Let’s face it – you can’t miss him.

Christopher Frey looks like a football player, and has likely been mistaken for an Eagle on more than one occasion. And while he has always liked sports, what few people know is that he never actually played on any high school teams, but did play a few club sports the equivalent of TYA. He grew up going to playgrounds and playing pick-up games. Frey was the student trainer in high school, an average student, worked a lot as a waiter at Olive Garden and used to be very big in video games as well.  

“My favorite was this game called Contra and it came around just when cheat codes started, and I remember specifically it was up left right up down up down B A B A  Start, I can still remember that but I can’t tell you my wife’s phone number,” said Frey jokingly. “But I really enjoyed video games, going to movies (not much different from kids today). Take out the computers, Facebook, Twitter and I was pretty much just like today’s teen. I think that’s why I can relate to some of my students so well.”

Frey still has the same friends he had in high school; the best man at his wedding was his best friend in high school, which is very rare.  In college, Frey got his undergrad at Temple University, while commuting his first year. Frey rode crew freshman year which is a very interesting sport that is currently D1. Through crew, Frey got into lifting weights and exercising. He lived at home, worked part time, paid  for some of his school fees himself , and his parents helped out a bit and he got student loans as well. Frey really began to enjoy college through visiting his friends in other colleges but also has a few distinct funny memories from Temple.

“I’m sure I had a girlfriend during college, but it’s a funny story because freshman year I know for a fact that I did not have a girlfriend. Because, the first crew party was a social and you had to bring a date and I didn’t have anyone. So I went and people would ask me “oh where’s your date,” and I would tell them all, she is in the bathroom, I said that the whole party. Then at some point the guys are like Frey you’re needed upstairs, and they tell me it’s because my girlfriend is not feeling well in the bathroom, I should go help her out. So I go up to the bathroom, and sure enough there is a girl in there, I have no idea who she is, she came with someone else but they all assumed she was my date. So I helped her and then she left, so all the people were feeling bad because my date left. I finally told everyone at the end of the year that I did not have a date, but until then we would always see her and they would comment about how she was my date to that one party and then she would look at me like I was crazy,” said Frey.

After graduating, Frey worked for a year in an outreach program through Temple. He would go visit different schools twice a week, going to home games providing coverage for a lot of different sports.

“It helped me with the teaching part. I would always be telling people, here is what you have to do, this is how you tape an ankle-  I was always teaching someone to do something in case I wasn’t around in the instance of a injury. That got me slowly got me thinking about teaching,” said Frey.

Frey also worked at a bar as well as doing athletic training. It is a job that suited him well and he continues to bartend in the summer, in Sea Isle, New Jersey.  While working at a bar Frey met a man who was training to become a professional wrestler. So Frey decided to give it a chance, tried out and made it, then trained to become a pro wrestler for about three months.

“My mom thought I shouldn’t do it but she saved this paper of mine from the 4^th grade and it was one of those things where it would say “I want to be…” and then you would say a firefighter or a doctor or something important, then it would have a little picture of you on top of the firefighter or whatever you said you wanted to be. So she saved this thing and it was a picture of me saying I want to be a professional wrestler, so the whole experience was like a childhood dream come true for me personally.”

After working for the outreach program for a while, Frey decided to pursue grad school, in hopes of becoming a graduate assistant, working as an athletic training, through this process he got his Masters degree.

“I had this idea that I wanted to go to a division one school to become their athletic trainer. So I printed out the top 25 football, basketball and baseball schools in the country and I sent an application to every single one of them and only the University of Kentucky replied out of all the schools I applied to. I did not get the job but I have two great stories from it. The first one is I had to fly in a small plane to the university. So we are flying then all of a sudden the stewardess comes back and she says “The captain has asked if you will sit on the other side of the plane.” Apparently my weight was causing the captain to have trouble flying the plane due to the imbalance of weight. The second story is when I was on campus and I was shadowing the girl’s softball trainer, and he liked to go out and catch fly balls so I decided to join in as well because I wanted the guy to like me. So I’m out there in my suit and tie and there’s this 8 foot fence behind us, the coach is pitching and no one has hit a home run of off him the whole year. I wasn’t planning on diving or anything serious but all of a sudden the ball is coming , and I lose track of where I am on the field so I take three steps back and as I jump I hit the wall but my glove goes over the fence and I bring the ball back into play, but I then fall on the warning track, roll my ankle, I’m down on the ground, my suit is all ruined with dirt all over it and then I realize that everyone on the field has stopped and they are looking at me trying to see if after all that I caught the ball. So I lift up my glove and the balls in it and they are all clapping, probably one of the coolest moments of my life. So I’m thinking I got the job after all that….and I didn’t,” said Frey.

After grad school Frey tried out for Slam Ball, and was on an episode of the Real World. But mainly his first job was at  West Chester University as a professor in the sports medicine department for one year. Immediately after his contract at West Chester expired, Frey became a trash man the following week, and continued that job for the remainder of the summer. After college Frey and his buddies decided to try out different things, in hopes to go to the great parties and events of the world, including Wing Bowl, Mardi Gras, and Times Square for new years twice. However the buck stopped short as they all began to get married and have kids.

The year after working at West Chester Frey became a trainer here at North Penn because the former athletic trainer, Dave Defusco, was leaving to become an FBI agent. This enabled Frey to get an emergency certification to become a teacher as he taught the classes that Defusco had previously been teaching, because at that point Frey was not yet officially certified to teach. Frey continued to be an athletic trainer and teacher here at North Penn for 7 years before he stopped practicing athletic training and now only teaches at North Penn.  Last year Frey became a T.O.S.A (Teacher on Special Assignment) working as an assistant principal at Pennbrook Middle School. Frey then returned back to the high school this year as a teacher, while briefly becoming the acting assistant principal for 3 weeks in January.  Occasionally Frey continues to practice as an athletic trainer as a private contractor. He has now been married for a year and a half and has 2 kids.

 “I like it here a lot; it’s a great place it really is. I love North Penn I like the students and the great teachers here. I feel very lucky that I’ve been inducted with the teachers that I’m currently working with, among the likes of people like Mr. Manero, Mr. Young, Mr. Jones, Mrs. Young, Mr. Christopher, Mr. Hall, Mrs. Willis, I can name about 25-30 teachers that are very big parts of this school, people who I think are making a very big difference in this school and we all came in together. I look forward to going through the system with them and becoming a bigger part of this school as well. That’s a very exciting part for me, to have a group that in 30 years we will be able to look back and say look at all we did together, that’s a very big deal for me,” said Frey.