‘She’s really, really a hard-working, nice person’: Grace Wiczek leads Park City to state semifinals

Orem • One thing you can bank on with Grace Wiczek: When she carries the name of Park City on her volleyball uniform, it’s not always just about how she and her fellow Miners play.

Feelings run deep for Wiczek about the community she lives in and the town she’s representing well these days.

Park City swept both Pine View and Green Canyon on Wednesday to earn a berth in the state semifinal round at the Class 4A state tournament.

Wiczek, a junior for the Miners, had 18 kills to lead all players in the 25-21, 25-21, 25-12 sweep of Green Canyon in the quarterfinals. That’s pretty much a normal match, according to Park City coach Matthew Carlson.

“She usually gets around six or seven kills a set,” Carlson said.

Before she started gaining attention as a 6-foot-2 outside hitter who can score points from the right, left or back row, Wiczek already was showing a social consciousness unusual for a person her age.

When she was a student at Treasure Mountain Junior High in 2015, she penned a letter to the editor of the local paper. The Park Record, urging readers to not forget the importance of low-income workers to the city’s “restaurants, ski resorts and other tourist services.”

Wiczek, a ninth-grader at the time, extolled the value of a local health clinic that supplied medical service to the uninsured.

That passion has not dissipated.

“I still value being a part of the community and giving back, just doing whatever you can,” Wiczek said. “People always categorize Park City as this rich community, but there’s so many layers of culture and different people, and it’s important for people to see that.

“That’s not often considered when you think or read about Park City.” Wiczek’s empathy extends everywhere, it seems, and that includes opponents who are on the wrong end of a blistering kill that she delivered.

“She hit a girl in the face in one of our region matches, and she went over to pick her up and help her out,” Carlson said. “That’s Grace. She was apologizing to her in the middle of the match.

“She’s really, really a hard-working, nice person — all the character attributes you’d want in a player.”

While Wiczek would make a nice addition to a college volleyball team in Utah when she graduates from high school, she said she would like to expand her search for a college beyond the state border.

“I would love to go out of state and experience different cultures,” she said. “I feel that would be valuable in gaining those life skills and find out who you are as a person.”

Park City is only two steps away from a state volleyball championship, which would be a first in school history. If that happened Thursday, Wiczek wouldn’t apologize.

“I firmly and 100 percent believe we can go all the way,” she said.