A joke turned senior Marilyn Popplewell into a three-sport varsity athlete. 

“I just happened to be in the weight room lifting at the same time that the throws team was in there on a Sunday, and I was just doing my own thing,” Popplewell said. “The throwing coach jokingly asked me if I wanted to go to their javelin practice on Tuesday and see if I liked it. I just laughed at first. And then she was like, ‘if you actually want to do it, you can come and try it out.’ I had nothing to do that day at that time, so I was like, ‘why not?’ I just went out there, and it was kind of fun, so I stuck with it.”

Popplewell is now an outside hitter for the Chargers volleyball team, a forward on the basketball team, and throws the javelin on the track and field team for Hillsdale. She was recruited to play volleyball, playing middle hitter in high school before transitioning to outside hitter for the Chargers. 

During her four years on the volleyball team, Popplewell was twice awarded the American Volleyball Coaches Association Honorable Mention All-American, twice named to the AVCA’s All-Midwest Region team, once named to the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics’ All-Midwest Region team, and was named to the Great Midwest Athletic Conference’s First Team All-G-MAC.

“I got here, and I played middle for like two weeks, or like in one of our scrimmages, and then immediately my coach was like, ‘No, you have to learn a different position, because this is not going to work out for you,’” Popplewell said. “And I totally understood. I was a little bit undersized to play middle here, so I transitioned to the outside. It took a lot of work to get to the point where I even felt confident just hitting the ball.”

As her volleyball career came to an end, Popplewell decided she wanted to play basketball again, a sport she had not competitively played since she was 18. 

“My grandpa coached me in basketball. It was more of a family oriented sport, like everybody in my family knows basketball and it’s just something that we can all connect on,” Popplewell said. “I chose to play basketball this year just because I missed it and I genuinely just wanted to experience the sport again, I guess.”

She began practicing, and then playing, with the basketball team a few days after her volleyball season ended. Head volleyball coach Chris Gravel said he supported her decision to play basketball and thinks that there are benefits to athletes playing more than one sport.

“It does develop a lot of different coordination, with situations and balance, and I think it’s really beneficial when they do finally decide on one sport to play multiple sports, even for injury prevention,” Gravel said. “They’re using muscles that they normally wouldn’t use from one sport to another. It can only be healthy.”

Head women’s basketball coach Brianna Brennan said she was initially excited to add an experienced collegiate upperclassman athlete to her roster and found that Popplewell was a strong contributor to the team and its success. 

“We actually had an injury down the stretch, and she was able to step into that position and honestly help us tremendously as we made the conference tournament and then the NCAA tournament,” Brennan said. “Every week, she was doing at least three individual workouts on top of our practices. She was watching film on top of her practices on her own or with a coach. And so again, she was just really hungry and willing to do anything we needed to help the team.”

The women’s basketball team had its best season in 16 years, and it was only the fifth time in its history that a team had won 20 or more games in a season. Brennan said Popplewell largely contributed to the team’s success. Popplewell’s success is not unique to her athletic career, according to Brennan.

“Off the court, she’s always striving for excellence,” Brennan said. “And you know, of course, that carries on to the court. But whether it’s in the classroom, whether it’s relationships, no matter what she does, she really does it with the utmost excellence — that’s the best way to put it.”

Despite her short time training Popplewell, track and field associate head coach Jessica Bridenthal said she has already noticed her dedication. 

“You can tell that she has trained at a really high level athletically for a long time,” Bridenthal said. “I think she’s very deliberate in how she works out and the amount of effort she puts in, I think that’s really evident. There’s not very many people who could dual sport, let alone do three sports in college. That’s obviously someone who is really good at committing to a high level of intensity.”

Popplewell took first place in her field debut in the javelin throw with a throw of 33.63 meters at the Hillsdale Outdoor Invitational on April 5. 

“I’m excited to see how far she can throw that javelin. Just because it’s not my sport doesn’t mean I don’t still have high expectations of what she can accomplish,” Gravel said.