SENIOR SPOTLIGHT: Sarah Gardner

Her path to Samford wasn't a straight one

Senior volleyball player Sarah Gardner has played sports all of her life. From fourth grade on, the Indianapolis, Indiana native played just about every sport a kid could play.

"I played soccer, softball, basketball, volleyball, kickball," Gardner said. "I played everything."

She finally narrowed it down to soccer and volleyball before choosing the latter over the former in high school since the two sports share the same season in Indiana. She continued playing club volleyball for Circle City as she had been since age 12 while also playing on her high school varsity team all four years of her high school career.

However, playing college volleyball almost didn't become a reality for Gardner. She committed to Butler University early on in her senior year of high school.

"I kind of just got sick of the recruiting process and decided to just stay close to home," Gardner said. "My dad works at Butler, we live two blocks away and it was the comfortable decision to make at the time."

Soon after, the 5-foot-8-inch defensive specialist found out that she had a fracture in her foot. She made the decision to continue playing on it, helping Bishop Chatard High School to its first-ever Indiana State Championship. She played in the Indiana All-Star match and landed a spot on her choice club team, but soon was put in a boot per doctor's orders. She made the hard decision to quit her club team as sitting out with a broken foot would have just been money wasted.

"I started to kind of experience stuff outside of volleyball," Gardner said. "It was the first time that I hadn't been playing since I was 12 years old. I was having so much fun and I was like, `You know, maybe there is more to life than just volleyball.'"

She went to her coaches at Butler and told them that she had decided that she wasn't going to play in college after all. But after just one semester at Butler, Gardner started to miss volleyball. When she would attend her brother's and sisters' athletic events, she wouldn't feel like part of the family anymore - separated athletically.

She had a connection to Samford's head volleyball coach at the time, Michelle Durban. Durban had been an assistant at Butler in recent years and had a great relationship with the Gardner family. Because Gardner had been recruited a year earlier by Durban, she gave Samford a second look and called to ask the Samford coach if she still had room on her team.

"I called her and told her that I really missed volleyball and wanted to start playing again and asked if she thought she had a spot for me on the team," Gardner said. "She told me she did. So within two weeks, I had filed all the paperwork for Butler that I was withdrawing and filled out all of the paperwork for Samford and written all of my essays and it was just like that - I'm going to Samford."

Gardner enrolled in Samford's 2006 Jan Term, practiced with the team in the spring and jumped feet first into Samford's 2006 fall season. She played in all 30 matches for the Bulldogs, even stepping in as libero midseason. She proved herself as one of Samford's power servers and led her team in aces (55) and digs (412) as a red-shirt freshman.

That year, she recorded the school's second highest single-season digs total (412), just missing the all-time record by four digs. Her most outstanding match came in her freshman season as well, as she recorded a career-high 29 digs against South Alabama in its own Jaguar Classic, just missing another school record by nine digs.

She continued to excel in the next years to come, helping the Bulldogs to their first-ever winning season as a sophomore and their first-ever conference division title as a junior. She led her team in aces again in her sophomore year with 45 while finishing her junior season ranked eighth in the nation in aces per set. She landed herself sixth on the single-season digs leader board with a total of 65 in 2008, which put her second in the conference, and currently ranks sixth on the all-time aces list with 162 in her career.

There is no doubt that Gardner's competitiveness helped her achieve such success here at Samford. Competitiveness is in Gardner's blood line.

Her dad played basketball and golf at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Her mom was a cheerleader and played softball at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Every single one of her siblings plays a sport - both younger sisters play college basketball, one at Davidson College and the other at the University of Indianapolis. From board games - their favorite is Scattergories - to basketball, it's all a competition for the Gardners. They even hold true to a holiday tradition.

"We are the most competitive family you will ever meet in your life," Gardner said, the oldest of five children. "On Christmas morning, we wake up, we open our presents, we eat and then - because my mom was a gym teacher and was the athletic director for our grade school (St. Thomas Aquinas), she has the keys to the gym and then my dad, because of his position at Butler, he has the keys to that gym - we go to St. Thomas and play dodge ball for like two hours and then we go to Butler and play basketball."

Gardner says her dad always wins but she's glad that her parents brought her up in such a competitive household.

"Some people have tried to knock my parents and said that they brought us up wrong, having us focus on sports so much," Gardner said. "But...sports teach you so much. I know how to be a team player. I had to learn how to balance work and volleyball and school my whole life. I feel like I've learned so much from sports and I attribute that 100 percent to my parents."

Gardner says that she is going to miss her team the most when her time at Samford has come to an end. From making lifelong friends to winning championships, she has gained a lot in her four years here. She has learned to appreciate the wins of the last three years after enduring a hard season of only six wins her freshman season. From watching her sister endure four ACL surgeries to watching teammates battle injuries, season in and season out, she has also learned to appreciate her health and the ability to play virtually injury-free over the last four years.

Gardner is not exactly sure what she wants to be doing once she graduates. She has aspirations of doing a lot of things from being a CEO to the next Erin Andrews of ESPN. But there is one thing that she is sure of:

"I want to find a job that I really enjoy and that I'm good at," Gardner says, "and I want to throw my whole life into it. I really want to prove to my family and prove to everyone that I can be on my own and really succeed."