When Adelina Wilks strolls the halls of Bridgeton, she gets a firsthand look at the hallowed history that she walked into in 2021 as a freshman. She’d heard some stories growing up, but this there is now a literal display of the legacy that the Wilks family created at the South Jersey school.
Her aunt, Helen, owns a wing of the Bridgeton Wall of Fame. She received that honor last year. It’s a celebration of a decorated track career with the Bulldogs that earned her a scholarship at Ohio State.
Helen was the first of four Wilks siblings to star for Bridgeton before going D1.
Was there pressure coming into high school for Adelina? You bet.
Her father, Ray, comforted her going into high school with a simple message: “Be you. This is your time.”
It’s been 20 years since the Wilks family last stole headlines and put Bridgeton on the map. Adelina has reinvigorated those memories. She’s a throwback to the glory days in Cumberland County.
No high school girl in New Jersey has scored more goals in the last three years than Adelina, a St. Joseph’s commit. She’s broken all the school records and led the girls soccer team to back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in 30 years. It’s been a Hall-of-Fame career.
“I told ‘Lina from the get-go that she doesn’t have to do anything to be like anyone who has come through Bridgeton,” said Ray, using the family’s term of endearment for the latest Wilks phenom. “I told her that she was going to carve her own way and do it her way. She’s not Cyndy, she’s not Mary, she’s not Helen, she’s not me. She’s ‘Lina and we always told her that we’re going to support her and let her do it her own way.”
Adelina Wilks (3) of Bridgeton battles Suvea Colon (4) of Hammonton for the ball at Hammonton High School in Hammonton, NJ, on Wednesday, October 30, 2024.Dave Hernandez | For NJ Advance
The Wilks athletic legacy in Bridgeton started when Adelina’s grandparents, Ed and Cynthia, moved from Arkansas to South Jersey in the 1970s. Cynthia was an accomplished tennis player. Big Ed became a legend in the Industrial Softball League. He was known as the “China Man” in reference to how far he could hit a ball. Bridgeton girls soccer coach William Ziefle played on those teams with Ed and remembers him warming up with an iron bar before his at-bats.
He’d never seen anything like that.
Ziefle graduated from Bridgeton 50 years ago and after a plea from Superintendent Thomas C. Lane IV over Memorial Day weekend in 1985, he came back to his alma mater and took a job teaching in the district. That set him up to witness all of the athletic feats of the Wilks family.
There were seven of them in total, including three adopted brothers.
They grew up just across the street from the high school, in a yellow house with brown trim. In the back, there was a two-car garage that served as an indoor soccer facility and a stadium for wiffleball games. They’d play with rolled-up socks if they feared breaking a window.
Their mother, Cynthia Wilks Mosley, still lives there to this day.
That house and the high school fields across North West Ave. are where the competitive fires started burning. No matter what the game or the stakes, everyone grew up wanting to win.
Helen was the first to star at Bridgeton and she did it while doubling as head of the house when Cynthia was at work. Her middle name is Francis. That’s what Ray calls her, and he says that “when Fran talked, you listened.” She was a role model that everyone looked up to.
Helen and Ray joined a historic group in 1994, when they each won a title at the state’s track Meet of Champions. Helen took the gold in the 100-meter dash and Ray won the first of back-to-back shot put titles. They were the second brother-sister combination to win titles at the same MOC, joining Olympian Carl Lewis and his sister, Carol, who did it for Willingboro.
Helen also won the pentathlon at the Metropolitan Athletic Congress Scholastic National Championships in 1994. She went off to Ohio State that fall. Ray left for UConn a year later.
In 2000, Cyndy was the overall South Jersey Player of the Year after wrapping up a memorable high school career that included accolades in basketball, soccer, tennis and track. She went to college to play basketball at VCU and was a Third Team All-American.
Cyndy came home after college and, at 29, she became the Athletic Director at Bridgeton, a post she retains today.
The baby of the family, Mary, made a name for herself in soccer and track. She went to Monmouth on a full ride and was First-Team All-Northeast Conference in 2009.
Mary teaches in the district now and is an assistant coach for the soccer team. She’s coached Adelina the last three seasons and watched from the bench as her niece has become yet another Wilks legend.
Cyndy’s there at every home game too, sitting on a golf cart at the corner of the field. Ray and his wife, Gloria, aren’t far away, sitting on the sidelines next to their son, RJ, and grandma Cynthia. Helen lives out in Ohio, but is prone to hopping in the car and driving eight hours to Jersey on a whim. She’ll catch a game and make a quick trip east to the beach before heading back home.
When they’re all together, it’s like no time has passed at all. They still compete – Uno, dominoes, cards, golf – and if someone asks, they’ll turn back time and recount their athletic careers. Right now, though, the focus is on Adelina and what she’s doing at Bridgeton.
Ray calls his daughter a “firecracker,” and his family sees that same ultra-competitive fire in her that the others had. That intensity, and her worth ethic, have made Adelina unstoppable.
“No one likes to win more than me. I’m a competitor through and through, and that’s what I tried to instill in my niece,” said Cyndy. “Be a dog every single day. Doesn’t matter if it’s practice or a day off, where you focus on your studies. Every day is a grind because the competition out there is real. You have to assume someone else is working harder than you. These kids really worked at it and watching ‘Lina pay the calendar and put in the time and work, it feels really good to see what she’s accomplished. I’m really excited for her.”
Bridgeton’s Adelina Wilks celebrates her Senior Night with her father Ray and aunts Cyndy and Mary.Photo courtesy of Cynthia Wilks
Ziefle remembers going over to congratulate Ray after Adelina was born. He has a daughter of his own and coached her in high school when she played at Cumberland. When she graduated, Ziefle switched gigs and took over at Bridgeton. He’s coached there for the last 14 years.
A decade ago, he got wind that Adelina was starting to wow on the soccer field.
He didn’t think much of it at the time, but when he’d bump into Ray and Gloria, who both teach in town, they’d assure him that their daughter was staying home and playing at Bridgeton.
Their family, like Ziefle, has roots in Bridgeton and they’re proud to be Bulldogs.
If Adelina wanted to go somewhere else, they’d let her, but the star scorer never wavered.
“It’s not because it’s all we know. It’s because the roots that were established here were so loving,” said Mary. “We had so many people make our experience so great. Whenever I come to the high school and drive past that old yellow and brown house, the memories are there and it’s a constant reminder of where you came from. You want to give back and make sure other kids have that experience too and I’m glad ‘Lina is getting that here.”
Adelina came out as a freshman and scored 14 times in 10 games, before an ankle injury knocked her out for the rest of the year. The next fall, the lefty scored 35 goals for Bridgeton.
Last season, Adelina broke the school’s single-season record with a state-best 58 goals. That mark broke a record that Cyndy set as a sophomore back in 1997. Cydny tore her ACL playing soccer the next fall and as a senior, she switched to tennis and played first singles.
At the end of her junior year, Adelina already had 107 career goals – a school record. She added another milestone when she scored her 1,000th career point for the basketball team last winter.
Adeline has 152 scores now and ranks Top 15 all-time. This season, she moved up past Heather O’Reilly and Christie Rampone, New Jersey natives who starred for the National Team.
Bridgeton won two games the year before Adelina joined what was considered a downtrodden program. She’s changed the narrative. Last fall, Bridgeton finished 13-6. It’s 9-7 this season.
In a 5-4 loss to Winslow two weeks ago, Adelina scored four times and nearly willed her team to victory. She leads Bridgeton with 45 goals. That particular performance caught the attention of Winslow coach Rich King and he compared Adelina to his own daughter, Tziarra, who went to NC State and now plays for the Seattle Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League.
In the offseason, Adelina trains with SJEB FC, the same club that Carli Lloyd once played for. That’s where she fine-tunes her skills, working on her shot and developing ways to score from angles that leave Ziefle speechless, a common state for anyone who’s seen her play.
“I wish I could say I saw all of this coming in a crystal ball, but it’s been even better than I could have thought,” said Ziefle. “There are very few of us who stayed here locally, so it’s been a joy to watch her grow up here at Bridgeton.”
After an 0-2 start to this year, Adelina went off with three goals and two assists in a 6-5 win over Buena. She then had two goals and an assist in a 4-3 victory over Lower Cape May. She’s an offensive force who can take over a game if teams don’t double- or triple-team her.
Adelina lines up in the midfield at times in order to get the ball sooner. Once she has it, she dribbles her way through defense on the way to scoring. Adelina does most of her damage as a forward, though, drilling the ball with speed and force that catches keepers off guard. She’s also improved on finesse, placing shots into corners of the net to make those attempts unsaveable.
Adelina has developed into one of the state’s elite scorers, and she’s done it all at Bridgeton.
“My advice is that if you work hard enough, it will happen,” Adelina said. “When I was in eighth grade, I had people tell me that if I went to Bridgeton, my career would be ruined. I knew that if I really wanted to go somewhere with soccer, I had to work at it. It didn’t matter where I played. I had to make it happen on my own. It’s not easy. You have to work. My family has accomplished so many great things here in Bridgeton and it’s special to do it now in my own way.”
Brandon Gould can be reached at bgould@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @BrandonGouldHS.
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