{"id":11185,"date":"2018-09-06T15:33:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T21:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/?p=11185"},"modified":"2018-09-13T23:23:15","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T05:23:15","slug":"on-the-road-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2018\/09\/06\/on-the-road-again\/","title":{"rendered":"On the road again"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the end of the weekend, the Harding volleyball team<\/a> will have spent at least eight hours on the road and will have played at least three matches each weekend for three consecutive weekends.<\/p>\n

Head Coach Meredith Fear<\/a> said that this volleyball season, the team will be starting preseason tournaments earlier than previous seasons. Last year, the team\u2019s first game was at home, and they had a full week before they started traveling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the toughest preseason schedule we\u2019ve ever had, as far as the amount of ranked teams we\u2019re playing and also anytime you\u2019re traveling that far, it\u2019s tougher to play well when you\u2019ve been on the road and when you\u2019ve been on a bus for a long time,\u201d Fear said.<\/p>\n

Starting Aug. 24, the team will travel 24 hours over the course of three consecutive weekends. Four days after Harding started the fall semester, the team travelled to Stephenville, TX, where they played in the Tarleton State Tournament. The following weekend, on Thursday, Aug. 30, the Bisons made the trip to Indianapolis, Indiana for the UIndy Tournament. Today, they will be playing in Pensacola, Florida, in the West Florida Tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cA typical day of traveling for us is hopping on the bus, driving five plus hours, stopping to eat dinner at [a teammate\u2019s] house or a restaurant, practicing and then getting settled in at the hotel before starting our games the next day,\u201d senior outside hitter Emily Clayton<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

Both Clayton and senior defensive specialist Taylor Lake<\/a> agreed that long road trips can be hard, but in the end, the time on the road spent with the team contributes to the time spent on the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like when we travel it helps our team chemistry,\u201d Lake said. \u201cI mean there\u2019s people obviously really tired by the end of the trip, and you don\u2019t always get back to Rhodes feeling your best, but I really think that it\u2019s when we travel that we really get to know each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a student athlete, each player must balance being a full-time student with being a collegiate-level athlete. Especially this early in the school year, being on the road for hours of the weekend and some weekdays, can make studying a difficult task.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt works miraculously,\u201d Lake said. \u201cStudying on the bus is not always easy, but it\u2019s a lot of fun because it\u2019s kind of like a team-building thing where we\u2019re all in this together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bisons enter the season picked by Great American Conference coaches to finish second in the conference, behind Arkansas Tech University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With seven seniors, many of whom have played as starters since their freshman year, this team has high expectations for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve just seen a lot of volleyball over the last four years,\u201d Fear said. \u201cSo keeping them healthy and maintaining that, but as far as their motivation, their drive \u2014 it couldn\u2019t be stronger. They\u2019re very motivated to get to the tournament, win the tournament, and get to the NCAA tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bisons\u2019 first home game will be Sept. 11, at 6 p.m. versus Arkansas Tech University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to play some tough matches, but I think we\u2019re up to the challenge, and I\u2019m just excited for what we have ahead of us,\u201d Lake said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the end of the weekend, the Harding volleyball team will have spent at least eight hours on the road and will have played at least three matches each weekend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15071,"featured_media":11195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[224,149,221,223,173,222],"class_list":["post-11185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-arkansas-tech-university","tag-bisons","tag-bisons-volleyball","tag-great-american-conference","tag-harding-university","tag-meredith-fear"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15071"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}