Back injury, coronavirus rob North Penn’s Erik Jesberger of varsity dreams
Erik Jesberger remembers looking up to North Penn players from the 2013 and 2015 state championship teams as if they were Major Leaguers, picturing himself one day wearing the varsity uniform and hoisting a PIAA trophy at Penn State.
“From the time he was really young he came to all of our camps, all of our clinics,” North Penn head coach Kevin Manero said. “You could just tell he was always wide-eyed to be a North Penn baseball player.
“Even when he was real young and came to our camps and things, you could tell he was taking everything in. He was always a little undersized kid. You never knew if by the time he gets to high school will he be big enough. He was just a small kid, but anything he lacked in physical size he made up for in his love of baseball, his desire, his intensity with the way he went about things. He’s one of those kids when you think back over the years you can picture him as a kid coming to the clinic. When he got to the high school program he played 10 times his size from day one.”
Jesberger, now standing 5-foot-9 and weighing 152 pounds, never got the opportunity to take the varsity field. After playing ninth-grade ball as a freshman and JV as a sophomore, Jesberger was set to be the starting varsity shortstop as a junior in 2019. A devastating back injury stole his 11th grade season and the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic robbed him of his senior year.
The back injury occurred in February 2019. He had some flare ups the month prior, but it was during a lunging workout where a slight twist to the left created two ruptures and two bulges in his L4 and L5 discs.
“(My back) completely gave out on me,” he said. “Undoubtedly the worst pain of my life in the weight room.”
The Lansdale resident missed his entire junior season and all but the final game of his summer 2019 American Legion schedule.
He worked out on his own leading up to the fall 2019 season. He went to the North Penn baseball field to work on his fielding, conditioning and hitting and everything felt great.
On the first day of fall tryouts, after fielding three ground balls, his back flared up again. He went straight to the trainer’s room and is forever grateful to Manero for staying with him for two hours until he was able to stand up, walk around and head home with his dad.
“I can’t be more appreciative for coach,” Jesberger said, “not just being a coach for his players and trying to win, but also caring for the players and for me as a kid who’s trying to be on the field with my boys.”
After physical therapy he felt good enough to finish the fall season, but Manero told him to save his energy for the meaningful spring season. He had some minor discomfort in his back and a hamstring strain while lifting in the winter, but everything cleared up and he got the thumbs up from doctors ahead of spring tryouts.
One thing that never wavered from his February 2019 injury to the beginning of the 2020 season was his work ethic. Whether it was sitting in a chair doing glove work or throwing himself grounders off the wall, he always asked what he could do instead of focusing on what he couldn’t do.
“I remembered being that kid watching the big leaguers earn their spots, earn their stripes, get to wear the stirrups and be out there on the community nights and the senior nights,” Jesberger said. “Also on a June night at Penn State in the summer — that was of course my goal. Every rep I took, every swing in the cage, groundball off the wall — I took it just like I was at shortstop in the final inning of a state championship game. That’s how I take everything in my life. Everything is competitive and everything is putting my best foot forward.”
Thanks to his hard work and guidance from North Penn athletic trainers Melissa Rosenberger and Mike Burke, he was finally 100% healthy and ready for his senior season. Jesberger and the Knights boarded their plane to Florida to start the 2020 season the same week the coronavirus halted sports across the country. They played one game and four innings of an intersquad scrimmage before being sent home. The final play of the scrimmage was Jesberger making a play deep in the hole at shortstop and throwing across the diamond to get the out at first.
“It was such a long road for him but he kept at it,” Manero, who believes with a junior season Jesberger could be playing college baseball, said. “He’d be sitting in a chair fielding groundballs. He would go on his knees and throw a ball against the wall. I’ve never seen a kid do as much as him to try and get back on the field. Then right when he had it and right when he was ready to go this whole thing happened.”
After about a month of staying optimistic and hoping that a shortened senior season could be saved, Jesberger, who was expected to hit either second, eighth or ninth in the batting order, woke up to the news that Governor Tom Wolf closed schools for the remainder of the academic year and the PIAA cancelled all spring sports.
“I woke up and had a notification on my phone of the Governor Tom Wolf news,” Jesberger said. “Just as I sat up from bed, coach gave us the text. Unfortunately that broke everything. Like he said and he’s continued to say, he is going to have us on the field one more time at least for the seniors. We’re looking for a game hopefully sometime this summer, whether that be just between us or perhaps our rival over there at Souderton.”
“My heart breaks for him because knowing what he went through to be able to get back onto the field this spring,” Manero added.
While his high school sports career is over, Jesberger still plans to build a future around athletics. He is attending Temple University Klein College of Media and Communication this fall. He might try to play club baseball, but his main goal is to be a sports broadcaster.
“Sports broadcasting has really opened up some amazing doors for me and has been pretty awesome,” Jesberger, who remembers commentating simulated games on MLB 12: The Show, said.
“I’ve seen a bright light at the end of the tunnel with that aspect. I’m just hoping to commentate some of the sports I love playing. I love roller hockey in the street and basketball with some of the guys, hopefully some baseball, too, down the road. Maybe I’ll be able to find myself in a booth if it can’t be a dugout.”
Jesberger is a member of the Emmy-winning North Penn Television station. He’s done play-by-play for most of the Knights sports teams, including football, boys and girls basketball and girls water polo.
“Erik is going to be a great example of what we say to kids all the time,” Manero said, “which is, ‘There are a lot of ways to stay in the game other than playing.’ I think you’re going to see Erik on the sidelines, you’re going to see Erik reporting from dugouts or you’re going to see him doing being a sports anchor somewhere. He is going to be in baseball for a long time.”
