{"id":4889,"date":"2014-08-28T21:51:55","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:21:58","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"volleyball-team-ready-to-defend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2014\/08\/28\/volleyball-team-ready-to-defend\/","title":{"rendered":"Volleyball team ready to defend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Lady Bisons were picked second in the Great American Conference preseason poll and have aspirations to return to the national tournament.<\/p>\n<p>They were undefeated in conference play last season, but fell short in last year&#8217;s championship game. Head coach Meredith Fear said that even though keeping the 28 game winning streak alive is a goal, the focus has been shifted.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are putting more emphasis on peaking at the conference tournament,&#8221; Fear said. &#8220;We&#8217;re really switching our focus to winning the conference tournament over being undefeated.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Three seniors graduated, last year leaving the floor open for younger players to step up as leaders on the court. Junior Molly Howard, outside hitter, is one of those players.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It feels like we have a new team, to be honest with you,&#8221; Howard said. &#8220;We&#8217;re really dynamic in different ways than we were last year. We mesh well together.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Senior Taryn Eubank said Arkansas Tech University, who was picked first in the GAC preseason poll, and Southern Nazarene University will most likely be the toughest teams to beat.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They are good programs, but if we play our game we should be fine,&#8221; Eubank said.<\/p>\n<p>As the first game of the 2014 season draws near, Fear said she wants to encourage the student body to come watch and bring energy and excitement to the Rhodes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Come give volleyball a try, even if you don&#8217;t know that much about it,&#8221; Fear said. &#8220;It&#8217;s exciting and fast-paced; a lot happens in a short amount of time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Lady Bisons play their first exhibition game on Sept. 2 against Lyon College in the Rhodes Field House at 7 p.m. and in the Christian Brother&#8217;s Tournament on Sept. 5 and 6 in Memphis, Tenn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lady Bisons were picked second in the Great American Conference preseason poll and have aspirations to return to the national tournament. They were undefeated in conference play last season,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14530,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-4889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-hurricane-florence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889","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\/14530"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}