With no plans of playing volleyball in college, Metea Valley’s Maddie Hopkins knows that every match this season could be her last. She also wants to balance that fact with being a leader.
All of those thoughts and then some were racing through the senior outside hitter’s mind Thursday night during the Class 4A Geneva Regional championship match against the host Vikings.
“I knew what I had to do personally to help my team,” Hopkins said. “If that’s getting kills, then that’s getting kills. The second set, we all had to step up because we didn’t have our big powerhouse middle like we usually do.
“I knew I had to be bigger than I have been before.”
Hopkins was referring to the injury suffered by junior middle hitter Olivia Stewart on the final point of the first game Thursday. Hopkins then helped power the Mustangs to a 25-23, 25-16 victory.
After a lengthy delay before the second game, Metea (28-8) trailed 5-0 before the emergence of Hopkins, who led the Mustangs with nine kills. Six of those came after the Mustangs fell behind.
Addison Torain added eight kills, while Katie Schuele had 17 assists and Ashley Ward served three aces. Sam Vanda and Fiona Turnbull each had six kills and three aces for Geneva (21-16).
Metea will play at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the West Aurora Sectional semifinals against St. Charles North (31-6), a 25-19, 25-15 winner over Wheaton North.
Geneva led the majority of the first game but saw a late lead slip away. Stewart’s kill, however, forced a 23-23 tie and the Mustangs won the next two points.
“I felt like we made the same errors we’ve made the whole season,” Geneva coach Lauren Kosecki said. “Metea is a good team. We knew they weren’t going to fall apart and let us have it.”
After watching one of their captains go down with an injury, the Mustangs had to regroup, though. And Hopkins knew what the team needed to do.
“I think at first we were in shock and everyone felt that,” Hopkins said. “We came together. We decided that Liv wouldn’t want us to give up and call it a game. She would want us to win.
“We just said, ‘Let’s do this for Liv. Let’s do this for each other.’ We worked so hard this season. We’re not going to give it up now.”
The Mustangs were down 7-2 in the second game when Hopkins got going. She had four kills to fashion a 10-10 tie. She then had two kills to give Metea the lead for good at 16-14.
Torain served an ace for the final point.
“It’s an emotional time,” Metea coach Dave Macdonald said. “I went in there and I was crying. They were fine until I started crying. I was like, ‘Listen, (Stewart’s) going to be OK. We have to do this for her. She would want that.’”
Macdonald was happy to see Hopkins have her moment to shine in that situation. The Mustangs have several highly touted players, but Hopkins doesn’t always receive their level of recognition.
She said she wants to try new challenges at a big college and leave competitive volleyball behind.
“This is her last go with volleyball,” MacDonald said. “Our conversations all year have been just give us the best Maddie we can have throughout the whole season and have a stellar senior year.
“She turned it on (Thursday) and was just fantastic.”
The Mustangs have three practices to regroup before sectionals, and Hopkins is ready to help lead the way.
“We’ll work on the new rotation that we’ll have to do,” Hopkins said. “We’ll make sure that we all figure out what we’re going to do and alter what we did before to make this work.”
Paul Johnson is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
