Concordia-St. Paul Athletic Hall of Fame
A member of Concordia-St. Paul volleyball’s first NCAA Division II Championship squad, Maria (Steinhagen) Sperl would go on to win a pair of NCAA Championships (2007 & 2008) as well as being a starter on the 2006 team that carried the highest team GPA in the country (3.69).
The Alexandria, Minnesota native (Jefferson High School) was coined as a “buzzsaw” for her dominance in the 2007 NCAA Championship run and was named to the NCAA Championships All-Tournament Team during each of CSP’s title runs in 2007 and 2008, along with being named to the 2006 NCAA All-Tournament Team during regional competition as a sophomore.
A two-time All-American, (Steinhagen) Sperl contributed to a program that produced a cumulative 139-13 overall record and a 59-1 mark in Northern Sun play including four NSIC regular season and two NSIC Tournament titles. The Golden Bears reached the NCAA Region Championship match (Sweet Sixteen) each of her four years including three region titles and a pair of national championships.
She was part of three perfect NSIC seasons and competed in 37 of the program’s 59-straight NSIC wins in 2005, 2006 and part of 2007. She helped establish a 75-match winning streak with the first 37 straight wins in the 2008 season that culminated with a national championship win on her home floor at Gangelhoff Center.
The two championship runs that she co-captained in 2007 and 2008 were the start of seven straight NCAA Championships and a run of nine total national titles to this day.
She holds the NCAA Division II single game hitting percentage record with a perfect 1.000 attack percentage, terminating 10 kills in 10 attempts at St. Cloud State (10/3/06) as well as the single match blocks record of 14 against Wayne State (11/10/06).
In her career, she’s currently ranked fourth in career total blocks (438) and fifth in blocks per set (1.09) while ranking 12th in the program’s career kills list with 1,194. During her breakout sophomore season, she produced 153 total blocks which ranks fourth in the current record books for a season.
She ranked second in the league in hitting percentage as a sophomore (.344, 37th DII) and junior (.318, 67th DII) and fifth as a senior (.343, 31st DII), and fourth in the league in kills as a junior (3.70). On the other side of the net, she ranked in the league’s top eight in blocks three years in a row including second as a sophomore (1.17, 54th DII) and league leader as a senior (1.05, 37th DII).
A CoSIDA (now named Google Cloud) Academic All-America First Team selection as a senior in 2008, she completed her degree in art design in 2009 before pursuing a master’s degree in speech-language pathology in 2014 from Northeastern University.
Her professional career began in 2014 with Chisago Lakes School District and was followed by positions with Community of Peace Academy, Speech Partners in educational SLP and Sanford Health Medical Center in medical SLP before her current position with Hastings School District as a speech-language pathologist.
She remains active in the community as a volunteer for The Studio School, Project SUCCESS and in coaching (White Bear Lake, Visitation, Chisago Lakes, Community of Peace Academy).
A St. Paul resident, she married her husband, Simon in October of 2016.
