Harvard volleyball senior Mimi Hanley joins the Double-A Zone community with her inaugural post this afternoon. Mimi refutes the geographical stereotypes that often characterize volleyball student-athletes and describes the journey she took to Harvard.

Everyone assumes that because I am on the Harvard women???s volleyball team, I must be a ???NorCal??? or ???SoCal??? native. Countless number of times have I been asked, ???You are from California, right???? Wrong.

It is true that California does breed excellent volleyball players, so maybe I should look at that inquisition as a compliment on my athletic abilities. California does seem to dominate the volleyball world. If you look at the rosters for all of the Ivy League teams, the vast majority are from the Golden State, but volleyball enthusiasm and culture is growing all over ??? especially in my native New England. So I politely correct the questioner, and tell them that I actually grew up in Seattle and became a volleyball player at my high school in Massachusetts.

I grew up in the Seattle area playing basketball because my dad played the sport as did my older brother and sister. We were a basketball family. So when I decided I wanted to go to prep school in the east, I left home committed to working hard both academically and athletically. As summer ended and freshman fall approached, I decided that I would try out for the volleyball team. I had played for my school???s team for fun whenever I could fit it into my basketball schedule. And I had enjoyed it, so why not continue on in high school?

Andover???s high school volleyball coach saw the potential in my 6-foot frame, and put me on the squad to give me technical coaching I would need to become a real ???player.??? And this is where my love for the game grew. New England volleyball lags somewhat behind the rest of the country in terms of competitiveness, but this offered me a tremendous opportunity to get experience and develop as a player.

I was still as committed as ever to basketball and my future in it, but I had developed a new passion. I was able to balance both sports along with academics while even managing to pick up lacrosse in the spring. I was loving high school, and couldn???t have been happier with my decision to go to Andover.

Then junior year rolled around. I had spent hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours practicing, traveling, and competing, all in an effort to realize my dream of playing collegiate basketball. But by this time, my dream had changed. Basketball was no longer the joyous game it had once been for me. Maybe it was the pressure I had put on myself. Maybe I was sick of the constant physical beating you get when playing under the hoop. Whatever the reason, I had turned my attention solely to volleyball.

Volleyball was a game that I had grown to love and excel at. All my hopes of playing collegiate sports hadn???t died, but had just changed venues from the basketball arena to the volleyball court. I was fortunate to get the chance to play in college at Harvard, and have loved every minute of it for the last three years. I began playing this sport as more of a fun social experience (all my middle school friends played on the school team), and continued playing because it is a dynamic sport. Looking back, it seems strange to think that competitive volleyball, which has been such a huge part of my life, will be over in just a few short months. And although my collegiate career may end shortly, there is no doubt that I will keep playing???somewhere, somehow.