Life as a freshman student-athlete (Part 2)

Today is the second of a two-part entry in which our freshmen discuss their first year as a college student-athlete. This year's four freshmen all came to Kent State from different states, spanning from Florida in the South to California on the West Coast.

Maddie Moxley

My time so far at Kent State has been a mixture of emotions and experiences. Moving this far away from home has been hard, but very rewarding. I feel like I have been coming into my own person because of it. When I get homesick, my teammates are always there for me. It has only been two months and already I have lost track of how many times I’ve thought to myself how lucky I am to have the teammates and coaches that I have.

Learning to manage my time with classes, tests, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, and studying took some getting used to, but after the first week of travel and preseason I finally settled into my routine. I feel like I have everything figured out now and have been focused on school and volleyball.  

One of the most stressful things about the first two weeks was being undeclared in my major. Initially, I had no Idea what it was that I wanted to major in. After my first week of my Intro to Psychology class and a great conversation with one of our seniors, Hannah Herc, I finally declared Psychology as my major. I don’t think I would have been as interested in the subject had it not been for Hannah, but now I am ecstatic about my major and all of my future classes at Kent!!!

Bianca Cifaldi

I really like it here. I was super nervous coming in because I have a big family at home and knew I was going to get homesick. I was definitely homesick a lot at first, but it’s been a lot easier to deal with as I’ve grown closer with all of the girls. Friendships on the team grew very quickly. It didn’t take time for it to get not awkward and we all just kind of fit right in.

Our teams understands that we all do things a lot differently. Usually when you’re with a team, you’re with them for a longer period of time, but being new, you have to get used to everyone and how they react to certain things. I feel like this team does a really good job of it. We all celebrate different and are intense in different ways, but we all deal with it and feed off of it.

Usually I’ not really big in school, but I’ve taken it super seriously and I’m enjoying it. I feel like playing volleyball is helpful for me. If I was just a student, I would feel like I have a lot more free time to do whatever I want and wouldn’t be able to manage my time as efficiently. But being a student-athlete, I definitely take my time more seriously. When I have to be doing homework, I’m doing homework, and that usually doesn’t happen with me. But I’m getting the hang of it.

I definitely realized that I wasn’t in high school anymore when went I went to my lecture class for psychology and there were 400 students and it took me by surprise.