Hanover Central’s Sarah Pena followed her own route to the field.
With year-round club soccer beginning earlier and earlier in players’ careers, Pena opted to do something else.
“It’s a lot of fun because I look back and see how I got off the bench with all of the work I’d been putting in at practices and some of the side things I do,” she said. “It’s showed me that you don’t have to play on all of those club soccer teams to make a varsity team.”
Pena didn’t merely make Hanover Central’s varsity team. The senior defensive midfielder is a second-year starter and a central figure for the Wildcats (18-2), who are ranked No. 12 in the final Class 2A state coaches poll and will play No. 3 Mishawaka Marian (15-3-2) in the South Bend St. Joseph Semistate on Saturday.
Hanover Central got four goals from senior midfielder Kiara Desiderio to rout Yorktown 5-0 in the Fort Wayne Concordia Lutheran Regional championship game over the weekend, securing the program’s first regional title while recording its third straight shutout of the postseason. Sophomore goalkeeper Layla Nestor said Pena has been critical to that defensive effort.
“If anything gets through the midfield, she’s there to stop it,” Nestor said. “Whether it’s a punt from the goalkeeper or a ball that happens to get through our midfield, she’s always there to stop that and help out our back line.”
Hanover Central coach Jim Pattison said one of the biggest reasons for Pena’s success this season is she knows where she needs to be on the field — and where she doesn’t.
“For the last couple of years, she’s overthought and sometimes played herself out of position,” he said. “Sometimes she feels like she needs to help our outside wingers, but we told her to play more central, and that’s a big adjustment she’s made this year.”
Trying to do too much reflects Pena’s high expectations for herself, according to Pattison.
“That’s her biggest enemy sometimes,” he said. “She’s too hard and too demanding on herself. She’s very hard on herself, but with her being so hard on herself, she has the right to have high expectations of her teammates.”
Pena knows she had a tendency to get too wrapped up in her mistakes earlier in her career but believes the support of her teammates has helped her get out of that habit.
“When I started off here, I didn’t want to mess up,” she said. “I wanted to be perfect. But building up all that pressure on myself, I just did terrible. Now I know that I know how to play, and I have the encouragement of my teammates. They trust me, and I’ve been able to do a lot better.”
Pena earned that trust as she tried to close a gap between her and the teammates who got to high school with several years of club experience.
“At the beginning, I was definitely behind on skill level,” she said. “I had to work a lot more and practice outside of school to catch up to them.”
Pena wanted to get on the field so she could play with her classmates.
“I really just wanted to be with my friends,” she said. “That was a big motivation for me. And they were all on the varsity team, so that made me work hard because I wanted to play with them.”
Pena said doing soccer drills at home and at Next Generation Soccer Training and Education in Crown Point helped her earn varsity playing time by her sophomore year and a starting spot last season.
Pena will be starting once again on Saturday, when Hanover Central will try to extend the deepest postseason run in program history. She hopes she can help pump up her teammates for the occasion.
“We do have some younger players on this team, and going into bigger games like this, they can get nervous,” Pena said. “So having that positive energy on our team will get everyone excited so we can have fun out there.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter.
