Athlete of the Week: Kat Hess carries on family tradition at Corona del Mar High School

Katherine Hess, better known to everyone as Kat, is the 14th member of her family to play a sport at Corona del Mar High.

The members of her immediate family never stopped at just one sport.

Her dad, Dan, played basketball, baseball and football for the Sea Kings. He was a member of the 1981 CIF Southern Section Division 3-A championship team in basketball, as was Kat’s uncle, Mike, who went on to play at UC Irvine.

Kat’s older brother, Justin, also played all three sports until his junior year. A standout lineman on the 2013 football team that won the program’s third straight CIF title and the CIF State Division III championship, he now plays football at Pomona-Pitzer.

Kat’s mom, Renee, also played basketball and volleyball growing up. This is the kind of environment in which Kat was raised. Growing up, she played water polo, volleyball, lacrosse, even basketball and baseball with the boys.

“I decided that I loved soccer the most just before I started high school,” Kat Hess said. “I decided to play high school basketball because it was kind of a Hess tradition.”

Saying you want to play two varsity sports in the same season is one thing. Actually following through with that is another, especially because both sports tend to play Pacific Coast League games on Tuesdays. But that’s what Kat Hess has done this season. In reality, it’s nothing short of remarkable.

The soccer game ends around 5 p.m. The basketball game starts at 5:30 sharp. Both are at the same school either home or away, which is essential, but time is literally of the essence.

“I’m usually coming back from the high-five line [in soccer], sprinting to half-field,” Hess said. “I take off my cleats, change out of my clothes, go into my basketball uniform — usually barefoot — and then I run to the other part of the campus to the gym. They’re usually just starting warmups when I get in. When that game’s done, I go home and then I start studying. It’s really crazy sometimes, especially when the [soccer] game runs longer or they’re stalling. Refs aren’t always the most diligent and time-efficient, so there’s always little things that come up. But for the most part, I’ve been able to make every warmup and game, which is impressive I think. I’m proud of that.”

It’s one thing to participate in two sports. It’s another to be a starter and one of the best players on each team. Hess has helped both the girls’ soccer team (9-7-7) and girls’ basketball team (20-6) finish second in league and advance to next week’s CIF Southern Section playoffs.

In soccer, she is a high-level goalie who has competed for the U.S. women’s national Under-17 and Under-18 teams in the past. This is the sport that she will play in college at a to-be-determined location. Hess earned four shutouts in CdM’s 10 league games, an impressive total when you consider that she didn’t play in both Woodbridge games, one because of a sprained ankle and one because she was on a recruiting trip.

Hess and junior Hailey Neumann, who plays center back, are leaders for the CdM defense. The two have an increasing friendship, CdM Coach Bryan Middleton said, because both love soccer so much. As for Hess, he thinks she has a promising career ahead of her.

“I think she could also be a top-level coach in her future,” Middleton said. “She has that mind set, she knows the game inside out and backward and she’s a soccer junkie.”

Hess first got called up to play for the U17 national team in January, 2013. At that point, she had just turned 14.

“At first I was kind of surprised, like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’” Hess recalled. “It just came out of nowhere. An email pops up and I’m like, ‘What?’ But I was really excited. I felt like I was really prepared. I was training with [CdM girls’ soccer alumni] Annie Alvarado and Karsten Sigband. When they were seniors, I had been training with their club team at the [SC] Blues for a year at that point.”

Hess went to Costa Rica in March of that year for a few “friendly” games with Mexico, Costa Rica and Japan. She fractured her hip, but recovered in time to travel abroad again to Jamaica on October, 2013, for the World Cup qualifying for that age division.

There, she had to deal with adversity. The Americans lost in the semifinals to Mexico in penalty kicks. If the U.S. had won that game, it would have made the World Cup.

“We were 25 goals for and one goal against, and we ended up not qualifying,” Hess said. “As crazy as that sounds. It was tough. The thing with soccer, different than any other sport, is that it can go completely different ways. Anything can happen. You can be dominating a team, and someone accidentally slips on a blade of grass and you lose. We know that we probably could have gone all the way, but we just got a little bit unlucky for a few minutes [in losing to Mexico in penalty kicks].”

Hess said it was a highlight in Feb. 2014, though, when she helped the U.S. win a tournament at the National Training Center in Carson. That tournament included a win over World Cup champion Japan.

In high school soccer, Hess split time in goal as a freshman at CdM with then-junior Kendall Mulvaney. But, before her sophomore year, she transferred to JSerra. She was going to have to miss much of the school year to travel with the national team, and JSerra was able to help her accomplish that. She played sparingly for the JSerra high school team that year, playing in just two games.

However, she again had adversity strike as a junior, when she transferred back to CdM. The CIF Southern Section ruled her ineligible to play.

“I laugh at it now, because it was such a small amount of time, but the CIF Southern Section felt like I went [to JSerra] for soccer,” Hess said. “ Honestly, I don’t know why they disapproved my appeal to come and play last year [for CdM]. We did it for academic reasons, but I’m actually glad that it worked out that way, because I was able to play basketball and that was great.

“I knew I wanted to play a sport no matter what. I went for it. I went to a couple of basketball practices, and I loved it. And it helped so much with my soccer as a goalie ... it’s a really great way of cross-training. Fitness, hand-eye coordination.”

Hess was a key player off the bench last year for CdM girls’ hoops, which won its second league title in program history and advanced to the semifinals of the CIF Southern Section Division 3AA playoffs before losing at eventual champion North Torrance. This year, she plays an even bigger role. She’s a starter and is averaging seven points, seven rebounds and two steals per game.

“She means a lot, just her energy, her athleticism and her aggressiveness,” said CdM Coach Mark Decker, who sees a lot of Hess this year as she’s also in his fourth-period AP Psychology class. “She really meshes well with our post players, and some of our guards that are a little bit more finesse and shooters. She’s that grit in-between, kind of that missing element. I think that’s really pushed us to where we are.”

One of those post players is UC Santa Barbara-bound senior Natalia Bruening, the two-time Newport-Mesa Player of the Year. She smiles when Hess’ name is brought up.

“It’s an honor to be playing with her,” Bruening said. “I remember back in the day, when I was watching the varsity games as a little fifth-grader. She’d always be shooting at halftime with her dad. My mom [Julia] would always point her out and be like, ‘Hey, you need to get her to play basketball. She’s going to be really good one day.’ She finally joined last year, and I had memories of it, but I hadn’t really talked to her since then. It’s really cool to see how she’s blossomed into this awesome player.”

Hess thinks it’s cool, too. She will have to wait to see what her schedule will be like next week with playoffs. But she knows that whatever sport she is playing in, she will give it her all.

The Hess tradition is alive and well.

“I’m looking at it as kind of going out with a bang,” she said. “I’ve played two sports that I’ve loved, I’ve had fun with it and we were able to be successful with both. It’s something that not a lot of people have the chance to do, to play both and to be able to make an impact. Not a lot of people have that opportunity, but we were able to make it work and I completely recommend it. It’s stressful and it’s difficult because you’re always trying to be two places at once ... but I have no regrets.”

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Kat Hess

Born: Oct. 2, 1998

Hometown: Newport Beach

Height: 5-foot-11

Sports: Soccer and basketball

Year: Senior

Coaches: Bryan Middleton and Mark Decker

Favorite food: Spaghetti

Favorite movie: “Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi”

Favorite athletic moment: Beating Japan while playing for the U.S. U17 National women’s soccer team in Feb. 2014.

Week in review: Hess helped the CdM girls’ basketball team earn league wins over Beckman and University, and shut out both the Patriots and Trojans as the girls’ soccer goalie.