Dike-New Hartford alum Payton Petersen recently completed her first season with the Louisville volleyball program, which included a memorable run to the national championship match and a runner-up finish.
The outside hitter appeared in just over half of the team’s matches, and started a regular season match against Notre Dame. Petersen says she found herself in various roles throughout the season.
“First and foremost, I’m so thankful to learn from all the seniors and all the upperclassmen,” Petersen says. “They’re amazing and they really did everything for this team, and to be able to learn from the veterans is something I’ll never take for granted. But my role this year was, it started off being backup for the outsides. I played a little bit in the Penn State match early on this year, and then I turned into serving subs sometimes. And then I got into the Stanford game on the right side a couple of times because we were out of subs. So I think being always mentally prepared on the bench to play right side, outside, serving sub really was my role, and to help my teammates in those situations. How can I help them on the court of things I’m seeing off the court? So always just being prepared for anything to happen.”
Among the notable moments, Petersen and the Cardinals played Northern Iowa in both the regular season and NCAA Tournament. Petersen’s mother, Bobbi Petersen, is the head coach at UNI, and twin sister Jadyn and high school teammate Maryn Bixby are members of the Panther squad. Louisville won 3-0 in an early-season tournament, and 3-2 in an epic five-set match in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
“I actually hated playing them in the tournament. Love playing them in pre-season. It’s just so fun and I’m so grateful to be able to play against my sister, my mom and my friend. Not a lot of people get to do that. But then when we drew each other in the tournament, we were like, ‘what are the chances that they come to our place?’ And it actually happened. But honestly, it was not that fun. It was fun to have all my family down there. But when you know that someone’s season is gonna come to an end, it makes it hard, and it was hard to watch and it was tough, I’m not gonna lie.”
After somewhat limited action throughout the first three rounds of the NCAA Tournament, an unfortunate circumstance led to Petersen getting the spotlight. When teammate Anna DeBeer was injured in the national semifinal against Pittsburgh, Petersen was subbed into the match to help earn the winning points in the final set. When DeBeer was unavailable for the championship match, Petersen got the starting nod.
“It’s obviously unfortunate that Anna DeBeer didn’t come back, and I was heartbroken for her. She was always there to help me and give me the confidence and calm me down no matter what. Along with my other teammates, we were told, make sure you look around and enjoy the moment. And I’m like, ‘I am not looking around right now. There’s too many people here. I cannot look around.’ I ended up actually looking around, and it was a lot of people. But I think you do sports to play in those moments and to enjoy that atmosphere and be grateful for that atmosphere. We made it so far. All we can do now is play our hearts out and enjoy what we built that year. And it was heartbreaking to lose, obviously, but I’m so proud of how the team responded and what we were able to do this year.”
On the season, Petersen appeared in 35 sets, recording 37 kills on a .200 percentage.
After enjoying the holiday break, Petersen and the Cardinals will soon begin offseason training.
