By Jay Sorgi • Posted August 13, 2025

The words Vicki Dileggi says about her daughter Isabella, a rising senior at Archbishop Ryan High School in Northeast Philadelphia, succinctly describe her.

“There’s nothing this kid cannot do,” Vicki said. “If she puts her mind to it, she’s going to do it.”

Isabella, known as Izzy, possesses a strong faith and can-do attitude, maximizing the talents God gave her. Her drive has led her to reach for the best in herself and others, so much that the publication Positive Athlete chose her as one of the top seven female athletes in the U.S. Northeast region.

A congenital limb difference on her left arm doesn’t stop her from being team captain and winning matches for the school’s girls’ wrestling team. She even has a custom-made wrestling uniform that reads “Fear the Nub.”

Her disability doesn’t stop her from doing her Cooper DeJean impersonation for Archbishop Ryan’s girls flag football team.

“I show up one day, and I’m walking across the field,” Vicky says. “I see Izzy run across the field, interception, and she runs it back for a touchdown.”

Throw in the fact she’s at Archbishop Ryan on a music scholarship for playing bass guitar with the help of a special apparatus on her left arm, serves as vice president of the concert and pep bands, owns a martial arts black belt, and can proficiently shoot a rifle.

That’s on top of her academics, where Vicki says Isabella owns a top-10 ranking at Archbishop Ryan while taking honors and AP classes.

“Everything she does, she excels at,” Vicki said. “Everything she does, it’s not 110%, it’s like 210%.”

“I want to prove that I’m not different and then I have to show it and I have to do my best, but it’s not for people’s validation,” Izzy said. “It’s more of a mindset, to prove to myself that I can do it.”

She took up the “can-do” challenge in late 2023 as a sophomore in wrestling, a sport in which she had never competed. It led to a series of breakthrough growth moments for her after some early defeats.

“She was putting a lot of pressure on herself, because she’s always got to be above everyone else. You could see things were getting to her,” said Bill Brangan, Archbishop Ryan’s assistant girls wrestling coach.

“We had to pull her aside and tell her, ‘Don’t put all that pressure on yourself. Just remember why you started. You figured you’d give it a try. You figured it’d be fun.”

Yet even in her on-the-mat struggles, her unselfishness became another avenue for her “can-do” attitude to spread to others.

“She would have a tough loss and you’d have to give her a good minute or two to compose herself. But when her teammates are out on the mat, she’s out there and she’s cheering and you would have no idea what just went on, because she’s going to be in your corner,” said Brangan.

“She’s going to be cheering for her teammates, and she’s going to want them to succeed regardless of what’s going on. That just shows strength of character. ‘It’s not always about, ‘Hey, what can I do?’ It’s about supporting your team, supporting others, even when you’re feeling at your lowest.”

A day in mid-January 2024 provided Izzy, then a sophomore and a first-year wrestler, with her first “can-do” day of winning on the wrestling mat.

“I was going against this girl from Bensalem. It was my second match that day. I was more aggressive. In the third round, I had the pin. I was just running for the pin,” Izzy said.

“It was probably one of the best feelings, just having my hand raised like that and knowing that I won that.”

“Everybody in the place, the whole gym erupted,” said Brangan. “Her first win, and you would have thought she just won a national championship.”

It has not been her last win on the wrestling mat, the flag football field, the music theater or the classroom. That kind of example rubs off on nearly everyone whose life she touches — from teammates to her coaches and parents.

“Izzy’s the leader. Izzy’s going where Izzy wants to go, and I would advise most kids to follow her because she’s not going to lead you down a one-way alley,” said Brangan, who credits Vicki and her husband Brian with how they raised her.

“This girl can carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. You can’t even call Izzy disadvantaged because she overcomes everything. She’s got faith. That’s for sure.”

“Our job as parents,” said Vicky, “is to make sure we raise them right in (God’s) image. He puts such a spirit in her, a spirit of determination, a spirit of strength, even a spirit of peace. She lives her day like that. She’s not doing things to show,  because of an ego. She loves.

“She is truly a blessing.”