Young sportswoman excels at athletics, aviation

LA FERIA — Peanut is obviously daddy’s little girl.

So it’s only natural that La Feria senior Hannah Wolf — that’s “Peanut” to father Steve Wolf — has decided to pursue her pilot’s license just like he did when he was a senior in high school.

“It’s a great opportunity to do something different, to be a little bit above and beyond,” she said. “Luckily I’ve had someone in my life who has made that possible: my dad. I like to be outgoing, so how much more outgoing can I get as an 18-year-old?”

Steve Wolf’s influence over the youngest of his three daughters is evident. In addition to her flying pursuits, she goes bird hunting with her father and helps him out on the family farm. He has even has taught her welding.

“I don’t have any sons, so I had to make a boy out of one of them,” he said. “And Hannah was always the bravest one.”

“Yeah, I hate when he says that,” she said.

The young aviator is about halfway through her training to get a private pilot’s license. She began the process two summers ago with instructor Mike Baker, who is based out of Weslaco’s Mid Valley Airport. She flies a Cessna 150, a basic two-seat plane that is used to train pilots.

“She’s very adept at it,” Baker said. “She’s got a feel for it. When you start out, you start out with the basics, and Hannah picked them up very quickly. She’s very confident and quick to understand stuff. … Hannah’s a real good student, good pilot and is making good progress.”

The teen’s busy schedules with volleyball and the upcoming basketball season have made it difficult for her to get the flying hours she needs, but Baker expects her to get her private pilot’s license by next summer.

FLYING OVER

Steve Wolf has been fascinated with airplanes since he was a little boy. He used to love to lie in his father’s cotton fields and watch the crop dusters fly overhead.

“They’d spray the heck out of me,” he said. “But it didn’t stop me.”

Steve Wolf was a member of the Confederate Air Force — now known as the Commemorative Air Force, an all-volunteer, nonprofit group of military aircraft enthusiasts — and flew in several air shows from 1978 to ’90 when it was based in Harlingen.

Learning to fly is a natural progression for his daughter, who has grown accustomed to soaring over her competition as one of the area’s top high school volleyball and basketball athletes.

La Feria High School’s Lionettes volleyball team is state-ranked for the first time in school history — No. 16 in the most recent Texas Girls Coaches Association Class 3A poll — and they play Devine in a second-round playoff at 5 p.m. today in Robstown.

Hannah Wolf has been an all-district performer in volleyball and basketball since she was a sophomore. She was named all-district MVP two years ago and is the odds-on favorite to earn the same accolades this season after leading her team to a perfect 14-0 mark in District 32-3A play this season.

Steve Wolf said his daughter owes some of her athletic prowess to older sisters Kelly, 22, and Kate, 20, who were also volleyball and basketball stars at La Feria High.

“This little girl had to keep up with them when she was at home,” he said. “That’s what helped her big-time.”

For Hannah Wolf, competing against her sisters at home was always a challenge she enjoyed.

“It was one of those things, anything they could do I can do better,” she said.

An outside hitter by trade, she showed her versatility earlier in the season when she played in place of the team’s injured setter.

“She can play any position I ask her to,” La Feria coach Rebea Fraga said. “She’s pretty easygoing and even-tempered. She’s very positive with her teammates and usually tries to encourage them.”

ELEVATION AND ELATION

Hannah Wolf achieved her biggest feat in the air in July when she completed her first solo flight in Edinburg. Eight months of training went into preparing for it. The flight was just a couple of touch-and-gos, but she said the feeling was indescribable while she was in the air, by herself and in control.

“My stomach did a few flips, but after I got over that, I just loved it,” she said. “More than anything, I was excited. I didn’t want to stop.”

The first thing she did when she landed was call her father.

“I smiled for 10 minutes straight,” she said. “I couldn’t wait to tell him. That whole day, I couldn’t get over that little high.”

Friend Jordan Stewart remembers what a nervous wreck the young aviator was before that first solo, and her elation after.

“She was speaking gibberish because she was so excited,” said Stewart, a senior member of La Feria High’s soccer team who has been Hannah Wolf’s best friend since they were in elementary school. “I wasn’t scared for her because I know she can pretty much do anything she wants to do. … She’s not afraid to do anything, and she’s not afraid to try anything.”

NO FEAR

Hannah Wolf considers herself fearless, and not much scares her — well, except for tarantulas. She has gone hunting for doves, pheasant and whitewings with her father since she was a little girl. She started as a “birddog,” retrieving the birds her father shot, and then when she was 6, she got her first shotgun, a .410 single shot. She has since graduated to a 20-gauge automatic shotgun.

In September, she used that gun to shoot down a whitewing in a sunflower field on some property her family owns in Mercedes. When she went to retrieve the bird she noticed it was caught in the mouth of a 5-foot blue indigo snake. Not thinking twice about it, the teen picked up the snake to see if she could get her bird, which was locked tightly in the serpent’s mouth.

“I knew it was safe to pick it up,” she said. “That snake wasn’t going to let go of that bird no matter what happened. I never really think of anything that scares me. I’ve never really come in contact with anything that would.”

Hannah Wolf’s farming pursuits are usually restricted to irrigating — moving pipes from one field to another. But there was one time two years ago when her dad got behind on his farm work and pulled her out of school for a day so she could plant 100 acres of corn.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” the teen said. “I love to do that kind of stuff, getting in the mud, picking up pipes and stuff. It definitely beats being indoors. There’s not much you can do indoors.”

And when it comes to flying and volleyball, she sees many parallels.

“You have to be aware of everything all the time on the court and in the plane,” she said. “You are always scanning, having to multi-task, knowing where you are and what you are going to do. You have to be prepared for both of those.”

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David Hinojosa covers high school volleyball for Valley Freedom Newspapers. You can reach him at (956) 683-4442 or via e-mail at dhinojosa@themonitor.com.