Haley Burgdorf is a big fan of the Michael Jordan mindset.

After a junior season where the St. Charles North star lit up the stat sheet, the Penn State commit sat down with coach Lindsey Hawkins to discuss the game plan for her senior season.

It was there that Burgdorf’s favorite basketball player was bought up, and led to them watching “The Last Dance,” a docuseries about the rise of the Chicago Bulls while Jordan played.

“He always had the other pieces, but not everything was around him,” Burgdorf said. “But when it was his time to shine, he would take the ball and he would shoot the last shot.”

It’s an approach that may not have produced the same eye-popping stats on the court, but led to plenty of success for the North Stars.

Even while spreading the love, Burgdorf thrived on the court, putting up 435 kills, 198 digs, 52 aces and 25 blocks as a senior, leading the North Stars to a 35-4 record. She was also named an Under Armor All-American, a first-team All-Stater for the second straight season and repeated as the DuKane Conference Player of the Year.

Considering the accolades, Burgdorf has been named the 2025 Kane County Chronicle girls volleyball Player of the Year.

“There’s an episode in the series where Jordan talks about leaning on Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant and Dennis Rodman and taking them under his wing,” Hawkins said. “I feel like Haley just adopted that persona. Whatever we were going to accomplish this year, it’d be because we were functioning as a whole team rather than just five players around her.

“I feel like that was her focus this year. How can I make all these other people around me better so that we are better as a team?”

Burgdorf turned her focus on the improvement of the team. The oldest and most experienced of the group, she made it her mission to have everyone clicking at their best, from middle Sidney Wright and fellow outside Amber Czerniak getting plenty of looks at the net, to helping junior libero Addison Kashuba prepare for the new role.

“I think this year was just the confidence sort of leadership because everyone is going to look to you when something goes wrong or you do something off and see how they’ll react,” Burgdorf said. “Jordan always gave his teammates feedback and had them behind his back, and I think that’s the kind of leadership that I took into this year.”

It was that cohesiveness that led to one of the most successful seasons in St. Charles North history. Of the North Stars’ 35 wins, all but one of them were via straight sets. And of their nine dropped sets on the year, eight of them were to either Marist or Benet, the two teams that played in the Class 4A state final.

“Teams had a really hard time scoring on us, one was because of the defense and the work Burgdorf did with the libero,” Hawkins said. “But also on offense, everyone was keying in on Haley and not expecting the other girls to come out and get a ton of kills.

“She still had a ton of kills this year, but nowhere near the 600 she had last year. And that’s really because she took the sacrifice and said that we need to be a fully functioning team.”

Burgdorf will begin her next journey in the coming weeks. After playing in the Under Armor All-American game on New Year’s Day in Orlando, she’ll leave for Happy Valley on Jan. 8.

There, she’ll go back to being the youngest player on the team, a situation she’s been used to since starting to play up a grade level in club since she was 11.

“I just really hope I can make an impact wherever I am,” Burgdorf said. “Whether that’s with Under Armor, maybe with USA Volleyball and definitely with Penn State, I want to prove that I am a sensational pin. I might be small compared to most of them but I feel I have the confidence to do that.”

Burgdorf exits the program as the best volleyball player in North Stars history, finishing with 1,658 kills, 758 digs and 162 aces, all of which are top marks in the program.

And Hawkins doesn’t see that fact changing for a long time.

“She’s going to lead in those statistics for quite a while,” Hawkins said. “She just dominated in every aspect of the game at the high school level. More than just her kills, she’s just impacted the game in so many ways.”