Accomplished Athlete
Whether she has been on the volleyball or basketball court or on the soccer pitch, Abby Peduzzi has been a mainstay on Hilton Head Christian Academy’s varsity girls teams every season since seventh grade.
It’s a remarkable run that will wrap up this spring before she continues her volleyball career at UNC Pembroke.
Before that, she played on the varsity tennis team for two years, and there was that time she had resigned herself to helping the football team until a new student with kicking prowess entered the picture.
“I was so close to being the kicker for them,” Abby says, noting her dad, HHCA head coach Ron Peduzzi, needed a kicker and wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer.“It was going to happen until Chaz Brigstock came to our school and saved me.”
To be clear, she wasn’t shying away from the notion of playing football as much as playing for pops and the perception that perhaps she didn’t earn the job on merit.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ron and Janet Peduzzi instilled in their children an unrelenting work ethic and unmatched love for competition. It’s no accident that J.P. Peduzzi was a three-sport star at HHCA when his not-so-little sister burst on the scene, and now she’s following his path to the next level and hoping to find the same level of success.
J.P. is a wide receiver at NCAA Division II Washington & Jefferson University in Pennsylvania, where he led the Presidents with 54 receptions, 915 receiving yards, and eight touchdown catches as a freshman last fall.
“My brother just did an interview the other day and he said something that really hit home,” Abby recalls. “We never had participation trophies; you won or you lost. That was a good mindset to have. You’re out there to win.”
And everyone can’t win, even when siblings square off.
“I think growing up with my brother, just playing against him and stuff made me become more physical and aggressive,” said Abby, an island resident. “He never let me have it. I always had to work for it.”
Growing up in the Peduzzi family meant seeing things through and giving it your all, especially when you wanted to quit.
“I started playing soccer when I was 3, and I hated it,” laughs Abby, a star on HHCA’s back-to-back state championship teams with a shot at a third this spring. She scored 40 goals last season. “I told them I hated to run and I wasn’t playing soccer anymore. They kept me in it, so that turned out well.”
She took up basketball and often held her own as the only girl on a team of boys, but after fifth grade she wanted to give up on hoops.
Again, she was encouraged to continue playing, and again, her perseverance was rewarded. With Abby as a stabilizing force who can dominate in the paint and knock down outside shots, HHCA began the recent hoops season as winners of four consecutive S.C. Independent School Association state titles.
She finally succeeded in giving up a sport in seventh grade, when it came time to choose between continuing on the tennis team or taking up volleyball.
Fast-forward five years and volleyball is the sport she has grown to love the most and the one she elected to pursue in college.
Despite playing up on Low Country Volleyball Club’s 18U national team since she was a sophomore, Abby flew under the radar and received interest from only a handful of the dozens of coaches she emailed. One of those coaches was at UNC Pembroke, where she attended a camp and found her next home.
“I really loved all the other girls in my recruiting class, and they have a great coaching staff and facilities,” she says. “And they’re building a tradition of success. They just won their conference and made the NCAAs for the first time.”
Peduzzi is leaving a legacy that might never be matched.
“I’ve loved it at HHCA,” Abby says. “The people there are what really make it. I’m friends with everyone on all my teams, and it has brought so many different people into my life. The bonus has been winning.”
In a perfect script, Abby Peduzzi would walk off the soccer pitch for the last time this spring as a champion. But after years of grinding to secure her dreams, winning won’t be the highest objective.
“Just enjoying all the practices and the small moments, because I’ll never get those times back,” she said.
