LUMBERTON — In her own words, if Alona Hanna does it, she “goes hard” at it — especially within the athletic arena.

“I think (I’m a good athlete) just because I go hard at everything I do,” the recent Lumberton High School graduate said. “I’m very aggressive at anything I do, I’m outgoing, and even if I’m not doing the best, at least I’m trying to do it as hard I can, so it definitely sticks out and makes people notice me.”

The result is a well-rounded high school athletic career filled with accolades in both softball and volleyball. After senior seasons in which she was among Robeson County’s best in both, Hanna has been named as The Robesonian’s All-Around Female Athlete of the Year for 2023-24.

“She can run, she can jump, she can hit with power, she hits the volleyball with power too,” Lumberton softball coach Mackie Register said. “She’s smart, she’s got a good IQ on all the games she plays. She’s a competitor; that’s one thing, she doesn’t like to lose, so that’s probably her biggest thing is that she’s going to find a way to win somehow.”

Hanna earned Robeson County Player of the Year recognition in softball; she was also one of the players considered for the same award in volleyball. She finishes her high school career with six total All-County selections, three in each sport.

“She’s competitive, first of all, which is one thing that makes her stand out a little bit, just her competitiveness,” said Ivy Johnson, Lumberton’s head coach in girls basketball and an assistant in volleyball. “She just did whatever was needed that the team needed her to do well in. … I love that kid. She’s competitive and she’s got a fire to her when she’s going to compete, and she wants to win.”

Softball is the sport that Hanna will continue to play collegiately after signing with UNC Pembroke last fall. Her award-winning senior season included a .538 batting average, setting new Lumberton single-season records with 39 runs and 17 doubles, and the school doubles record for a career with 45. She also had 33 RBIs, five home runs and two triples and a 1.591 OPS at the plate, while compiling a 23-for-23 clip on stolen bases and adding six outfield assists.

“She’s special, because she set the school record in doubles, she’s liable to hit a home run too, or she can get a walk or if she hits a single she can steal second,” Register said. “She set the school record for runs scored. She’s just an offensive weapon; she can do it in a lot of different ways.”

Hanna was part of a strong senior class for the Pirates softball team that set a single-season school wins record in each of the last two seasons, with 24 this spring, and reached the third round of the 4A state playoffs for the first time after winning the United-8 Conference championship.

In volleyball, Hanna had 225 kills from the outside hitter position, but played all over the court, adding 318 digs and 39 aces to her resume. She helped lead the Pirates to their first state playoff appearance since 2019.

“She’s very smart, on and off the court,” said Kali Carter, who coached Lumberton volleyball for the last three seasons. “She’s a very tedious person, and a lot of people will look at that as maybe an attitude, but … she looks more at the mental side, knowing the sport, instead of the physical side, and I feel like that makes her smarter on and off the court.”

Playing volleyball at such a high level, Hanna said, didn’t come as natural, but came through a lot of hard work over her career.

“When I first started volleyball I was not good at all,” Hanna said. “My coaches literally built me up for volleyball, because I didn’t know how to do the right mechanics, I didn’t know how to swing right. But it was something I wasn’t good at, and I wasn’t used to not being good at a sport, so it made me want to work harder to be good at it.”

During her senior year, Hanna even briefly tried her hand at basketball, joining the Pirates girls basketball team for the first couple of weeks of the season.

“I definitely got knocked back a little bit, because that was definitely a different sport for me,” Hanna said. “It was fun for the time that I did it; I just realized it wasn’t for me.”

“She could’ve been good if she had given it time; I wish she would’ve played all four years,” Johnson said.

But while basketball ultimately didn’t work out, Hanna’s volleyball and softball careers often fed off each other, as each sport made her better in the other.

“Volleyball, I definitely worked my legs out; I’m constantly jumping, doing box jumps,” Hanna said. “The overhand swing is just like a throw, it’s the same motion over and over again. I’m always active on the volleyball court, so it prepares me going into softball, because it gives me faster reflexes when the ball’s coming at me faster, to move faster. I think it’s good for an athlete to always have another sport, because your body can adjust different ways and maybe work parts that you haven’t worked before.”

“I’m a firm believer in kids playing a lot of multiple sports; I think nowadays kids specialize too much into one sport,” Register said. “I think when you play other sports and you learn how to win in other sports, or even failure in other sports to help you, you can learn from your failures and stuff, and I think that’s a big plus in becoming a good athlete, becoming a winner.”

The uncommon combination of speed and power she possessed in softball also showed in volleyball.

“If you can swing at the ball, and put it to a corner, down the line, in the middle of the court, if you hit it hard enough she could break it through a lot of blocks,” Carter said. “And the speed helped her with back row; if she was back row, she could move really well, she could get behind another girl and chase it down, or get a shank off the arm.”

Coaches say Hanna has shown great growth through her high school years, from making the varsity softball team as a freshman through completing her seventh combined varsity season this spring.

“She was always a confident player, but when you move cockiness into confidence, it definitely makes a person well-rounded and more knowledgeable on the court,” Carter said. “You can always be confident, but her attitude definitely developed a lot the three years I had her.”

“That’s the way you want to see your athletes improve,” Register said. “The way she’s leaving us, I’m proud of everything she’s accomplished in her career, and … she’s left our program in a good spot, but mainly I think she’s where she needs to be to go to that next level.”

Hanna says one of the difficulties of being a multi-sport athlete came in looking forward, deciding which sport she wanted to continue playing in college.

“One of the big challenges for me was definitely this year, trying to decide over the years whether I wanted to pursue volleyball or softball in college, because I love both of them so much and I was good in both of them,” Hanna said. “I just had to think about what my heart wanted more.”

Ultimately choosing softball, she’ll enter the 12-month grind of playing a college sport having already been practically a year-round athlete at the high school level, hoping that will ease the transition as she joins the Braves.

“I’m definitely nervous and I hope that high school has prepared me a little bit for it, but I know that high school is nothing like college, and I hope I can balance out everything while still excelling in my sport,” Hanna said.

There shouldn’t be any doubt that she’ll be trying hardest, though, after everything that attitude has gotten her so far. And when she “goes hard,” good things happen.

“Being the competitor that she is, she’ll find a way,” Register said. “If she’s not doing something better than someone else, she’ll figure out a way to do it. She works hard; she’s a good athlete. There’s nothing Loni can’t do when it comes to sports.”