The Grind, presented by Bank of Clarendon: Best friends-turned-stepsisters Hawkey, Champion help power Wilson Hall's success on the court

Wilson Hall seniors Mary Todd Champion and Natalie Hawkey just go together.

On the volleyball court, they play two positions that are locked at the hip. Natalie sets for the Barons, while Mary Todd takes those passes and delivers kills as an outside hitter. But these seniors are far more than just teammates.

Mary Todd and Natalie have been inseparable since they were in preschool, long before ever stepping foot on the volleyball court. They had dreams of going off to college and rooming together as many friends do, but they didn't actually need to wait that long to live under one roof. The pair had the rare opportunity to evolve from best friends to stepsisters when their parents, Todd Champion and Jacqui Hawkey, got married, taking an already unbreakable bond to the next level.

"It was always just the two of them," Jacqui said. "Everyone always knew it was Natalie and Mary Todd, Mary Todd and Natalie everywhere they went, the two of them always together. They're sisters, so to speak, now, but they will still tell people they are best friends. If they meet somebody, they introduce themselves as best friends.

"It's a very unique relationship, I guess. Most people don't end up becoming family with their best friends. They always planned to live together, but they didn't expect they were going to live together earlier. They thought they'd go off to college and live together, so they've been able to live together before then."

BUILDING BONDS

Natalie and Mary Todd met on a field trip to the fire house while in preschool.

"We were in the same class, and we didn't really hang out much," Mary Todd explained. "Then we were too scared to go into the smokehouse together, so we were the only kids left outside, so we became friends."

Natalie continued, "So, our parents became friends over that and then we would have playdates basically every single day through preschool, kindergarten and elementary school, but we were never in the same class, but we were still friends."

They've been connected at the hip ever since but didn't necessarily have a structured activity that kept them in lockstep. All throughout elementary school, they were in different classes. Natalie spent a lot of her time focused on gymnastics, while Mary Todd tried her hand at basketball, but it didn't quite stick. Then, in the fifth grade, Mary Todd decided to give volleyball a try, following in the footsteps of her older sister. Natalie had to wait a year to join, however.

"I begged (my mom)," Natalie said. "I was like, she's doing this and she's like, 'You have to let her have her one thing.' I was still doing gymnastics, and I had to let her do volleyball, and I wasn't allowed to do it that year and I started playing the next year."

In the sixth grade, they finally teamed up and never looked back, and their friendship off the court instantly helped them on it.

"I put my whole trust in her in every situation, so I think volleyball has helped that," Mary Todd said. "We kind of don't really have to communicate, 'Will you set me on this ball?' We just have unspoken chemistry; I know I'm going to be there and I'm gonna hit the ball."

WORKING TOGETHER

Volleyball became an obsession that took over most of Natalie and Mary Todd's free time. Their parents' living room, with high ceilings that made it possible to pass to each other, became a training ground, at least for a while.

"We did notice later there were some vases that disappeared; that's why we ended up moving everything out of the living room," Jacqui quipped. "What we learned was that they had been in there playing volleyball while we were not there. Then they would get balloons to play in there; anything to keep playing. That became their area to play when it was too cold to go outside. They were constantly playing, either outside or inside. We had ball marks all over the house."

Todd continued, "The funniest thing was that it took us a while before we started realizing that there were items missing out of the living room. Guys, where is this? And then they'd both look at each other and give you this look. We kinda laugh about that."

Todd and Jacqui pulled out all of the stops to help Natalie and Mary Todd get the practice they craved. They set up a net outside and got a machine to feed passes to Natalie, who could then set for Mary Todd. They got a roll cart they could fill up with balls so they wouldn't waste their time running after balls every time.

"As we were getting older, we realized we should find a machine that could replace the old people here," Todd joked. "We could tell they wanted to do it and do it all the time, so you want to give them the best chance. That's the reason we got them an outdoor net at the house, and it's a regulation net so whenever they were practicing, they were basically practicing on a real court. They would go out there during the summer, in the heat of the day, all of the time. Once school started, they would still go out and play. If you've seen the roll carts, we have one of those here sitting in our kitchen. It was in our dining room, and we would have to move volleyball stuff out of the way when family was over for Thanksgiving and stuff like that. We essentially have the same roll cart and what must be 15 balls down there. They would do that year-round."

The pair was able to rapidly improve because they had a built-in training partner. They didn't need to spend much time convincing each other to get a little bit of extra work in.

"Instead of having to call a friend and be like, 'Hey, do you want to come over and hit the ball with me?' she was already there, I just had to walk a couple of steps," Natalie said. "And she was always willing to do it. I feel like the summer time is when we really developed."

Natalie and Mary Todd can also talk as sisters, not just teammates. At the end of the day, they go over the positives and the negatives, but the negatives quickly get washed away.

"Our dinner time is always our debrief time, like our entire day, school, volleyball, everything. That's just what we do," Natalie said.

"Our arguments are definitely minor; we don't ever have to go and apologize to each other," Mary Todd said as Natalie chimed in, "We just kinda shake it off. With friends when they argue, it just kind of stays, and people still just stay mad at each other. We're just able to be like, 'That's OK, that's in the past.'"

SUITING UP FOR WILSON HALL

When Natalie and Mary Todd got to high school, they had their sights set on making the jump to varsity for an incredibly consistent program. Since 2020, the Barons have won at least 25 games every season and have regularly surpassed 30 victories. They definitely felt the pressure of trying to match those high expectations.

"It was very stressful," Mary Todd said. "I was really scared because there were older players and they were really good, and I was like, 'I could never do that.' I guess it was like a maturity thing, like I finally realized this is my time to shine; I have to be responsible."

For Natalie, it was a chance to come out of her shell a little bit more. As a setter, you can't sit there quietly and hope everything around you works out. Natalie compares it to playing quarterback; you have to direct the offense and get things flowing in the right direction.

"I've always been shy. That's just always who I've been. But in volleyball, you can't really be shy, especially as a setter," she said. "You have to be talking the whole time, so I had to step in to a big role and realize I had to talk louder and get more involved."

After a year on JV, Natalie and Mary Todd started to carve out roles on the varsity level. Natalie served as the team's primary setter as a sophomore, dishing out 329 assists, while also leading the team with 66 aces. She was also tied for third on the team with 150 digs. Mary Todd stepped in as a hitter and had 88 kills in her first varsity season. All the while, they were helping each other improve.

"They've been able to train together, whether it's through club or coming up here and doing workouts over the summer with me or Coach (Erin) Trueblood, having that time together; as a hitter, the more time you spend with your setter, the more in sync you're going to be and get accustomed to the types of sets and your tempo and stuff like that," said head coach Rip Ripley. "They've definitely spent a lot of time together in that regard, and it helps. They can talk to each other in a way that's good and productive and give feedback to each other. I think it's been a really cool relationship to watch continue to grow."

The arrow continued to point up for both players, as well. Last year, Natalie was Wilson Hall's only setter and dished out a ridiculous 756 assists on the season. She remained an elite server with just nine service errors on the season, which equated a 98.1% serving percentage. Natalie had 71 aces last fall. This season, she's been able to share setting duties with Tatiana Erichsen, but she still has 534 assists heading into the final week of the regular season, while smacking another 65 aces with a serve percentage of 96.1%. Ripley has been impressed with her continued growth at the position.

"You look at Natalie, and she's small in stature. She's not the tallest player, but she makes up for it; she works really hard, she gets the ball and puts it where it needs to be a lot of times for our hitters," Ripley said. "Being a high school setter, the hitters expect a perfect set every time, and that's just not the reality of what we live in at the high school level a lot of times. But I think Natalie does a really good job of living up to that expectation as much as she can and giving them good, hittable balls. She works hard, she hustles, she's very athletic, very quick, she reads it well.

"She's a great passer, too, which is really important in our defense, with the way we play, to have a setter who can be a good passer. This year I think she's third on our team in digs and last year may have even been second on our team in digs. And, of course, her serving; she's kinda been our No. 1 server for the past two years. Not an overly powerful server, but she's very consistent, so we know we're minimizing those errors when she goes back there."

Consistency is exactly what Mary Todd brings to Wilson Hall as an outside hitter. Last year, she was second on the team with 179, and she has an additional 164 kills this fall with some time left in the season. This season, she's been exceedingly efficient with a hit percentage of .207, which is third on the team and second to only McKinley Bath at their volume of hitting.

"She's not necessarily the leaper that some of our hitters are where she's getting up and crushing balls down, but she's gotten really smart. I think her biggest development has been her consistency of putting the ball in play and being smart and keeping us alive," Rip said. "The other night against Pinewood Prep, we're playing a 4A opponent and some of our other hitters were struggling a little bit with consistency; we had quite a few hitting errors and things like that. At the end of the night, she had 12 kills and no errors from the outside hitter position, which is pretty impressive. She's getting smarter with how she's tipping and pushing and doing things like that. It's helped us having that stable outside attack."

Players like Mary Todd and Natalie make the offense go. Wilson Hall has a clear top hitter in McKinley Bath, who has 388 kills on the season. But teams can game plan for a really strong hitter. When Bath moves to the back row, Mary Todd can put pressure on opposing defenses, while Natalie makes sure the ball gets to the right place.

"It gives us a consistent outside attack the whole game. With some teams, they've got a really good hitter, but once you get that hitter back row, you can kinda breathe for a second because they don't have a strong attack any other places. Mary Todd gives us that consistent outside attack where we know as Mac rotates to the back row, we still have a strong front-row attack," Rip said. "I think that's one of the biggest benefits of our team this year as a whole. Yes, we have some outstanding players like McKinley and Savannah (Wells) and Natalie, who are all returning all-region players from last year, but I think our consistency around them with players like Mary Todd and Beaty (Zeigler) and Bella (Quiroz) and Kira (Stelle) and Ellis (Coker) all kind of developing as hitters, I think has helped us be more competitive and gives us a more varied attack up front that I think is one of our strengths."

Natalie and Mary Todd have also been important leaders for Wilson Hall, even if they aren't always the most vocal players on the team. They had a unique opportunity to step into larger leadership roles last year because Wilson Hall had just one senior, Addie Griffin, who was willing to let some of the younger players share that responsibility. They were able to learn from that experience to lead the Barons to a 31-3 record with a week left in the regular season.

"A lot of times you pass down from senior class to senior class, and last year, we didn't have that senior class. Addie was our lone senior, and she was willing to kind of have them come alongside her as leaders of the team and they kind of took to that. That was a good experience for them where, even last year, they got to cut their teeth on being leaders in the program and this year they had some experience with it, so they kind of knew what the expectations were and kinda knew what I needed," Rip said. "That's a hard thing as a coach sometimes is each year you're training a new senior class. This year, this group knew what the expectations were, so I think that's been a benefit for them to have that two-year growth, and we're seeing some of the benefits of that with how we're playing."

Natalie and Mary Todd credit the closeness of the team for helping ease that transition.

"We kind of work as one unit, kind of like a family, and we've really grown up together," Mary Todd said. "All of us on our team have kind of been playing together for a while, so we just know that we can depend on each other and not need to carry the weight on our own."

And that family has been there for each other through the good times and the bad. Last season, Mary Todd was faced with a terrible loss when her mother, Stephanie, passed away after a long cancer battle. Stephanie passed on the day of Wilson Hall's flagship tournament, the Baron Bash, and there was only one place Mary Todd wanted to be.

"I decided I wanted to be there with my team, I want to be there with the people that love and care for me. So, I just showed up for them, and I tried to show my passion and drive; we're not going to be sad, we're going to play, we're going to play the game we love," she said. "Definitely, that helped me get through one of the hardest times of my life."

Natalie helped her stepsister by trying to provide a sense of normalcy during a tragic time.

"It's a little bit harder sometimes to be open about that because it's not something that everyone will understand," Mary Todd said. "She was there for me, and everyone was there for me."

ONE LAST RIDE

This will be the final season of volleyball for Mary Todd and Natalie, so the seniors are working to make the most out of their last run. So far, it's been an incredible success. Wilson Hall has 31 wins with two games left to go in the regular season and expect to make a real push at the SCISA state tournament next weekend.

There have been a slew of highlights this fall, but none so far have been bigger than winning the Baron Bash. Wilson Hall was able to grind out six wins in one day to win their home tournament for the first time in more than a decade, checking a major task off their bucket list for the season.

"It was definitely really surreal," Mary Todd said. "Knowing it was the first time in 10 years that Wilson Hall has won the Baron Bash, our own tournament, was definitely something I was really happy to check off, especially senior year."

That tournament also helped prepare Natalie, Mary Todd and their teammates for the challenging state tournament in front of them. The two-day tournament can be a grind, so the fact that they were able to push through a day when they beat programs at every level of SCISA competition helped solidify their chances to compete in the 4A tournament.

"It really shows that we really do have a chance, especially because the state tournament is slowed down and slower paced," Mary Todd said. "Playing club helped a lot, doing tournaments all day over the course of six years definitely helps."

As the end of the year draws near, so does the end of competitive volleyball for Natalie and Mary Todd. No one in the Champion-Hawkey household is trying to linger on that quite yet, though.

"We're not really allowed to talk about that," Jacqui joked. "We really don't discuss the end of the season very often because that ends in a lot of tears. They've both started grasping that that is coming up, they have a couple weeks left and that's it. That's going to hit them, and I think it's going to hit them hard because they've played since sixth grade. For us, we love it, we love going to the games, so it's going to be hard. We've never missed a game in all of their club and everything. It's hitting them that it is coming to an end, and I think they're going to be very sad about it."

Natalie added, "I can't imagine not playing volleyball, I'm not going to know what to do; it's going to be so weird."

No matter what comes next, Mary Todd and Natalie will be side by side through it all.

"Even without volleyball, that's not going to change," Jacqui said of their tight bond. "They're still going to play volleyball; it'll just be here at the house and for fun. I'm sure they'll play intramurals. But nothing is going to change because volleyball is done; that's not going to affect their relationship in any way."