The CSUN women’s volleyball team had a memorable 2012 season. They posted a 21-10 record and their coach, Jeff Stork, was inducted to the Volleyball Hall of Fame. To top it all off, middle blocker Casey Hinger followed up an amazing freshman year with a spot on the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) All-Region Honors team.

“It is such a huge accomplishment, and I feel so honored to be recognized,” Hinger said, “but most importantly this award means I have a lot of work ahead of me.” That type of humility is what coach Stork saw in Hinger when he recruited her out of Valencia High School in Fullerton.

“We knew when we were scouting her she’d be a tremendous talent,” Stork noted when asked about her year. “She’s a great student, too, which just goes to show how she exceeds at everything she does.”

That type of work ethic led to Hinger’s amazing season in which she finished as the Big West’s top blocker, averaging 1.34 stuffs per set, and placed third on the Matadors’ squad with 277 kills. Hinger’s season total of 147 blocks is the eighth-best for a single season in CSUN history and ranks second in the Matadors’ rally-scoring era. However, even with these accolades, Hinger is in no way sitting on her laurels. In fact, she’s taking it all in as a learning experience.

“The biggest obstacle I faced this year has been learning to be proud of the little things,” she remembered. “It’s easy to say you had a good game when … your stats look amazing but it’s a lot harder to say (it) when you got a lot of control blocks for your team, or pulled blockers. The coaches have really instilled that in me this year that it’s (about) how well you do at the things no one gives you credit for. I am still working on that.”

It’s that “work-in-progress” mode that has made Hinger a standout, one that coach Stork believes finally got AVCA’s full attention this year. He mentions how a new offense implemented this year made the team a little slower out of the box. But as the season wore on, the team got better. It was during this ascension that Hinger broke out and became dominant—not that she sees it that way. In her eyes, she’s got a long way to go to fully realize her full capability. Lucky for her, there’s nowhere else she’d want to do that.

“I refuse to peak my sophomore year,” Hinger says. “Our volleyball program has grown so much, and each individual player has grown so much it’s been amazing to be a part of. I couldn’t be more thankful to be here and be able to do what I love with people I love.”

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