TOWAMENCIN- A person playing sports and participating in musicals is not a regular occurrence.  Usually these two activities have been separated by students.  Look at the protagonist from High School Musical, star basketball player who got involved in the school musical.  Well, meet North Penn High School’s version of Troy Bolton, senior Amir Pickens.

Pickens was a tight end and defensive end on the football team and also wrestled in the heavyweight class in the winter.  He also is involved in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes club.  As for the music program, Pickens is in the chorus, the men’s select chorus and will be in the spring musical, Mamma Mia.

“Ever since elementary school, I’ve always been heavy related into music and stuff like that and in middle school I just stopped doing it and decided to pick it back up in ninth grade just because of how much I liked to do it and it just pulled out a better side of me.  It helped me get better as a person,” Pickens said.

Pickens was named to the SOL All-League first team in the heavyweight class as he finished with a 24-14 record this year and made regionals.  On the gridiron this fall, he was a big part of the football team that went undefeated until the district title game.

“I’ve been playing football since I was nine and wrestling since ninth grade year.  With football, it was just like one of those things where I wanted to come out and try it, didn’t like it at first, ended up loving it and now I still do it.  Wrestling was also kinda the same thing just later on in life.  My ninth grade English teacher encouraged me to come out for the team my ninth-grade year.  Ever since then I’ve just been wrestling ever since,” Pickens said.

The man they call Pick, realizes the stereotype of athletes not being involved in the musical program and vice versa.  He thinks it has a lot to do with the amount of time that has to be put in for each program along with limiting yourself.

“A lot of the athletes most of the time are busy with their practice and school and games but they also see as it though, where if someone is an athlete that’s only what they do.  Like they’re are only an athlete.  There’s not other things they can do, maybe like singing or acting or maybe an artist and painting.  It’s just strictly athletics,” Pickens explained.

So, then the question becomes, how does he have time to be involved with both programs.

“I pretty much just go with the flow.  Sometimes I might misschedule and miss things.  I know this wrestling season, I missed the Interboro match because we had a chorus concert so there are sometimes unfortunately where I can’t be at both places at the same time, but you find a way to make it work.  Somebody said to me one time, they said ‘No one ever has free time but you have to make free time to have free time’ so as long as you make the time to do the stuff you really want to do, you’ll be able to find a way to do it,” Pickens said.

Pickens hopes that students will follow in his footsteps by getting involved with both the athletic and music program at the high school.

“Actually, there’s a lot of people now, more like in this generation, that’s starting to do more with just sports or just theatre and drama and the music department and now you have people doing multi-clubs or people who are athletes who do SGA or a different club like FCA or something like that.  That’ll help them not only balance out their regular day life but add something,” Pickens said.

Pickens’s future plans are to play football at Ursinus College for the Bears.  He is strongly considering joining the wrestling team as he majors in business and minors in theatre.  But his time at North Penn is not done yet and you can see Pickens in the spring musical from May 1^st to the 5^th at North Penn High School.  You can get your tickets at http://www.npenn.org/theatre.