Senior Salutes: Even with shutdown, Stuck sticks to being a leader

Even before he attended Haverford High School, Adam Stuck wanted to become actively involved with the issues facing young people in America.

Becoming politically aware and fighting for good causes early in his high school tenure molded Stuck into the well-rounded person he is today.

A member of the varsity basketball and baseball teams at Haverford, Stuck was the type of kid his baseball coach, Paul Bogosian, could trust to always do the right thing and set a good example for his teammates. Stuck was a co-captain on the baseball team.

“His leadership qualities are fantastic,” Bogosian said. “He’s going to be a leader in everything he does, whether he’s a coach later on or a boss later on in life. He’s going to be a leader because he has all the qualities that you want in a young person. He’s just a good, good kid. Even in basketball, he’s the kid who tells the coach, ‘Hey, don’t worry about me, let’s go out and win this thing.’ And he was a big part of that and helping them (win the Central League championship in 2020).

“Adam is a very unselfish person. His parents are very good people and he comes from a good family. He is just very impressive.”

Back in 2016, shortly before Donald Trump was elected president, Stuck and friends Jamie Taglang and June Park started a student club called “The Young Democrats of Haverford High School.” They organized monthly meetings and canvassed on behalf of Democratic candidates during election season.

“Two of my friends started that club the fall of my freshman year, when Trump was elected, and it’s just something that we wanted to do because we felt that we couldn’t be physically engaged as 14-and 15-year-old kids because we couldn’t vote,” Stuck said. “So, we were looking for a way to turn that into something positive. We wanted to organize some kids, volunteer at the polls, just doing whatever we could.”

READ: Senior Salutes: Baseball

In 2018, Stuck was among a dozen Delaware County high school students invited to speak during a special forum hosted by Delco United for Sensible Gun Policy. Stuck’s message to his peers that day resonates today.

“You can’t lose respect for your peers because in this country right now there’s a lot of hate, and hating on hate is never going to be the cure,” Stuck said in March 2018. “We all just need to love each other.”

By his senior year, Stuck and his “Young Democrat” colleagues were making a big difference at school. Stuck will pursue a degree in political science and continue his baseball career at Susquehanna University.

“This year we registered 285 seniors to vote. That was a pretty big deal for us, we were excited about that,” he said. “It didn’t start out as something that we thought we would get people registered to vote. That’s something that didn’t start until our sophomore year and it was able to grow. Originally, it was more about how we could get involved, how we can have our voices heard. We got involved with H-CAN, which is the Havertown Community Action Network, and they helped us out as well. We tried to get in the community, volunteer with some campaigns and canvass. We just wanted to be involved in any way possible.”

As for baseball, Stuck was disappointed that his senior season was wiped away due to the coronavirus pandemic. Following a .500 season in 2019, the Fords were loaded with senior talent and depth. As the team’s No. 1 pitcher and starting center fielder, Stuck believed the Fords were poised to make noise in the Central League.

“We’ve been on an upward climb since I started at Haverford,” Stuck said. “My sophomore year we struggled, I think we won six games, but last year we made a lot of progress and I think we were .500. We were going to have a lot of starters coming back, and we had a lot of juniors and seniors who got playing time last year. So, I was really excited to see what was to come. We had a pretty deep pitching staff, which had been a problem for us before this year. I was excited for that.

“We were hoping to make the playoffs and maybe make a run at the Central League title. You never know.”

Stuck had a blast playing for Bogosian, who was supposed to retire following the 2020 season but announced he will return in 2021. Bogosian said that he was content calling it quits this year because he had such a strong senior class to go out with.

“Playing for a guy like Bogo, what stood out to me the most was how personal of a relationship he built with all the players,” Stuck said. “He’s someone I can call up on the phone and have a full conversation with if I needed to. He’s a coach that you know is going to be there for you if you have something going on, off the field or on the field, because he’s going to be there to support you. That’s the biggest thing I took away from playing for Bogo.”

Stuck misses the camaraderie that baseball fosters and is hoping to have the opportunity to play summer ball for the Haverford Heat of Main Line Legion, which cannot have its players wearing the American Legion patch or use the logo, since the Legion season was canceled in April. With Delaware County slated to move into the green phase of Pennsylvania’s reopening plan June 26, baseball summer leagues are allowed to begin.

“These kids that I play with in the summer are kids I have been playing with since I was 7, 8 years old,” Stuck said. “And we didn’t get a proper sendoff in high school like we were expecting. So, you know, it would be nice to play another game or a few with some guys I grew up with. That’s kind of the goal. Everyone is going off to college, so to have one last summer playing baseball before we all break up … that’s the important thing.”