Ellie and Chandra Hepler have had quite a summer of volleyball playing with the Boiler Juniors club team. (Photos provided)

INDIANAPOLIS – Ellie Hepler has gone a long way already to become a great volleyball player. That road took her this week to Indianapolis for a shot at a rare double.

Hepler, along with her travel volleyball team, Boiler Juniors, were looking to finish its 11U season on a very high note. Two weeks after winning the AAU Nationals in Orlando, Hepler and her teammates were in the Circle City looking to add the USAV Junior National Championship to its impressive list.

The Juniors were well on their way at the USAV, running 5-0 in its pool and winning 10 of 11 sets in the process. The three-day tourney, which started Monday, had the Lafayette-based club jump into the crossover round against a very strong Puerto Rican-heavy Alfredo side. While pool play was relatively simple for this amalgamation of Hoosier volleyballers, the Alfredo club had the Boilers on the brink, winning the first set 25-23 and up 24-18 in the second set. To the shock of coach Chandra Hepler and the club itself, the girls rallied. And rallied some more. And some more. And eventually won the second set 26-24. Then took the third set 15-10 and escaped to the ticket round.

The Juniors would win one more matchup before falling in the semi-finals to Top Select 11 Elite of Florida, 25-17, 25-19. The loss left the top seed in third place, but the run provided some major moments.

“They had to win that second set if they wanted to play for a championship, and somehow they figured it out,” said coach Hepler of the crossover round. “To stay in the top eight, they had to win that game. We were sitting there in the second set going, ‘do the girls realize it is literally match point?’ I’ve been around volleyball most of my life, and that was some of the best volleyball I’ve ever seen. That was a major comeback.”

The name Chandra Hepler should be very familiar to the Warsaw volleyball scene. A longtime assistant for the Warsaw Community High School program she once played for, Hepler left a year ago to take her shot at college coaching at Taylor University. But the travel and the time commitment nearly two hours away from home at Taylor has Hepler back in Warsaw and on the Tiger coaching staff again for this fall.

The tie to Lafayette, however, is with the Shondell family. John Shondell created the Boiler Juniors, Shondell of the famous first family of volleyball in Indiana. John, along with Dave Shondell, run the Purdue University volleyball program.

Ellie Hepler with her trophy from the USAV Junior National Championship.

Hepler has ties to the Shondells, and to field an opportunity to get Ellie into a program taught by the Shondells was a chance of a lifetime. But that meant two hours back and forth in the car again, going to practice with the Juniors three times a week in Tippecanoe County. The Heplers had to make a decision once again.

“As long as we can learn from the Shondells, we will make the drive,” Chandra said. “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. Ellie understands that getting training from the Shondells is something we can’t say no to. But it’s not just about that. This is a really great group of girls that have really, truly become a family and are friends off the court. As long as Ellie continues to have fun doing it, we’ll continue to make the drive.”

The Boiler Juniors is made up of nine girls and two coaches. Hepler is the only girl from the Warsaw area, a student at Washington STEM Academy. The remainder of the girls are from either Lafayette or Indianapolis and co-coached by Suzanne Masten, who was a two-time captain for Purdue in the mid-1990s. The distance, both literally to practice each week, and between homes of her friends, doesn’t deter Ellie, who has really found her stride with the club team.

“These girls have really become good friends of mine even living so far away,” Ellie said, who is the team’s libero. “We all have the same goals with the team.”

The highlight of Ellie’s summer came two weeks ago at the AAU Nationals, played near Disney World. The Boiler Juniors entered the tournament smitten after a runner-up finish to Vaqueros, a Puerto Rican juggernaut program, in 2018. This season, Boiler Juniors were able to upset Vaqueros in the championship, 26-24, 25-21, becoming the first continental United States team to win the AAU title in 46 years. Puerto Rican teams had won the previous 45 titles at that tournament.

Of note, the loss to Top Select in Indianapolis was the first time the Boiler Juniors have lost to a team from the continental United States in two years.

“When we got ahead of them, they just shut down,” Ellie Hepler said of the win against Vaqueros. “They fell apart and we took advantage. Winning that tournament was amazing.

“We did a good job up to the last game,” added Ellie of the USAV tourney, sounding more like a coach and less like an elementary school student. “We all just got tired. That brought us down. We didn’t move our feet a lot. We didn’t move well.”

The Heplers will now get some time off, the USAV tourney signaling the end of the travel season for the Boiler Juniors. Chandra will get back to work with the Warsaw program after moratorium week is over and Ellie will get back to being a kid and enjoying some summer break, but likely keeping the volleyball in the air somewhere and somehow.

Volleyball is just what the Heplers do.