Libero, Ceramicist, Baker: Paige Stepaniuk Burns Hot for Vikings

Paige Stepaniuk is a nail artist, ceramicist, cook, perfectionist and future lawyer. She’s also tough, competitive and a three-time winner of the Big Sky Conference Defensive Player of the Week this season as Libero/Defensive Specialist for Head Coach Michael Seemann’s Viking women’s volleyball team.

“Paige is mentally tough. She’s a competitor. We’ve had liberos in this program who came in with more refined skills, but very few who are as tough as she is,” said Seemann, in his 19th year leading the program.     

He first noticed Stepaniuk as a 14-year-old and playing against a 14-S team he coached.

“She always stood out as a very solid libero, extremely competitive and tough, essentially the anchor of her team. Those are rare traits for such a young player in the libero position…and I was impressed,” he recalled.

For her part, Stepaniuk said she was interested in sports from a young age, played several, but “volleyball was the only one I took seriously”. She got involved with gymnastics, soccer, figure skating and taekwondo at the age of nine, “but when I started playing volleyball, I knew it was the one.”

It wasn’t that she’d found the sports love of her life (that came later) or that the technical aspects of the game appealed to her. At the age of nine, she decided she wanted to play volleyball “because I thought the older girls who played it were cool.” That might have included her older sister Emilea, who played volleyball at Colorado.

But once she started playing club volleyball at age 11, she knew it was the sport for her and that she wanted to play at a high (collegiate) level.

It was painful at first…being a libero and throwing herself on the floor for digs. But being competitive and having a high pain tolerance were major pluses.

“It was honestly something (diving for digs) I never really gave a second thought. I’m a very competitive person, who happens to have a pretty high pain tolerance and I would say I’m pretty tough. Sacrificing my body and a little pain to keep the ball alive was worth it,” she said, adding that as she progressed, she learned tricks to mostly avoid the pain. “However, sometimes there will be a really hard hit or two and I just have to get back up and keep going.”

Although she came to Portland State clinics and committed to Seemann’s program early, she did draw interest from Northern Colorado and the University of Texas El Paso and an offer from Hawaii Pacific.

As a PSU freshman, she said she felt excited but pressured. “I knew the previous libero had graduated and that the jersey was up for grabs. I worked extremely hard,” Stepaniuk said.

And that work ethic is what has brought her to her current position.

“Paige has worked very hard at refining her skill sets. Her receive passing has improved immensely along with her serve. She had a slightly steeper learning curve than some of our past liberos, but Paige is a person who believes in herself and is determined to keep pushing for more. She works hard every day, so the areas of her game that needed attention were tackled daily,” Seemann observed. 

Seemann said he’s also been impressed with Stepaniuk’s leadership skills.

“She was quiet at first and, as she grew more confident and we gave her more responsibility, she has emerged as a very effective leader on and off the court. Any player will tell you she is someone you can approach, who will listen and advise. She’s an incredible person who has a lot of skills outside of volleyball,” he said.

One of those skills is as a nail artist, a talent she developed “mainly because I hated paying $80 at a nail station for my nails to break while I played volleyball.” It’s a hobby she’s refined and grown. Today, she does most of her team’s nails, which also gives her a little spending money.

Stepaniuk also has shown talent as a ceramicist. 

She took ceramics all four years at Ridgefield High School. It grew into a strong skill, and she began selling her creations to teachers, friends and family. Unlike her nail painting hobby, which she envisions dropping after college, she wants to continue with ceramics, maybe as a side hustle, she said.

Stepaniuk particularly likes wheel throwing. “The act of wheel throwing is my favorite part, being able to turn a ball of clay into different shapes. I was also pushing myself to try creating something new or different.”

Cooking, she learned from her mother, Suzanne, and Stepaniuk took foods and baking classes in high school… “but baking was my favorite. By the end of my senior year, I had built a strong relationship with the teacher and was baking daily for dances, bake sales, sales promotions and constantly pushing myself to bake something new.”

At PSU, the cooking has become more practical… “I was on my own and needed to start feeding myself.” Also, the demands of being a collegiate student-athlete left her with little time to cook. “Living on my own and cooking meals for myself and roommates is really where I grew to enjoy cooking. I really enjoy being able to create and cook healthy recipes and feel good about what I’m putting into my body.”

Being a self-described perfectionist may be what she’s best at.

Stepaniuk is highly frustrated that she’s only carrying a 3.97 cumulative GPA with her criminology major “because I am very much a perfectionist, and I am very disappointed I do not have a perfect 4.0.”

Following next fall’s graduation, she plans to take the LSAT and apply for law school.

And Seemann is pleased to have spotted his future libero during that match so many years ago.

“Paige has worked very hard at refining her skill sets. She’s been a real find for us,” he said.

And, did we mention that she was also a Big Sky Defensive Player of the Week in 2023, was MVP in this year’s early-season Joust Tournament and was College Sports Communicators Academic All-District in 2024?