Personal Statement
My goal is to continue to grow as a student-athlete and play at the next level; after that I want to teach and coach volleyball.
What makes me a good candidate for a team is that I put in the extra time to improve myself for my team. Last club season our club director, Austin Filer, who was 2020 class 4A coach of the year, asked if I would join the 18's practice too; I jumped at the opportunity which meant I got to practice for 4.5 hours straight at a high level (18's then 16's). I LOVE to compete. My passion for the game is contagious and I bring out the best in my teammates while at the same time holding each other accountable. I know all the extra touches from those double practices helped in our success in winning the 2020 President's Day Classic in St. Louis, MO, where we won the 16U tournament at the club level and I was honored to be on the all-tournament team and also one of the MVP's that weekend.
Volleyball has taught me to be patient. Patience is something I work on since I am VERY competitive. I want to be out on the court competing and helping make the plays. My freshman year I was on varsity, but they ran a 5-1 with a setter two years older than me. Coach said at the banquet that year that, "Sophie made our team better." Although I did not see the court much that year I knew I was still helping our team get better (I still wanted to be out there, don't get me wrong). The next year we ran a 6-2 and it was fun to get more varsity action and we made it to state that year and we had such a fun season. This year(2020) we ran a 5-1; we lost 8 seniors and 7 of them saw the court, so this was definitely going to be a "building year." I remember coming home after two a days telling my mom, "We are going to go to state this year." Some people were skeptical since we lost so many seniors and had a young team (only 2 seniors for 2020 and 1 played regularly), but I was feeling really good about our team. Final season rankings came out and we were ranked by the Iowa Girls Athletic Union (IGAU)as being ranked #2 in class 4A. We kept working our way up throughout the season! We ended up with a major upset, we fell short to an appearance at the state tournament. We lost to a team we had beat earlier in the season at two tournaments not losing to them in a single set until that night at regionals. We will be EXTRA hungry next year to get that 4A state title. Overall, we had a lot of great successes and won a lot of tournaments, but that one night at regionals stung extra hard. A lesson our team learned was to focus on one match at a time and never under estimate your opponent.
What makes me different from other recruits is that I I have a crazy strong work ethic in /out of the classroom and on the volleyball court. I am told I am a "scrappy player" according to PREP DIG (check out their twitter post for a short video). I fight for a spot on a team (I have done this since I was 10 years old) and take every opportunity to better myself. I am also able to balance my academics (3.5 GPA), athletics (varsity level) and social life (spending time with friends and taking care of 4-H projects).
