeper into it and in doing research I found out that the cost of sports equipment is a huge barrier for non-profits.” Levitt said he found that one
TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE
Paint Branch graduates and twins Jeremy (pictured) and Nick Ponafala start for Montgomery College.
TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE
Paint Branch High School graduates and identical twins Jeremy and Nick Ponafala (pictured) start for Montgomery College’s baseball team. practice. “Now, I got it figured it out. One (Nick) looks a little more serious than the other.” “The long hair definitely makes it easier and helps people,” Jeremy Ponafala said. “I just wanted to grow it out and Nick has always been a short-haired guy. There was definitely a lot of
confusion last year. It was fun and we are used to it.” The now-sophomore twins — Jeremy starts in right field for the Raptors and Nick starts at third base and occasionally pitches — have always played on the same baseball team. They began playing tee ball together
motor control or arm strength. He will repeatedly say that, aside from the inconvenience of taking 10 or so different medications every day and checking in for regular MRIs and spinal taps, there are no lingering effects from the 16 rounds of chemotherapy and roughly 10 weeks of radiation in Boston that kicked the cancer into remission just months after its diagnosis. Georgetown Prep coach Robert Barry knows otherwise. After shooting a 42 earlier this year, Jack Rolle shook Barry’s hands. It was “like shaking an ice cube,” the coach said. Jack Rolle has Raynaud’s syndrome — the circulation in his hands is still not quite back to normal, a common side effect from the myriad treatments he received, and they are often numbingly cold. Not that he would let anybody know. “There’s a perspective that he has that is ‘OK, I’ve been through this,’” Barry said. “The only reason I knew [of Raynaud’s] is because I shook his hand — the only reason. He says, ‘Oh, I’ve got this syndrome, Raynaud’s, and it’s about circulation in the blood and etcetera.’ And that’s where we are. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it. It means absolutely nothing. He says, ‘This is what I’m going to deal with.’” Rolle’s remarkable strength, both mental and physical, throughout his cancer treatments has been a common source of inspiration. In the fall of 2009, it was the Maryland Terrapin football team. Jack watched most every home game from the sidelines with his brothers, William, Nick, and Chris; and after the Terps
beat James Madison in overtime, Jack was hauled into the locker room and handed the game ball by then-coach Ralph Friedgen. Then there is the story behind the PING hat that Rolle now regularly wears. He did not simply pluck it off a rack and shell out $20. It was a gift from one of the world’s top golfers, Hunter Mahan. The Make-A-Wish foundation had learned of Rolle’s condition and, being an avid golfer since the age of 6, Rolle’s wish was to meet one of his favorite golfers. So Make-A-Wish flew the Rolle family down to Doral for the World Golf ChampionshipsCadillac Championship, where he met Mahan, took a ride in Donald Trump’s helicopter, and raced down Homestead-Miami Speedway. “It was very fun,” he said, “But very scary going about 145 miles an hour.” Rolle does not view the world as most 15-year-olds do. After bad shots on the golf course, he doesn’t slam his club or fill the air with curses. At worst, there is a shake of the head. “He knows that coming out here — this is his,” Barry said. “‘I’m not a byproduct of medicine, I’m not a byproduct of surgery, I’m not a byproduct of therapy, I’m not a byproduct of chemo, I’m just Jack Rolle, and I love to play golf.’” “It gave me a new perspective on life that you can’t really take life for granted,” Rolle said. “You gotta look at the little things and appreciate them, just know how many blessings you have.”
in five underserved households are not getting their kids involved in athletics because of the price of equipment. Aside from physical fitness — obesity rates have tripled in the last three decades, according to Level the Playing Field’s news release — athletics possess important mental benefits. According to Levitt, children who participate in athletics are 60 percent less likely to drop out of school. In just a short time, what started off as a small collection of equipment Levitt stored in his parents’ basement has turned into an organization that has donated more than 5,000 sporting items to 35 youth programs primarily in Montgomery County, but scattered throughout the Washington, D.C. area and impacting nearly 5,550 children, Levitt said. That number is set to rise exponentially after Levitt and Level the Playing Field volunteers cleared out the Montgomery County Recreation Department’s warehouse Sunday in an event that drew out County Executive Ike Leggett. Leveling the Playing Field was given nearly 4,000 pieces of equipment no longer being used by the county as it now only offers basketball league play. Among area programs benefitting from Levitt’s organization are Linkages to Learning — 15 sites within Montgomery County Public Schools — and the City of Rockville’s Latino Youth Development Program. “Max really helped us with donating actual equipment, it’s
very expensive, money we don’t have in our budget to purchase supplies,” said Lynique Murray, the Linkages to Learning site director at Maryvale Elementary. “That is money that I can now use elsewhere like for finding reading materials, other educational items or food.” Whereas Levitt used to spend time calling around for whatever pieces of equipment he could find, an average of two organizations per week reach out to him these days. In addition to Syracuse, Levitt’s organization has working relationships with the University of Maryland, College Park, Towson, Gallaudet and Goucher College and he said he intends to add to that list. While donations aren’t an issue, Levitt said seeking corporate funding will be important as his organization and programs continue to grow. He has also joined forces with professional athletes and local teams, including the Washington Redskins and D.C. United, to provide a life skills component with his donations, Levitt said. “Sport is a really good vehicle for teaching,” Levitt said. “There’s always something that can relate to real life. One lesson we’re trying to get across is when facing adversity the last thing you want to do is put your head down, with hard work and determination you can get out of your situation. That goes hand in hand with sports. If you’re losing a game you’re certainly not going to come back if you put your head down and feel bad for yourself.”
tmewhirter@gazette.net
in kindergarten and moved their way up, including coach and kid pitch levels of the Oxon Hill Boys and Girls Club. When they moved from Temple Hills in Prince George’s County to Burtonsville the summer before enrolling as high school freshmen, they switched to play for the Burtonsville Big Dawgs. “Ever since we picked up a bat and glove, we’ve never split up,” said Jeremy Ponafala, who was voted Montgomery College’s team captain this spring. “I can’t imagine not playing together. I think it would be awkward.”
BASEBALL
Continued from Page B-1 great it would be to come here and play home games. We’re trying to make the best of it. Kelley Park has lights and it’s an OK field. But sometimes during rush hour it takes 45 minutes to get there.” Paint Branch has not played a home baseball game at the school since the older Jacobs graduated in 2010 due to the school’s building and facilities being rebuilt. The constant traveling to games and practices is becoming somewhat taxing on both coach Tom Rey and his players, they said. The Panthers practice at Briggs Chaney Middle School on a field that does not have a grass infield and is smaller than a standard high school field. On rainy days, the team will practice on the school’s turf football/soccer field. “I kept thinking that we were going to get a chance to play home games this year,” Rey said. “We’ve been waiting for the county to finish building the new school and
Added Nick Ponafala: “We have an extra connection. Baseball became easy because we always had a guy to practice with, hit with and throw with.” The twins’ parents, Pua and Cindy Ponafala, encouraged them to try several sports growing up — they played basketball and soccer before settling on baseball. “Baseball became what we stuck with and loved, it is what we were best at and enjoyed the most,” said Jeremy Ponafala, who didn’t begin playing in the outfield until his junior high school season. “At first, Nick started as a first baseman and I started at third and then when we were 11 or 12, he started pitching and I started catching. Most days, we’d get the job done.” Added Nick Ponafala: “I mean, we practiced together all the time. Our yard wasn’t big enough so we just hit a whiffle ball and played catch. No broken windows happened, but we tried to see who could hit it the furthest.” This spring, both have made strong contributions for the No. 7-ranked team (12-4 record as of now it’s been almost five years. I’m grateful that we have a place to practice and we have access to Kelley Park. But it’s like we’re a bunch of nomads. We’re always packing up the cars and commuting somewhere.” Paint Branch junior catcher Sam Stewart has accepted the current setup and already made adjustments. He admits that the scenario has hardly altered either his personal goals or those of the team. “It’s annoying, but I’ve gotten used to it,” Stewart said. “Everything is OK. It would be nice having home games, but I like being able to play under the lights at Kelley Park. I don’t like making that drive over there after school when there’s a lot of traffic, but we get there and back. As one of the team captains, I like showing my teammates that we can overcome a little adversity.” Jacobs has not lost all hope that the team could play at least one or two games on the high school field before the end of the season, and neither has Rey, but the Pan-
Monday) in the NJCAA Division III national poll. Nick Ponafala, who broke his right ankle in April 2013 practicing sliding into second base and is not quite back to full strength, is hitting .394 with a home run and a team-leading 14 runs batted in. Jeremy Ponafala has six hits, including a double, in 30 at bats. “It’s kind of amazing Nick is back,” Rascher said. “He’s worked his butt off. ... I’m amazed to see where he’s at.” Both brothers hope to transfer to a four-year college to continue their baseball tenures next year, but they don’t know if they will still play together. “It would be nice, but we we’ll figure it out,” Jeremy Ponafala said. Montgomery College, which had several early season games cancelled or rescheduled due to inclement weather and poor field conditions, hopes it can get in a groove now that practice conditions have improved. “You get stir-crazy in the gym,” Rascher said. “Hopefully we will be OK.”
thers’ senior has not lost sight of the team’s main focus — winning the Class 4A North Region title and getting to the state tournament. “You know, there is still a chance we could play a home game this year,” Jacobs said. “In the meantime, I’m not going to dwell on it. It sucks that it hasn’t happened and maybe I could go all four years without playing a home game. But our main goal is to win a state championship this year. I think we have the hitting and the pitching to do it. Having to travel for practices and home games only makes us work that much harder.” “It’s really a tribute to the seniors and our captains that the team stays focused and stays together,” Rey said. “You never hear any of them complain. They leave school, go home and carpool to the field for practice and for home games. It’s not the best situation, but it’s made everyone understand that sometimes things don’t always go your way.” tblack@gazette.net