Spotlight on #1: Stephanie Willett

After a rough junior year at Eastern New Mexico University, Stephanie Willett joined the Oregon Tech Hustlin’ Owls for her final season. “Last year turned out really, really bad. Not only for volleyball, but the town, the school, everything…I wasn’t having fun there.” Stephanie says this year is “so much better.” She likes the coach at Oregon tech and all the players get along with one another, as opposed to last year when pretty much everyone hated each other and the coach would kick the team out of practice and the locker room. She says this year is a big change, but it’s a lot better.

Stephanie really likes the new head coach Angela Stewart: “I think she’s an awesome coach, even for her first year. She obviously knows the game…in practice we work on things we need to work on, not just little things here and there. So that’s what gets us better, working on things we really need to work on. And she knows what that is.”

Before ENMU and OIT, Stephanie attended South Western Oregon Community College (SWOCC). It was close to her home town, North Bend, and she always said she would never go there. When it came down to it, she can’t remember why she chose to go there, but she thinks it was “a last minute decision and I had to choose fast. I was like, I may as well do this. But I’m so glad I did after that. Like, playing two years at a JC definitely helped a lot before going on to a four-year.”

Stephanie played volleyball and basketball and tennis in high school. “I love it [volleyball]. Basketball was just something in high school to do. I didn’t really care for it. Tennis, I did love that, but they didn’t have it at the community college I went to.” She says she loves volleyball because she’s competitive: “I love competitive sports and playing them. For volleyball, I love as a defensive specialist digging all the balls and diving and everything. It’s that little adrenaline rush when you hit the floor. And winning is always fun, which we’ve been doing a lot of this year.”

As far as her biggest accomplishment, Stephanie says it’s simply playing collegiate volleyball. “Getting the chance to play collegiate volleyball, not everybody gets to do that out of high school.”

Having that said, it’s easy to understand why Stephanie’s only here for a short while. “I’m actually only here for fall term. Then, I’m going to transfer to Oregon State to finish school. I’m basically only here for volleyball.” She’s going to OSU to study communication, wanting to get into Public Relations. “I just like Oregon State…I’m honestly just here for volleyball. That’s it.” She’s moving up there in December: “I’m excited for that. I have a lot of friends up there…it’s not going to be a hard move and not know anybody up there. Basically it would be like going to high school again.”

In her extra time, which she doesn’t have a lot of, she likes to workout, even outside of volleyball. “Wednesday’s and Thursday’s when we practice at seven I always work out before; which is the first year I’ve actually worked out during volleyball, like outside of it.” She usually runs for ten minutes and on Wednesday’s she does legs, Thursday’s she does arms. “The cardio part, I notice when I don’t’ get tired at practice when we’re doing conditioning and stuff. It just deeps me in shape for that I think.”

For practices, she says “usually Tuesday’s are the worst. We do a bunch of jumping, sprints, all that kinds of stuff—especially the second half of the season she’s [Angela] having us do that more.” On Monday’s, the girls work out on their own. Angela writes down what they need to do, and it is on their own free will to get it done. She doesn’t keep track of who comes, it is all about trust.