Maggie Wolf
As a freshman, CHS Senior Maggie Wolf would not have foreseen herself committing to Kenyon College to play volleyball. Wolf saw college sports as all or nothing: play at a Division 1 school and focus fully on your sport or don’t play at all. As an academically driven student, Wolf did not see college sports as an option for her.
She originally began playing volleyball as a 4th grader in a small rec league with her friends. In 5th grade, Wolf switched to a local club team. Then, around eighth grade she became more serious about the sport and playing for higher level club teams.
As she continued to play on higher level teams Wolf began to prioritize volleyball over other extracurriculars.
“It wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice to prioritize volleyball,” Wolf said.
Throughout highschool, Wolf played for Huron High School (HHS) during the fall season and for her club team in the spring. Wolf also began taking advanced courses and participating in clubs at school.
Wolf’s weeks were packed in the fall. She would attend school volleyball practice for two hours a day, play in dual matches during the week and compete in tournaments over the weekend. On top of this, Wolf had to stay caught up with her schoolwork.
Then, in the spring, Wolf switched to club volleyball practices. As a setter for the L2 volleyball club, Wolf attended practice three days a week, along with various out-of-state tournaments. Wolf learned to squeeze schoolwork into pockets of time on car rides to practices and between games.
Then Covid-19 hit. When the pandemic took volleyball away from her, Wolf realized how much she missed it.
“[As a sophomore], I realized that I didn’t think I was going to feel done with volleyball over the next two years,” Wolf said. “My sister was graduating from high school that year so I began looking into D3 schools with her. [I realized] that there’s a lot of variety in where you can play and what you can do in college and there is a way to balance academic drive and other extracurriculars with a college sport. I could play volleyball and still have the academic environment I had always envisioned.”
That spring Wolf began emailing coaches and programs she was interested in. She spent a lot of time corresponding with coaches and putting together clips of her playing. Interested coaches began attending Wolf’s games to watch her play.
As a junior, Wolf and her team attended club volleyball Nationals in Orlando, Florida.
“We had a really rocky season that year,” Wolf said. “We did pretty bad on the first day. But then the next three days we played so well. It was the best I’d seen us play. We ended up winning our division and I got the last point of the game. Our coaches were so proud and we were so proud of each other and I think all of our challenges as a team only made us closer in the end. It was definitely a culminating moment for everyone.”
After her team’s triumph at nationals, Wolf continued emailing college coaches. She began narrowing down her list after meeting the coaches and visiting the campuses of interested colleges. Wolf’s plans were changed when an assistant coach from Kenyon College approached her.
“Kenyon was a school that wasn’t really on my radar and that I hadn’t really talked to,” Wolf said. “But I visited [the] campus and met with a lot of players on the team. I was just so impressed with all the people. They were so welcoming and I really loved the school environment. It was a very difficult choice between Kenyon and one other school, but looking back I’m confident I made the right choice. I chose the place that I thought was going to make me the happiest.”
Wolf committed to Kenyon in the first week of November.
“I think it’s going to be challenging to balance schoolwork and volleyball since it’ll be a new environment and I will be figuring everything out and meeting new people all at once,” Wolf said. “At the same time, it’s reassuring to know I’m going to have a group of people who share my common interests and who I’m going to be spending a lot of time with. I’m just very excited to be playing volleyball. I would definitely miss it too much if I were to stop now.”

Calvin Paulick
Calvin Paulick grew up playing multiple sports. From a very young age, he dreamed of playing sports in college. He has now realized that dream by committing to Susquehanna University to play soccer.
As he went into high school, Paulick played three main sports: baseball, basketball and soccer. He eventually narrowed it down to just baseball and soccer. However, after four years of baseball plagued by injuries Paulick was forced to bring his baseball career to an end.
“I wanted to play baseball and soccer in college for a while,” Paulick said. “But I’ve seen my baseball career slowly coming to an end over the past few years. I tore my Ulnar Collateral Ligament (UCL) as a freshman, then I couldn’t play because of Covid-19 my sophomore year, and in my junior year I broke both my elbow and rib, so this has been the first year I’ve really been able to play.”
Paulick’s soccer career for his club team, Liverpool, and for Pioneer High School (PHS), has been largely unaffected by these injuries. As a senior for PHS, Paulick helped lead his team to the regional semifinals. The Pioneers beat their in-city rival Skyline High School (SHS) in the District Final but lost to Salem High School just a few days later.
“It was a real high of my soccer career when we beat Skyline in the District Finals,” Paulick said. “It’s like the best feeling in the world—but then two days later we lost to Salem and it was devastating. It was probably the worst I’ve ever felt.”
Paulick began his recruiting process the summer before his senior year. He started by going to camps and emailing lots and lots of coaches. Once he was able to pinpoint the type of school he wanted, Paulick began attending specific camps that he knew were attended by teams he was interested in and sending film of him playing to those coaches.
As he got deeper into the recruiting process Paulick saw one of the pandemic’s effects on his prospective schools. Because many college seniors did not get the opportunity to play soccer due to Covid-19, many stayed at their colleges to play as fifth-year seniors. This led to there being less spots available on team rosters.
“Because seniors who would normally graduate stayed at these schools due to Covid, instead of there being six to eight spots like there are in a normal year, there were only around two to three spots available,” Paulick said.
In the end, he ended up narrowing it down to two colleges he had gotten offers from: Susquehanna University and Ithaca College. However, Paulick’s offer from Ithaca came with a catch: he would be forced to red-shirt (meaning he wouldn’t play) his freshman year due to an insufficient number of spots on the roster.
“I would have gone there if they gave me a regular offer because I liked the school better,” Paulick said. “But I decided to take the other offer so I could play right away.”
After turning down the offer from Ithaca, Paulick signed with Susquehanna University.
“It was really exciting [to sign] because I felt like everything I had been working towards was paying off,” Paulick said. “And it’s just so nice knowing that I’ll have the opportunity to keep playing soccer.”