From Georgia to Chester County, sophomore Anthony Papa finds his place in the Malvern Community.

After living in Atlanta, Georgia for the majority of his life, Papa has integrated himself into a society much different than his familiar southern surroundings with no problem at all.

Meeting Papa for the first time, many would not know he is from Atlanta.

“I’m not your typical southerner,” Papa said. “I’ve had several people who when they heard I was from Georgia expected me to have a southern accent, but both my parents are from New Jersey and every summer and every Christmas we go up there because we have lots of family up there.”

New Jersey is a part of him as his parents are from there, he lived there from age two to age four, and is a New York Giants and Yankees fan. Since he has been living in the Philly area he has grown to like the Flyers.

Sports have been one of his passions his whole life as he has enjoyed and played baseball his entire life, something he has continued here.

“I came up here and I was only a catcher, but I’ve recently learned that you can’t just do that so this season I’ve played catcher, third base, pitcher, I’ve played left field,” Papa said.

Playing baseball is just one of the reasons that helped him assimilate into the Malvern society. He gives most of the credit to his teammates.

“Everyone here is great really, everyone was really friendly here. You know coming here I wasn’t really sure how I’d be accepted as a kid from Georgia, but everyone was very welcoming,” Papa said.

Sophomore Joey Koch said, “Anthony Papa is a great kid, he is a real hard worker and a great person to do projects with.”

English teacher Ms. Nicole Wilkinson praised Papa’s welcoming personality.“He instantly made friends, he is very personable, he talks to everybody, he has just a really outgoing and unique personality. He was just a natural fit for Malvern,” Wilkinson said.

It may be Papa who welcomes others, but he still has nothing but praise for his Malvern brothers.

“All the guys here are great. It’s a very supportive community,”  Papa said.

One thing that followed Papa from Atlanta is his love of country music.

“The south is almost like a different country from up here really,” he said. “Everything is so different, the one consistency is country music though. Can’t get away from that.”

In addition to listening to music, Papa also plays drums.

“I just started drumming like a year ago, but it is something I’ve grown to love more than anything else,” Papa said.

Papa likes to create drum covers.

“I’ll take any particular song, almost always one I like, and basically what you do is listen over and over again until you have the drum part down and then you play it, you know you can kind of add some of your own stuff make it your own, and then you lay it out in a video and then put the original track on top of it so then you have the whole thing,” said Papa.

Papa has found inspiration for these drum covers through his favorite drummers, Josh Dun from Twenty One Pilots, and Matt McGuire from the Chainsmokers.

“I look at what they do and I try and take what I can learn from them and I kind of apply that but I want to try and stay as my own as much as I can,” Papa said.

Papa has taken his passion and brought it into the classroom.

“He likes to bring music into everything. One time when we were talking about transcendentalism he played a Twenty One Pilots song for us and we talked about the connection between the song and what we were doing,” Wilkinson said. “That was kind of a neat thing.”

“He is an excellent student. He always goes above and beyond,” Wilkinson said. She also said he has a “natural gift” for literature and writing.