When the season starts Saturday, Crown Point’s Payton Cholewa won’t have to hold back any longer.
In the meantime, the 5-foot-8 senior outside hitter has been trying — and sometimes failing — to keep herself in check.
“I got yelled at during practice yesterday,” Cholewa said with a laugh. “The first ball I went after, I dove and hit my knee. On another ball, I almost ran into the wall.
“I want to push myself to be a better player, so it’s hard to not try to go all out.”
That’s the kind of effort that helped Cholewa earn a spot last season on the Bulldogs (28-7, 14-0), who won the Duneland Athletic Conference title and a Class 4A regional title. She was slowed by injuries, which limited her to 44 kills, but 27 came in October as she became a more frequent starter.
Eager to make a greater impact this season, Cholewa suffered a sprained left ankle that sidelined her earlier this summer. Then she suffered a knee injury during an open gym about a month ago. She feared it was a torn ACL that would’ve ended her high school career, but it was determined to be a bone bruise.
“I got very lucky that it was not torn,” she said. “Somehow it stayed intact. I was very relieved. I couldn’t get the smile off my face.”
Cholewa has been cleared for full participation at practice, where she’s supposed to be exercising caution to avoid taking unnecessary risks. That hasn’t been easy, according to Crown Point coach Alison Duncan.
“She has a great energy in the gym, but we also can’t have her hurting herself,” Duncan said. “We’ve really had to think about safety because she does try so hard all of the time.”
Both Duncan and her daughter, Cailin, a junior setter, recalled a moment from practice Monday, which was Cholewa’s first day back at full speed.
“On the first play, there was a shanked ball, and you’re like, ‘Payton, no!’” Cailin Duncan said with a laugh. “If a ball’s kind of in her range, she’ll dive for it, even when there’s probably no chance she’s going to reach it.”
Cholewa said such persistence stems from the preseason last year, when she arrived at summer workouts and realized she wasn’t at the same level as the teammates she’d be competing against for playing time.
“I felt like there were a lot of girls who were doing better things than I was doing,” she said. “I was playing club, but I just wasn’t working as hard as I should have.”
Cholewa vowed to never fall behind again. She sought private lessons and went through extra drills at home, and she became a lineup fixture by the time the postseason began.
But Cholewa’s career actually started taking off toward the end of middle school. She attributes that to the encouragement she received from former Lake Central coach Matt Clark, who had remained involved in club volleyball until his death Aug. 4 at the age of 50.
“He always had confidence in me, even when I didn’t have confidence in myself,” Cholewa said. “He always said that he saw a lot in me, that I could do big things. He told me that he wanted me to go to Crown Point and be a hitter.”
Cholewa is undecided about her volleyball plans beyond high school, so her current focus is ensuring that Crown Point makes another deep run in the postseason.
“I don’t want to just win sectionals and then be done here,” she said. “I want to leave a mark on Crown Point volleyball. I’m not sure I’m playing in college yet, so I want to make a good, lasting impression right here.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter.
