Westmoreland County Senior Spotlight: Greensburg Central Catholic’s Sasha Hoffman

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Monday, January 13, 2025 | 12:16 PM


A lot of student-athletes work tirelessly to balance academics, athletics and extracurriculars.

Greensburg Central Catholic hurdler Sasha Hoffman takes that a step further, competing in track and tennis while participating in more extracurriculars than one could even fathom.

“It’s, obviously, challenging at times, and there are many times when I think I’m overdoing it,” Hoffman said. “The busyness, the chaoticness that it can be sometimes, but since I’m so determined to succeed in every area that I venture in, I feel like I honestly thrive better as a student-athlete because I spend less time on my phone or on social media because I have to get my work done, and I have to train or I have to volunteer.”

Hoffman has earned individual and team honors at the section and WPIAL levels in track and is a three-time section singles champion in tennis.

Yet her proudest achievement is neither a championship nor a medal.

“I would probably say my Positive Athlete Award, because I feel like it combines everything,” Hoffman said. “It celebrates students with high grades, high success, overcoming difficult circumstances, giving back to your community and definitely the infectious, positive attitude that makes everybody around them a better person.”

Last year at the WPIAL championships, Hoffman finished second in the 100 and 300 hurdles.

“I was, obviously, very happy with it,” Hoffman said. “Those achievements showed me that my hard work was finally paying off. I took every practice, every lifting session and meet very seriously, so it was very rewarding to see that my hard work was paying off.”

With all the success she’s had hurdling, it almost seems like she was born a natural.

“I don’t know if I really picked it,” Hoffman said. “I remember trying hurdles, and I picked it up very quickly, and that was something that the coach (Mike Brewer) saw. He put a lot of focus on me, but I kind of just enjoyed so many things about the challenge that it brought.”

Off the track, Hoffman is just as accomplished.

Academically, she was accepted into the University of Chicago, which had a 7.3% acceptance rate in 2024. She will continue hurdling while majoring in cellular engineering on the pre-med track.

“My family has supported me in so many unimaginable ways,” Hoffman said. “My dad picked up tennis for me so that he could do drills with me. Then my mom always records every race that I run so I can see it from a different perspective.”

She also credits her coaches, teammates and the support system at Greensburg Central Catholic for preparing her for the next chapter of her life.

“Our athletics represent our school very well. They support everything that we do,” Hoffman said. “They’ve just been very supportive. I can’t be more grateful for how they set me up athletically and academically.”

In addition to sports and academics, Hoffman has dedicated time to volunteering, primarily with the Light of Life Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter in Pittsburgh. She hopes to expand her involvement when she turns 18.

In the midst of her busy schedule, Hoffman took some time for a Senior Spotlight Q&A:

What are your goals for your senior season?

I’m hoping to stay injury-free as much as I can. I’ve been putting a lot of time into stretching and eating better. For track numbers, last year, I cut off my 100 by almost a full second. I hope to do something similar. I want to break that (15-second) barrier. With the 300, I want to get into the low 45 (seconds). I mean, the whole goal is to just break and chip into my PR. I want to leave this season as a better athlete than I came into it. And with a big emphasis on staying injury free.

How has tennis contributed to your success on the track?

I think tennis has built more of my mental game, because, with track, you run for 15 seconds or 40 seconds. It’s very mental as well, but at that point, you’re kind of in auto with tennis. You really have to focus on the match. You think very technically, so I think it’s helped me a lot with my mental game, but also my endurance, because they are longer matches. I feel like playing tennis helps with my endurance and my fast-twitch responses as well because the ball’s coming so fast. I love tennis. I’m very happy to have picked it up very quickly. I wish I had started playing earlier, and the same thing with track. I kind of wish I had started taking it more seriously earlier, but I think I’m on a good trajectory now to hopefully keep improving all the way through college.

What have you taken away from the volunteer service you’ve done?

Acts of service are a significant part of who I am. They’ve kind of helped me make a meaningful impact on the Pittsburgh community. I created a GoFundMe campaign that raised over $2,000. And that helped me create 200 care packages, which had a bunch of hygiene items in them. Then I organized bake sales. I remember I made a bunch of gobs, and I sold them in different markets all over the summer. I did clothing drives. I developed a separate donation website for my 5K fundraiser that I did in May, and I’ll be doing it again this May. That raised over $8,000 in monetary donations, and it secured over 50 donations from local businesses and organizations. I had raffles there, and I think, like, after all of that, I received this challenge coin from the Westmoreland District Attorney’s Office, which is super cool as well. They wrote me a nice letter.

But even outside of the fundraiser season, which is like the spring, I spend almost every Sunday and any free weekdays volunteering at the shelter in their meal ministry, where I prepare food for the meals of the week, and then the donation center, where I store, organize and fold clothing. I recently just started volunteering in their new branch off the floor, which involves cleaning and preparing furniture for the clients. That’s all my stuff with Light of Life, but obviously I volunteered it and raised funds for other important causes like caring hospice services. I’ve been doing that for the Westmoreland Food Bank. I’ve visited and spent time with hospice patients. I’ve done clothing and hygiene drives for them. Even with my school, I just did one. Last month, I delivered the stuff to them, but that was a hygiene drive, and I’ve made holiday cards for all the patients for the food bank.

I volunteer one Friday of every month, a school day, one Friday, at the Jeannette Ascension Church. I help people carry their food in their cars, regardless of what the weather is. It was very cold the last time we went, and it was snowing. With school, I became president of the Hungry Hearts Club. So, I’ve been fortunate to lead the development of new initiatives. I’ve organized fundraisers for local food banks and coordinated drives to collect donated clothing and school supplies for children in need. I think one of my favorite service projects this year was organizing a gnocchi cooking class where a group of 20 students and I made fresh gnocchi from scratch, and we served it to residents at a local homeless shelter. Then over this Christmas season, we organized workshops at Aquinas and Queen of Angels.

What led you to pick the University of Chicago?

I just felt like it was a better fit for me than the other schools I had talked to. I knew my senior year that I didn’t really want to do Division I track. I had a few offers, but I just felt like they were more focused on track than academics, which is something I didn’t really want for myself. I know with Division III schools, especially with how strong they are academically, the focus would be on academics over athletics. I kind of preferred that, but I reached out to the coaches at U Chicago, (coach Nicole Murphy and Justin McQuality), in June. Then, I knew I wanted to attend an academically rigorous school while running track, so they responded back to me very quickly.

A few months later I visited the campus. I literally fell in love with the campus at first sight. It was the most beautiful campus I’ve ever seen. I was so excited about the fact that it was like in a new city, a big city that I’ve never been to. I’d never been to Chicago before. I got to explore the city a little bit whenever I went over there to see the school, but I’m so excited to explore more around the city as well. I was so warmly welcomed by the track team. I know, like, one of the hurdlers, whenever I first got there, she ran up and hugged me and, like, welcomed me with open arms. It really seemed like they wanted me to be a part of the team, which was an awesome feeling, and that’s kind of why I decided to go through the recruiting process with them. I’m so happy with how things turned out because it had honestly been one of my dream schools.

What is one thing that people may not know about you?

I have a deep love for the universe and the art. I remember growing up, I used to spend most of my free time watching videos and researching black holes because I was so fascinated by them. I still am, but that’s why I’m so excited about Chicago, because they kind of contributed to the knowledge and data that we have today about black holes. I’m also fascinated by the fact that there are so many more questions than answers about the universe and about life itself. And there’s so much left to discover.

As for photography, I always appreciate museums. I love learning a story of like other people’s art creations, because I took AP Art and Design last year, and my sustained investigations kind of focused on why we treat homeless people the way that we do, which was so nice because I’ve been volunteering and working with homeless people for like, I think like a year prior, maybe a year and a half. So, I kind of got to take my art and do something with it. I tried to provide a glimpse into the challenging lives of those homeless people through my photography. Basically, I would go around the streets of Pittsburgh, and I would take their pictures with their consent, and I would set up this art mural in Westmoreland where I had like a bunch of cardboard signs. I took a little twist on it where it was like how we feel about them. So, you could really see the judgment that people have about them, which is something that I’ve seen through my volunteer work with them anyways.

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