Student-Athlete Hailey Brooke McFadden Shines

Wake Christian Academy student Hailey Brooke McFadden, who has attended the school for eight years and is a captain of the Wake Christian volleyball team, picked up the sport in elementary school and from that moment her love of volleyball has never stopped growing.

“I first started playing volleyball in fifth grade in a rec league because I had just come to Wake Christian and all my new friends were playing,” she explained, “I was not really interested in playing volleyball, but before long I was addicted.”

Volleyball has not just been a fun and engaging pastime for McFadden, but a skill she has honed that has resulted in college scholarships and acclaim in the amateur volleyball world. The high school senior was awarded an athletic scholarship from Division I school Wake Forest University and hopes to couple it with an additional academic scholarship. McFadden plans to “major in pre-law or psychology” at Wake Forest. About her mindset on academics, McFadden explained, “At a young age, I realized that schoolwork must come first because sports have a short expiration date — your mind doesn’t.”

McFadden also received the WRAL Extra Effort Award this school year and stated, “The WRAL interview was incredible. It is a tremendous honor to be granted the Extra Effort Award and I am truly blessed to have had the opportunity to share my story in such a big way!”

A team from WRAL came to Wake Christian to interview McFadden and film her in the place that has had so much impact on her life, her school. She recounted, “They took film of me doing various activities around campus from reading a book to walking down the hallway — it was certainly a blast! I then had the chance to sing, coach some of our middle school student-athletes, and play!”

WRAL’s shooting culminated with “students packed into the student section to see” McFadden receive the award from WRAL’s Tom Suiter. She gushed, “I’m so blessed to attend a school as supportive as Wake Christian.”

McFadden is grateful that “Wake Christian has prepared [her] for collegiate athletics” and the spotlight that accompanies it “in the department of emotional and spiritual maturity. I will always be able to take the lessons Wake Christian has taught me with me wherever I go.”

Some of the “plethora of lessons” that McFadden has learned through playing volleyball at Wake Christian are focus and time management. She related, “Having the opportunity to play volleyball also taught me how imperative it is to be focused. I’ve learned that the more focused athlete always beats out the more talented athlete. That’s why developing strong focusing skills is imperative to becoming a great player. My time management skills were developed out of necessity because of all the time I spent playing.”

Most importantly, she said, “Volleyball helped me gain confidence in myself. I do not let other people’s thoughts about me determine my self worth for good or bad. If you live by someone’s compliments, you’ll die by their criticism.”

Thanks to her own hard work and dedication along with the Wake Christian coaches and teachers who have guided her, McFadden is ready to start on the path of college athletics because, in her own words, “ Having the opportunity to play in college fulfills every dream I’ve ever had.”