Written by Amanda Hourt
At this point in the season, the Lady Bison volleyball team is 6-8 overall and 1-1 in conference play. At the beginning of the season, the Lady Bisons, led by seniors Emily Tate and Samantha Anderson, were predicted to finish on top of the GSC. Tate is a defensive specialist, and Anderson is a middle blocker.Tate has been playing volleyball since eighth grade, and Harding’s volleyball team was one of the biggest reasons why she came here for college.”Something I asked Coach Giboney before I came here was, ‘Does your team get along off the court?'” Tate said. “Because sometimes you can make it work on the court, but it’s just so much more fun when everybody is actually friends.”Anderson has been playing volleyball since sixth grade and said she “grew up in the gym,” since her mother was a volleyball coach.Since coming to Harding, both Anderson and Tate said some of their favorite memories with the team are trips to different games.”Road trips are always a lot of fun, especially if we win, because Coach is a little more cool about it,” Tate said. “We’re always trying to get Starbucks, or he’ll bribe us with food. In tournaments he’ll say, ‘Well, for how many games you win, you can get Starbucks.’ It’s funny.”Both girls say they are very close to the rest of the team and the coaches.”They joke around with me and call me ‘the old lady’ this year because I’m a fifth-year senior, so I am quite a bit older, it seems like, from the freshmen, but we’re all still really close,” Anderson said. “We have a chemistry.”Looking ahead, Tate and Anderson said they hope to win the Gulf South Tournament this season: their last opportunity to play in the GSC.”I think we have a good chance at winning our conference if we stay level-headed and error-free,” Anderson said. “I think we have a good chance of winning conference.”
