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In Owen Hiltz’s first season at Culver Academy (Indiana), he scored three first-half goals against head coach Chris Spahn’s Kiski (Pennsylvania) High School team. The first was a toe drag, the next was a face dodge, and the last was a shot around a screen. On all three, the defenders didn’t have a chance.

“Out of all (Culver’s) really good players, he just stood out,” Spahn said three years later. “He was just a really hard player to stop, especially with the ball in his stick.”

Spahn, who coached against Hiltz twice during the 5-foot-7 attack’s time at prep school, isn’t the only one with that sentiment. The Daily Orange spoke to coaches Hiltz played against during prep school about what it was like to face the Class of 2020’s No. 2 recruit.

At Culver, Hiltz grew into one of the best players in the nation by his junior year. Spahn distinctly remembers Hiltz’s first season, one where he notched 50 goals and 62 assists. Now in his freshman year at Syracuse, the former Culver No. 22 is third in points, behind fifth-year senior Stephen Rehfuss and sophomore Chase Scanlan.

“He was the best player on the field no matter who we played,” former Culver head coach Jon Posner said.

Trinity (Kentucky) High School head coach Pete Schroeder remembers how Hiltz’s role shifted from off-ball to Culver’s main ball carrier between 2018 and 2019. Schroeder said that Hiltz was “a lot for us to handle in either role.”

Hiltz scored the first two goals of the 2019 National Prep Championship game. Then for the remaining 46 minutes, Hiltz’s defender never left his side, so much so that the attack hardly touched the ball, Posner said. But that drew slides and opened shooting lanes for Hiltz’s teammates, propelling Culver to a 9-5 win.

When Culver played Montgomery Bell (Tennessee) High School in 2020, head coach Matt Garvey said it was hard to prepare for Hiltz. He put current Lafayette defender Noah Mendoza on Hiltz, but the goalie couldn’t react quickly enough to Hiltz’s shots. Garvey said Hiltz’s release angle made it hard for goalies to set their feet and make a save.

“Last year he was a great shooter. They ran plays for him to get shots off,” Garvey said. “When he gets that shot off, you know it’s probably gonna end up in the back of the net.”

Culver was the No. 1 ranked high school team in the country in 2019 and had over 15 upperclassmen with Division I offers in 2020, Garvey said. The powerhouse program finished 20-1 during Hiltz’s junior year, including wins over top-25 Haverford (Pennsylvania) High School and Gonzaga (D.C.) High School.

“You could spend dozens of hours preparing for Culver, but sometimes it just doesn’t do you any good,” Garvey said.

But all three coaches agreed that Hiltz stuck out as one of, if not the, best player on the team. Spahn said Hiltz didn’t stand out on film, but looked “10 times better” scoring in-person.

Now at Syracuse, Hiltz has the second-most points per game among Atlantic Coast Conference freshmen, behind Virginia redshirt freshman Connor Shellenberger. He’s the only freshman starter for the Orange, too.

“It’s just been fun to watch him evolve and play this year at Syracuse,” Garvey said. “You can point to that and say ‘wow it was just last year, last March that we were playing against that guy.’”

Published on April 21, 2021 at 10:24 pm

aekaylor@syr.edu | @cincinnallie