St. Edward alum Johnson relishing senior year at Charleston

Paige Johnson has the perfect approach to her senior season of volleyball at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

"I'm just trying to take things one day by one day and do my very best," Johnson said this week. "It's my senior year and every time I go out there I know I'm not going to have that practice back or that game back."

Johnson, a St. Edward graduate who was the honorary co-captain of the Daily Herald's Fox Valley All-Area team in 2005 and 2006, has had a stellar career as a libero/defensive specialist at Charleston. Among other things, she's helped lead the Cougars to two NCAA Tournament appearances and earlier this month was named the Southern Conference Defensive Player of the Week for the first time in her career.

"I've loved it in Charleston," says Johnson, a Sleepy Hollow resident. "It's very different from home and it took me a while to get used to it. I've gone through a lot of ups and downs but volleyball has been great and my teammates have been great.

"Being a senior, you don't take things for granted anymore. It's been a good experience here because I've had to learn for myself. Every year I've learned how to be stronger, more competitive and mentally tough."

On the volleyball court, Johnson has been her usual steady self, a college version of the player who helped St. Edward to regional championships every year she played for the Green Wave and played on the Wave's fourth-place state team in 2004. After recording 1,233 digs in her St. Edward career, Johnson is now on the threshold of 1,000 college digs. She had 976 earlier this week.

But Johnson's ascension to becoming a senior leader in college didn't come overnight.

"My freshman year we had five solid seniors who had won the Southern Conference every year they'd been here," said Johnson, a business marketing major who said she'd like to move back to the Midwest after college to pursue employment, possibly in sports marketing.

"Then those seniors graduated and we were left to build a team but I learned a lot from that."

And this year the experience Johnson and her teammates has gained is paying dividends. The Cougars were 11-4 to start the week and had earned wins over USC for the first time and Cincinnati, which beat No. 9 Illinois.

But as time goes on this fall and into winter Johnson knows the end of her playing days is near.

"Right now I'm just trying to focus on fall and volleyball but I know when January hits and there's no more volleyball I'll be like 'Oh my gosh.' I'd give anything to have to start training in January again."

While in Charleston Johnson, who will turn 22 on Oct. 17, has been able to travel to many different campuses in the Southeast and she's loved every minute of it. The Southern Conference has taken her to places such as Appalachian State, Tennessee-Chattanooga, Furman, Georgia Southern and North Carolina-Greensboro just to name a few.

"The schools in my conference have such beautiful campuses," Johnson said. "It's really nice to see what other campuses and towns are like. I feel real luck that all the schools we go to are so pretty.

"Sometimes you take for granted the things you get as an athlete. You have to sit back and look at it from an outsider's point of view and that's made me realize how lucky I am."

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