Schools

Soccer Player's Kick Wins Him New TV

Haverford High School junior Brian Gormley wins a LG 55" 3D TV.

When most high school soccer players kick the game-winning goal, they usually get a pat on the back.

But junior Brian Gormley got a LG 55” 3D TV. 

It all started when Gormley and the rest of the Fords played against Upper Darby High School in an Oct. 15 game when Teddy Thorogood kicked the ball to the 17-year-old Gormley, where the left forward kicked a spectacular shot into the goal for a 3-2 win, as seen by the YouTube video of the shot.

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Gormley explained to the Haverford-Havertown Patch in a phone interview that one of the players parents recorded his play and sent it to the Verizon FiOS Play of the Week contest, where the company would present the best soccer video submitted and people would vote for the best one. Gormley’s video was selected as week five.

Gormley, who has been playing soccer since he was 5 years old, said that he got a signed Union soccer jersey before his father received a phone call Tuesday, Nov. 22, two days before Thanksgiving, that the younger Gormley won the TV.

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“I was speechless,” he said when he discovered that he won the 55” 3D TV, which now sits in his “man cave,” or basement. “It puts the old TV to shame.” 

While it is his TV, he says that he does allow his family to use it, but adds, “But in the long run it’s mine,” he said with a laugh.

“It’s his. I never thought he would win,” Gormley’s mother Patti said, saying that the basement has recently been refurnished and her son and his friends play Xbox on the new TV. She added that she hopes to have HD cable to put the TV to full use.

When he is not playing soccer (for either Haverford High School or Spirit United in Downingtown during the winter and spring seasons), or even baseball or snow boarding, Gormley is hard at work maintaining all A’s in his subjects, the National Honor Society student explained to Patch.

But his love for soccer has taught him many things besides how to kick a goal-winning save.

“You learn to work more as a group and as a team. You can’t excel if you go (at anything) as a single person,” Gormley said.


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