Paige Toms is always moving. At the start of the school year, she was the goalie for the JV field hockey team at Western. Overlapping with field hockey, she plays travel volleyball for the Crozet team up until the end of spring. Right after the volleyball season is over, she jumps into the pool and is on the Boars Head swim team for the summer. When asked about why she plays sports all year round she said, “The best part about [sports] is the sense of community and shared emotion it can create. That’s probably why I’m always doing a sport.”

Paige has been swimming since she was three. The reason she has stuck with it for so long is quite a poetic one: “I like the excitement of jumping off the block and swimming across the water in a flash and winning.” During the summer Paige wakes up at six in the morning, every morning to get to her 7 o’clock practice. “If you go to the ones later you have to do dry land, which is not fun.” Dry land, for those of you who do not know, is exercise training. Once a week she goes to a swim meet and “wins, obviously!”

“Volleyball is probably my favorite because I have a great team and a great coach.” Paige (#99) is the middle blocker and middle back(libero). The libero is the most important, she sets the ball directly to the setter so that the setter can set it to the hitters so the hitters can score a point. The middle blocker hits the ball to score a point, but also blocks the ball when the opposing team tries to score. Paige had a recent tournament, her team won the game 25-23, with Paige scoring the game winning point. Unfortunately, she could not celebrate for long because she had to ref other games for the younger kids, but after the tournament, she was ecstatic. 

If just the thought of playing two sports is tiring for you, it is not for Paige. Along with volleyball and swimming, she is also the goalie for the WAHS JV field hockey team. It takes her 10 minutes to put on all her protective gear including chest guards, hand protectors, leg pads and more.

“[Goalie] isn’t the hardest position to play, mostly because you don’t have to run anywhere. But you do get hurt a lot.” During the interview, she remembered a story about just how painful it can be playing goalie: “One time, actually the first time I ever played goalie some girl came up to me and said ‘This is gonna hurt, I’m gonna hit you and it’s gonna hurt… like really bad’ and then she took a shot and it hit my throat… I had to go to the doctor… that was not fun,” she recalled, laughing.

Despite the losses, the injuries, and the dryland, Paige Toms is still dedicated to sports. “I will always love them, plus I have my team and coaches to keep me going when I’m not feeling up to it that day.” With her competitive attitude and willingness to do anything for her team, you can’t doubt that Paige is going to be playing sports for a long time.