The turning point in Maddie Stevens’ athletic life came as a result of happenstance — and her competitiveness.
Stevens, then in seventh grade at Twin Valley, was faced with the prospect of losing a game to Wilson because her team didn’t have a goalie.
That was unacceptable.
“I hate losing,” Stevens said. “They were like, ‘We can’t play if we don’t have a goalie.’ So I was like, ‘OK, well, I’ll take one for the team. I’ll play one game. That’s it.’ “
The Raiders won that day, and Stevens was hooked.
“I went to practice after the Wilson game and I came home with the pads in the car,” Stevens remembered. “I looked at my mom and I was like, ‘I’m doing this. Now I’m doing this.’ “
After such a modest beginning, no one has done it better in the county over the last several years.
Stevens, now a senior, is a three-time All-Berks pick and three-time All-State selection, the last two years on the first team. She’s helped the Raiders win two Berks titles (2021, 2022), a District 3 Class 2A championship (2022) and a PIAA Class 2A title (2022).
She’s committed to continue her career next year at Division I Liberty, and will represent the United States this winter as a member of the U.S. Women’s National Indoor Team. Stevens also has been a member of the U-16 Women’s National Team.
“She communicates,” Twin Valley coach Kim Walsh said. “She sees the entire field. She’s able to help the defenders know where they need to be. And then she’s quick. I mean, you watch any of our games, she can save four, five, six shots in a row. And you know, she’s all over the place. She’s up. She’s down.”
Since that fall day five years ago, Stevens hasn’t been anywhere but in front of the cage wearing the pads — what she said now feels like “a second skin.”
Despite her one-and-done vow, she said she was immediately drawn by the uniqueness of the position. Coming up through youth leagues, she had played forward, midfielder and defense. Suddenly, she was seeing the game in a new way.
“It’s so different than anything on the field,” she said, “and I think being able to specialize, learning the skills, learning the tactics. There’s so much to playing goalie, it’s not just, ‘I’m gonna put you in a cage, you have to save a ball.’ It’s angles and decision making. I think that that really interested me.”
Stevens said her experience as a defender in travel lacrosse, which she did through eighth grade, actually helped her a lot, too, as she transitioned to goalie (and eventually away from lacrosse, her one-time No. 1 sport).
Though she’s blessed with agility and quickness, what probably has helped her the most is her work ethic.
“When she first started playing in the goal, it was pretty apparent pretty early on that she was going to be something special,” Walsh said. “And I actually worked in the middle school, and she used to come in and talk to me about it. And you could just see that she was just so dedicated from the very start.”
As part of that dedication, Stevens opted to play club field hockey for the first time in eighth grade. She also decided to get involved with U.S. Field Hockey and tried out for a national team.
“I was like, ‘This will make me better,’ “ Stevens said. “You’re playing against the best players in the country. It’s definitely going to make you better at some point.”
To that end, Stevens said as a freshman she would ask Natali Foster to come to the field to shoot on her. Foster, now a sophomore at Drexel and a two-time Berks Player of the Year, possesses a hard shot, one that not many people would want to voluntarily face.
“You just have to push yourself,” Stevens said. “You can’t just be comfortable with, ‘Oh, I’m just gonna have the worst players shoot on me.’ You have to challenge yourself, even though it was really scary.”
Walsh said Stevens never showed that fear despite facing not only Foster, but other talented players such as Emma Winther (now at Saint Joseph’s) and MaKayla Carahaly (Ohio State) daily at practice.
“She just took it and took it and took it,” Walsh said. “And you could see her getting better, but them getting frustrated.“
Stevens has continued to strive to improve by going to a goalie trainer in Malvern for the last two years, refining her technique.
She has 31 shutouts in her career, including nine last year, when the Raiders finished fourth in District 3 Class 2A and reached the state quarterfinals despite losing a ton of talent from the state championship team.
She’ll be relied on heavily this season.
“She allows us to be in any game,” Walsh said. “And that’s really kind of what we have to learn as a team on the field. She’s gonna keep us in the game. We just got to do enough. It’s always going to be close. So they just have to do enough and she’ll keep us in it.”
Next year, Stevens will take those skills to Liberty, which competes in the Big East.
“I think anybody can say the team or the culture, but I just liked the school,” Stevens said when asked why she committed to the Flames. “I think that there’s so much support academically and athletically. I just feel like stepping in I have a strong coaching staff. I have so much support in academics and athletics. Just something at Liberty that’s so strong right now that they’re building I didn’t see at other schools.”
Stevens also said she’d like to continue on the pathway to the U.S. National Team after high school.
But all that’s in the future. Right now, she is focusing on her senior season at Twin Valley.
“I think that anybody could say going out and winning games, but I say building a team culture,” Stevens said of her goals for her final high school season. “I think that’s so important. I don’t think that you can do anything without that. So I think that building that up, being a senior, having leadership roles on the team is really important. I think as we build that we’ll build confidence and succeed in the season.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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