Show Me Spotlight: Stolte’s return to pitch is welcome addition for Hannibal girls soccer squad

HANNIBAL, Mo. — For two years, Malia Stolte watched from the stands as her friends played a game she loved. The entire time she wondered what it would feel like to step on the soccer pitch again.

“I just saw everybody playing and having fun, and I was just like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I miss that,’” she said.

Stolte had played soccer since she was 7 years old, but after seventh grade, she stepped away to focus on club volleyball. At that time, soccer just didn’t provide the joy it used to.

“I had kind of lost the love for the game,” Stolte said. 

But the more she watched her friends play, the more she felt the need to scratch that itch to get back in the game.

“It just felt weird,” she said. “I wasn’t really being too active in the spring other than playing volleyball on the weekends. All the girls were like, ‘You have to come back.’”

So, Stolte returned to the game this spring with the Hannibal girls soccer team, and in her first game, the sophomore forward scored just 11 seconds into the match. She ended up recording a hat trick in the 8-0 victory over Warrenton.

“I was just kind of surprised,” Stolte said of this performance. “Like, ‘Wow, I don’t know how I did that.’”

Hannibal coach Eric Hill wasn’t all that surprised.

“Honestly, we could have seen it coming,” he said. “We saw what she had in the preseason before we started playing games. We didn’t necessarily know that she was going to get the hat trick right off the bat, but we knew she was going to be a scoring threat.”

Spring soccer means no more club volleyball for Stolte, but she still plays volleyball and basketball for Hannibal.

Playing three sports means very little free time, but Stolte said she has gotten used to it.

“I’ve done it my whole life, so it’s pretty easy,” she said. “But there are a lot of late nights studying, just practicing any time I can.”

Junior Abbie Martin plays all three sports alongside Stolte and used to play club volleyball with her, enabling her to judge Stolte’s impact on the pitch and beyond.

“Malia is a great teammate,” Martin said. “She lifts everyone up.”

Sophomore defender Addison Friday has known Stolte since elementary school. Like Martin, Friday said Stolte’s positivity is infectious.

“She’s always an outgoing person,” Friday said. “She’s always cheering people on whether she’s on the field or on the bench.”

Stolte parlays that positivity and outgoing nature into a ferocity and high-flying style on the field.

“She pushes herself to the max,” Friday said. “You never see her walking or even jogging; she’s always sprinting. She’s definitely going to make history at our school.”