Melanie Trostel may be the middle of three daughters, but she doesn’t complain about being overlooked. The senior Wildcat volleyball player says her parents, Mike and Tami, are her biggest supporters. They helped keep her spirits up despite ten months in rehab after tearing her ACL. “I just came down on it wrong,” she says, but the result included a partially torn meniscus and a chipped bone. Later, while taking a team photo after the state semi-finals, someone accidentally stepped on her and sent her back for more rehab.
Melanie’s back to playing some, but club volleyball is out and she won’t be playing ball in college. In fact, she’s been inspired to study physical therapy, perhaps at OU. She still wears the knee brace she describes as “huge and heavy” in games, though she admits she’s “not back to her old self, skillwise” on the court. When not playing volleyball, Melanie listens to the music of Taylor Swift and enjoys watching movies, especially “A Walk to Remember.” Her favorite teacher at LHHS is Kathryn Laster because Ms. Laster makes sense of the “very difficult” subject of calculus. Melanie is also a Peer Helper.
Melanie says the end of volleyball season will be bittersweet – she’ll be sad to be finished but she looks forward to having more free time after years of intense practice and competition. She plans to watch the girls’ and boys’ LHHS soccer teams play and says the best part of LH sports is that all the guys come to cheer for each other. She says seeing the gym full of fans for Pink Out was “amazing,” and she invites the community to come out again this Friday since it’s a bye week for football. Tonight’s varsity game is an away game against Sunset, and Friday’s game begins at 6:30 pm in the LHHS gym against district rival Berkner. Go Cats!
