Maggie Calcaterra graduated from Herrin High School in 1993 — volleyball, basketball, softball, and swimming, constantly in motion alongside her twin sister, who did everything she did.

"I was always doing something very athletic," she said.

That part hasn't changed.

After high school, the sisters enrolled at the University of Evansville together. When her sister got engaged and decided to come home, Maggie's answer was immediate.

"If you're going home, I'm going home."

Rend Lake College coach Dave Ellingsworth had been recruiting both of them all along. He took them. They played softball and basketball there for a year and a half before both transferred to SIU, where Maggie finished a degree in secondary education with plans to teach history.

The plans changed fast. She couldn't land a teaching job — she jokes now that she was getting edged out by football coaches. So she went back to school and earned a master's in educational psychology to become a school counselor. That opened a coaching path that would define the next two decades: assistant at John A. Logan, three years at Carbondale High School, three at Kaskaskia College, seven at IUPUI in Indianapolis.

She swore off coaching when she came home from Indianapolis. Then Southeastern Illinois College, where she'd taken a job as an academic advisor, asked her to coach.

She said she'd do it for a couple of years. Six years later, she was finally done.

While at SIC, an opening came up to teach psychology. She needed 18 more credit hours — so she went back and earned a second master's, this one in psychology. She taught there for 12 years. Now she's in her second year at Shawnee Community College, and she loves it.

"There are so many different things that people don't even realize that are involved with psychology," she said.

She's also working on a doctorate in Higher Education Administration.

The busyness isn't accidental. When she talks to her Shawnee students, she describes her college schedule: up early, class, homework, practice, a shift at Target, another workout, more homework, not much sleep. Her parents didn't have a lot of money. "I knew it was on me to get a scholarship." Sport wasn't just a passion — it was the plan.

What she says to student-athletes now is what she says to herself: everything you learn here is applicable out there. The discipline, the time management, the psychology of adversity — it all transfers.

"What you're doing here doesn't seem like it's that big a deal, but you'll see when you get into the real world that everything that you learned here is applicable there."

She still visits high schools monthly to talk to student-athletes about sports psychology — Marion this year, Herrin the year before. She gives hitting lessons twice a week at the Wildcat Den in Marion. The mission hasn't changed since she was a player.

The deepest roots, though, are Herrin.

Her grandparents, Joe and Evelyn Calcaterra, are both in the Herrin High School Hall of Fame. They drove the sisters where they needed to be, showed up consistently, and pushed without overreaching. "If it wasn't for them, I don't think my sister and I would have been nearly as successful athletically."

It was also her grandfather's illness that ultimately brought her home from Indianapolis. He had Alzheimer's. She got back in time to spend a couple of months with him before he passed. The career pivot back home turned out to be more than a career decision.

Coach Bruce Jilek was the other giant of her Herrin years — legendary softball coach, early-morning practices, perpetual presence. "He was like a second father to me," she said. "I saw him more than I saw my mom and dad a lot." Teachers like Arma Raski, Mr. Starnes, and Byron Keener also checked in consistently, in the quiet way that actually matters.

"Not in an overbearing way," she said. "Just, you know, hey, how's it going? What's going on? Always just checking in."

Today, she and her partner are raising a blended family: a 12-year-old, a 3-year-old they adopted ("he's a lot, but he's worth it"), three grown stepchildren, and three grandchildren — one of them older than the youngest.

She lives in Marion now. But she keeps coming back to Herrin, and to the student-athletes who are where she was thirty years ago.

She wouldn't slow down if she tried.