The Province

In a sense, you could say that Rosie Schlagintweit has always made a habit of arriving before her time.

There was that time in 2008 when she made her first trip to our photo studios, taking an active role during one of the many days of behind-the-scenes work that goes into the annual pre-production of Head of the Class.

Schlagintweit was still too young back then to appear on these pages, but someone had to make sure her older sister Sofie, just now completing her sophomore volleyball season at Arizona State, looked just right for the cameras that day.

"I remember doing her hair that day," laughs Schlagintweit, an ace volleyball player in her own right. "And I was trying to help her with her poses. But I never thought that I would be coming back on my own. This is really cool."

Yet ask anyone in B.C.'s volleyball community about her, and it is actually no surprise at all that the 6-foot right-side hitter is standing tall in the spotlight and doing it all ahead of the rest of her class.

"As a first-year senior coach," said Yale's Ali Tessarolo, "I probably learned more from her than I could have taught her this entire season."

And what a season it was.

Despite the fact that her Yale Lions finished ninth at the B.C. Quad-A championships, Schlagintweit collected 128 kills in seven games, and in mid-December, the coaches from B.C.'s four CIS women's volleyball programs picked her the 2009 Player of the Year as part of The Province's first annual Super Preps All-B.C. team.

In the fall, Schlagintweit begins her post-secondary volleyball career with the most dominant collegiate program in Canada, joining the three-time defending national champion UBC Thunderbirds.

"She has been one of the few players I have seen recently that has played with the older players and not looked out of place from any perspective," says UBC head coach Doug Reimer.

And that's the best way to say that Rosie Schalgintweit has always been a little ahead of her time.