Highland hitter still growing, improving
Johnston becoming more versatile weapon for Highland, which has deep junior class
A three-year varsity starter, junior Sophia Johnston working on becoming more versatile weapon for the Trojans, a team with a deep junior class.
For Sophia Johnston, there was no other choice.
Johnston started playing volleyball in fifth grade and quickly decided that was going to be her sport.
“Right away, I knew I wanted to keep playing it,” she said. “I always had a passion for it, and it’s the only sport I ever had to focus on. So I never had to choose between any other sports.”
In her third season as a varsity starter for Highland, the 5-foot-10 junior outside hitter is the primary attack option for the Trojans and leads them with 177 kills.
Highland coach Abbey Strohl said she first saw Johnston playing in eighth grade and had reason to believe she was due for a growth spurt.
“I always look at shoe size with players,” Strohl said with a laugh. “She was an undersized outside at the time, but she had large feet. So I thought she was going to grow.”
Johnston’s abilities on the court grew as
well. As a freshman, she was second on the team with 192 kills, and she finished her sophomore season as the team leader with 234 kills. She also has improved her defense and has a team-high 251 digs this season.
“She’s paying attention to the smaller things, instead of just being that big kill for us,” Strohl said. “She’s been a lot more vocal this year too.”
Johnston spends her offseason playing with Epic United, a volleyball club with players on rosters at Crown Point, Lake Central and Illiana Christian, as well as
Highland.
“It’s a higher level, and it’s more technical,” Johnston said. “And when I come back to school, I try to put together everything I learned there.”
One of Johnston’s teammates, junior setter Carly Raab, is another three-year varsity player who surpassed 1,000 career assists earlier this season. Both Raab and Johnston were named to the 2020 American Volleyball Coaches Association Phenom Watch List, which recognizes up-andcoming underclassmen across the country.
They are part of a large junior class at Highland that includes outside hitters Grace Bedka (242 digs, 22 aces) and Angelica Castillo (77 kills) and middles Alexis Anderson (team-high 35 blocks) and Chloe Churilla (57 kills).
Strohl said the continued collective maturation of that class will be a key factor in how far the Trojans progress through the next two postseasons.
“We’re working a lot on the mental part of the game,” Strohl said. “It may not be high repetitions. It’s more about asking them things like where the open shots are in certain situations, to be smart and place the ball so we can get the ball on our side quicker and get a run of points with our serves.”
Postseason tuneups: Munster coach Brett Boden beefed up his schedule at the end of the regular season in hopes of better preparing for the upcoming postseason.
The Mustangs (25-2) won 25-14, 25-17, 20-25, 26-24 against McCutcheon, a perennial contender in Class 4A, on Saturday and will play Penn on Friday.
Against McCutcheon, senior outside hitter Lourdes Torres had a team-high 17 kills, and junior Haley Melby — an Iowa commit — added 15 kills.
Boden said the Mustangs learned from prior mistakes by not letting a defeat in the third set spiral into the fourth.
“We’ve talked about matches where we work super hard to get the first two sets and ease off in the third,” he said. “We did the same thing against them last year and lost in the fifth. This year we had more resilience.”
Sectional pairings: On Sunday night, the IHSAA revealed its sectional brackets, with the first matches to be played next Tuesday. The three local teams ranked in the state coaches poll in Class 4A this week received first-round byes: No. 3 Munster, No. 4 Crown Point (25-3) and No. 5 LaPorte (24-2).
In Class 2A, No. 3 Andrean (11-4) also received a first-round bye, while Kouts (18-5), ranked No. 5 in Class 1A, will play Hammond Academy in the opening round of the Washington Township Sectional.