Lakeside grad digs deep in national championship
Lakeside graduate Meghan Fuller-Freeman was a force to be reckoned with when she played for the Rams volleyball team, but her prowess on the court helped lead Hendrix to the NCAA Division III National Championships at Hickory Point Beach in Tavares, Florida.
A 2019 graduate of Lakeside, Fuller-Freeman signed with the Warriors volleyball team, but Hendrix started a beach volleyball program her freshman year. The beach volleyball coach, who was also the assistant coach for the indoor volleyball team, encouraged her to take part in the outdoor version of the sport, which is played in the spring.
“I figured it’d be a good way to stay in shape, and I thought it’d probably be fun” Fuller-Freeman said. “And so, I tried it out, and I ended up really liking it.”
Beach volleyball is played outdoors on a sand court that measures 16 meters by 8 meters as opposed to a hardwood floor that measures 18 meters by 9 meters, and while the indoor sport has six players on each side of the court, beach has two for each.
Fuller-Freeman said that the game is also much more strenuous.
“Playing in the sand is like so much harder, and like being able to jump and just moving in general is so much harder,” she said. “It’s honestly like just way more physical exertion than indoor is. So that’s kind of why I started playing is because like, I kind of thought it’d be like a good way to stay in shape for indoor. But … I also ended up really liking it, too, as the added bonus of being able to play indoor.”
While the actual beach volleyball season starts in February, the team is out on the courts in January, which can be problematic.
“It’s definitely interesting, especially in January, it’s like freezing,” Fuller-Freeman said. “But by like March, it kind of warms up. And then by April it’s, like, so hot. … The weather is so variable during the season.”
As one of the primary hitters in indoor volleyball, Fuller-Freeman’s role in beach volleyball is quite different.
“I’m just a hitter in indoor, and so I rarely have to pass, and I don’t have to set ever,” she said. “And so going to beach, it was definitely interesting learning how to be more of a passer, and you have to set your partner like half the time. So doing that was challenging.”
Fuller-Freeman said that she was very thankful she was able to work under Lakeside head coach Rhonda Thigpen her senior year and learn about spot serving.
“Going to college, that was obviously really helpful because I found that I was like, ‘Man, if I hadn’t learned this my senior year, I would have been a little bit behind,’” she said. “So yeah, she helped me a lot in that area. But also for beach because we do like — serving is a big part of beach because there’s only two of us, and so we have to serve a lot. And there’s not like a ton of spots to serve in beach. But it is definitely important where to serve aggressively in beach to get them out of system.”
Joining the team for its inaugural season, Fuller-Freeman said that the team only had eight players, and they had to have 10 for any major tournaments.
“We only had eight players my freshman year, and we had to recruit like soccer players to play those. … It’s so crazy to see like how far the program has come from that because now we have like 16 girls on the team, and we’re recruiting beach-only people. We used to also all play indoor, too.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team’s first season was canceled in March, and with Hendrix not having in-person classes in the fall of 2020, the 2021 beach volleyball program had just seven players since the indoor volleyball season was being held at the same time.
“That was like the longest break I’ve taken from volleyball like in my whole life,” Fuller-Freeman said. “And so it was suddenly hard because I kind of was just like, ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ So I just had to like find a way to stay active and like train. … The first four weeks, we played beach, and then the rest of the semester, we played indoor. And so I was just like, busy the whole semester.”
In just the program’s third season, the Warriors were able to reach the national tournament, and while Hendrix was the overall runner-up, Fuller-Freeman recognizes the scale of such an achievement.
“It was just really cool to experience that,” she said. “Like I said, I’ve never been a part of anything as big as this. So just even like to be there and to get second was amazing. And like, I cannot be more proud of the team in general.”
Fuller-Freeman said that the entire experience was something she will not forget.
“To like, see the growth that we’ve had, like, we weren’t even competing in nationals last year,” she said. “It was just crazy, and like getting to go to Florida, too, that was super fun. And just getting to spend time with the team that we didn’t necessarily get during the season, too, was awesome. So it was really cool. I was really grateful to be a part of that for sure.”