This Golden Hawk spins like a Cyclone

KALONA

There was no question in Jeorgia Evans’ mind.

Absolutely none.

She’s a Cyclone.

Evans, a volleyball starter the last two years at two-time 3A Regional champion Mid-Prairie and one of the fastest female high school sprinters in the state of Iowa, woke up on the 15th of June and waited for the phone to ring.

It did. Many times.

June 15 of a completed sophomore year is the first day that NCAA DI coaches can contact a high school athlete. So, it’s a big day.

Iowa State called.

The University of Iowa called.

And others.

Just two days later, Jeorgia verbaled to Iowa State. Just like that. It was done.

“They’re kind of a school that popped out of nowhere, that I ended up loving,” Jeorgia said, sitting in her Kalona home with her mom and dad, Mid-Prairie coaches Sherry and Zeb, already wearing an Iowa State sweatshirt.

Do you want to think about that for a minute or two?

“Not gonna change,” she said, laughing.

The verbal commitment finished off a dizzying month for Jeorgia. In late May at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, she won her first state championship in the long jump, made the finals in both the 100- and 200-meter runs with her older sister Jovi, and helped Mid-Prairie finish second in the 4x100 relay. A week later, she participated in an invite-only volleyball camp at Iowa State run by the Cyclones coaches. Ten days later, she’s a Cyclone.

“Once I went to their camp, I ended up loving it there and it ended up being the top place of where I wanted to go,” Jeorgia said.

And it wasn’t just the volleyball. Iowa State is a school that is deeply focused on agriculture in an agricultural state. The Evanses go to the Iowa State Fair nearly every year to show pigs in the 4-H competitions. Ag is big.

She won’t be the only Golden Hawk to hit the Iowa State campus. Mid-Prairie basketball coach Jenny Hobbs made the Iowa State women’s team as a walk-on. Former Mid-Prairie girls basketball and volleyball players Callie Huber and Brylee Gearhart, teammates of Jeorgia during her freshman year, went to Iowa State. As did former boys basketball star Carter Harmsen.

And it’s close. Maybe two hours from Kalona.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “that was a big thing for me.”

And if there’s one thing that a volleyball camp at Oklahoma University proved to her, it was distance.

“That one made me realize I wanted to stay closer to home,” Jeorgia said.

At Iowa State, Jeorgia is expected to be a libero, a defensive specialist and a position she plays in club volleyball but not so much at Mid-Prairie where she attacks the net. Watching many of those club games was Iowa State head coach Christy Johnson-Lynch, whose teams have won more than 400 matches in 21 seasons and reached the NCAA Tournament 17 times.

Jeorgia’s 579 digs in 2025 was the best among any high school sophomore in Iowa, any class, and ranked second overall in Class 3A, sixth in all classes. It was a monster season that also included more than 200 kills.

When Jeorgia arrives at Iowa State in 2028, she may follow All-American Rachel Van Gorp, who, like Jeorgia, was a long jump state champion and sprinter at Heritage Christian Academy in Olathe, Kansas. Van Gorp won it three times.

“If you look at her, she’s the same,” Sherry Evans said. “She was a track star, did the long jump, all the things.”

This past year, Van Gorp was Big 12 Libero of the Year.

Evans will be the second Golden Hawk in recent years to reach NCAA DI volleyball. Former teammate Dakota Mitchell, who was Mid-Prairie’s libero and one of the best defensive players in Iowa during Jeorgia’s freshman season, is a libero at North Texas State. She was named to the American Conference All-Freshman Team last year.

In the meantime, Jeorgia’s older sister, Jovi, has begun her freshman year in volleyball at Indian Hills Community College.

The same night Jovi began her college career, August 14, Iowa State hosted South Dakota State in a volleyball exhibition.

Certainly, Jeorgia is watching. She’s a Cyclone now.

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul