Chloe Song made a big change of courts going into her freshman year at High School North.
She grew up playing — and excelling — on the tennis courts. Her family all plays tennis, including older brother Kyle, who played in high school at the Peddie School. Her longtime coach saw a promising future in Song.
But after attending a volleyball camp in the summer before her first year of high school, Song was hooked on a new potential fall sport. She put away her tennis racket to see how good she could be on the volleyball court.
“I look back on it and I don’t regret it because I think that there are a lot of things in my life that I appreciate because of volleyball now,” Song said. “And I know that if I picked tennis, I would have regretted that a lot.”
Song has blossomed into a three-year varsity starter at outside hitter and a reliable leader for the North girls volleyball team. She is one of 10 seniors for the Knights, who have a new head coach in Jennifer Halterman and a promising outlook because of their veteran group.
“We have a lot of returning varsity players so there’s a lot of good leadership,” said Halterman. “There’s a lot of experience. I’m really excited because we have solid outsides, we have solid middles. They’re all seniors. So hitting power, we’re looking good. Passing, we’re looking really good too. And we have an incoming freshman who’s starting lib, so that’s really exciting.”
Freshman Olympia Xu has taken the libero spot to earn a chance to play with her senior sister, Olivia Xu, and most of the top contributors are seniors, though the defense is young. Leaning on the veterans has helped them off to a better start. After going 9-16 last year, the Knights have started the fall 3-2, with one of their losses coming at the hands of defending state champion Princeton High. They pulled out an exciting 2-1 win over Hopewell Valley and defeated Collingswood and Princeton Day School as well.
“I really, really like the team this year,” Song said. “I think us girls get along really well and we’re playing pretty good together. I’ve been waiting for my senior season for my entire high school time and it’s been really fun recently.”
Song’s biggest move came with her decision to take up volleyball. While she might still catch herself wondering how she would have done with high school tennis, joining volleyball was the right choice coming into high school. Tennis had helped her grow athletically, but it had lost some of its appeal by the time she was in middle school.
“Basically, it just caused a lot of stress on me to the point where I didn’t really enjoy it as much,” Song said. “And so I decided to make the switch to volleyball because first off, volleyball’s with the team, and I really wanted to get to know more people. And also, I’ve never played a team sport before, so it was something new and something that I thought would be more fun.”
She knew she could explain to her family why volleyball was her pick. She worried mostly about how her tennis coach would react.
“I kind of just had to like rip off the Band-Aid when I decided because I was scared of his reaction because I knew that he would be disappointed,” she said. “But at the same time, I had to do. I knew that I wouldn’t be as happy and I would feel like I would regret it if I picked tennis over volleyball.”
Song’s emergence into a key contributor on the volleyball court did not take as long as she expected. She found that her former sport helped her new one.
“A big thing that helped me is that I also played tennis for pretty much my entire childhood and I think tennis and volleyball are pretty similar sports, just with kind of the technique of it and then the hand-eye coordination you need for both,” Song said. “And so because I played tennis for so long, a lot of skills in volleyball came pretty naturally to me and I think that’s especially true with my serve and my hitting. A lot of people, when I serve and when I hit, many people ask me, ‘You played tennis in the past?’”
After a year starting on the junior varsity, she moved into the starting lineup for the varsity as a sophomore. She delivered 68 kills, 47 digs and 18 aces as a sophomore.
“I think that recently our program has gotten a lot more talent because looking back, I was not that good in my sophomore year,” Song said. “But I had opportunities to actually play in games and stuff like that. I think that’s definitely played a big part as to how I grew and developed and improved as a player.”
Last year, Song made another big jump on the court. Her numbers climbed to 88 kills and 138 digs, along with 38 aces. Her confidence climbed too, and that set her up for this season when she has returned as an important member of the team.
“She’s always positive, has a good mindset, she’s aggressive with the ball,” Halterman said. “She doesn’t give any free balls and I really appreciate that aggressive mentality, at least it’s a down ball or placing it well. Passing, she’s very consistent. So that’s a huge benefit to have an outside that passes. She’s always an option in the back row to run the pipe as an offensive option. Her serve is a high-risk, high-reward serve, which I love. Instead of just like your standard float, she’s got that topspin. So high-risk, high-reward, she gets after it. And I just like that her mentality is really strong to get after it.”
Song has tried to be a good influence on the team. She helped introduce daily journaling to the team, with players recording their goals and how they’re feeling before and after practices.
“It’s kind of just like goal setting to set our intentions and have something written down so that we know what we’re striving for and what we want to focus on during practice or during games,” Song said.
The practice has helped the Knights focus a bit more on what they want to accomplish. The goals are bigger for them this year. North would like to be at least .500, and they are hoping to reach at least the third round of the state tournament.
“My goal for them is to get them above .500 for the season,” Halterman said. “And get past that state round that they keep getting stuck on — the second round. So my win-loss goal aligns more with them. I’m really just trying to have their experience in high school volleyball be a good one, a learning one. It’s not going to be easy. They have to understand it’s hard to balance everything. Hopefully they learn from it in that regard and are better for it.”
Song has learned a lot about herself over her career. It started with making a tough choice to take up the sport, and then she had to play catch-up against players who were doing club volleyball outside of school or had been playing longer. She drove herself to improve each year.
“My first two years, I was really timid on the court,” she said. “I didn’t really want the balls as much because I was scared that I would mess up. And when there’s upperclassmen on your team playing alongside you, you feel pressure to do well because they’re older and you don’t want to ruin it for them. But now that in the past two years, once I’ve gotten older, gotten more experienced on the court, I definitely have felt a lot more confident and then also more willing to take risks and try new things in order to see what works well for me.”
Song has gotten more out of playing volleyball than just the development on the court. It’s brought her life enrichment. It’s given her more than she anticipated when she made the move.
“Being a part of this program has given me so many friends and people that I wouldn’t have known or talked to in high school, especially amongst different grades,” Song said. “My freshman year I was able to immediately make friends with some upperclassmen and some people that I didn’t really talk to before and it really is a way to get to know so many different people because in school itself, you really just talk to your close people who are in your classes. Right now most of the girls on the team I don’t have any classes with and so without volleyball I wouldn’t know them and I wouldn’t be friends with them and so that’s why I owe so much to this program.”
Song also has made friends as a sprinter in the North track and field program, another sport that she’s participated in throughout high school that allows her to showcase her athleticism. Outside of school, she enjoys helping those less fortunate in the community. She volunteers with several clubs. She has spent the past few summers volunteering at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.
“We get groceries and packed goods and stuff and then we pack them into the bags and then we distribute them to people in the area who need it,” Song said. “It sustains them for about a week and so we do that weekly, giving out these grocery bags for them. It’s really fulfilling. I really like doing it.”
Song hopes to study business marketing in college. She won’t be playing volleyball or running track in college. She has in recent years picked up her tennis racket again to just play for fun with friends.
“I’m definitely happy with my decision because I really do enjoy playing volleyball and I don’t think I would ever have an opportunity to play like this in any other setting other than high school,” she said. “But sometimes I do think about like, what if I did play tennis? And I think about if I would enjoy it more, but at the end of the day I know I wouldn’t have.”
Chloe Song is off to a great start to the end of her high school volleyball career. She posted five kills and four digs in the three-set win over Hopewell Valley and has 12 kills and 15 digs, along with a pair of aces, in helping the Knights start at .500 at 3-3 through six games. She had an incredible seven aces in a 2-1 loss to Hightstown. She’s been a leader and positive influence for the North girls while trying to make the most of her last year on the court.
“A lot of girls on our team play volleyball outside of school and stuff and so we have a lot of people with a lot of experience,” Song said. “And in our games recently, we’ve been playing really good. We have chemistry and then we also have been performing well, minimizing our errors and our mistakes. And so I think as the season goes on and obviously we’re going to get better during the season as well so I could see us doing really well this season.”
