Hello GMVA family,

After seeing the influx of first year college GMVA folk getting their blogs done I thought I better get one done and some them how, a blogger better than Linford Bennett does it. 

I remember about three years ago when Gerrard Lipscombe would grace us with about 1 blog a year, a time when I was young and less aware or ignorant as some may say, and I thought how do these college people never have time to blog…? Well three years into college I think I have become aware of the phenomena of ‘just getting by’ especially during season where the balancing act of being a college athlete is tough. I do believe if you are a very focused individual you might be able to do it all but keeping motivation day in day out is something that I am glad to be able to practice in college because I’m confident that will look a little bit similar to the dark unknown after college known as life. 

So now that I have got around to providing my fans a blog let me tell you about my year. The year before this last year I made the decision to transfer schools and so when I came back from a trip to Vietnam I arrived in sunny California, where I started school at Concordia University Irvine. The transition from one of the biggest schools in the country to one with the population of about 2000 undergraduate students was hard to adjust to at times. But like everything if you spend enough time somewhere it will feel like a home soon enough. 

My school is located in Irvine, California about an hour south of Los Angeles in Orange County. It is sunny all year round which is a little different to weather in Ohio. Many people in the Orange County and surrounding southern California area believe they live in the best place in the world and are very content with never moving out of the state. The state is full of beaches and national parks, but it can be hard to get around sometimes as you need a car or nice friends that let you borrow their car. Because of this and for convenience I got my American driver’s license last November. 

Starting off there year the preseason here featured some 6am Friday mornings to play some beach volleyball and do a buoy swim which I was died a little bit inside every time we did it, but I can’t deny that afterwards I felt better. For anyone who doesn’t know a buoy swim is simply ocean swimming out to touch a buoy and then swimming back to shore, sometimes the tide was nice and sometimes unforgiving. 

Next was fall practice and some preseason tournaments. These tournaments were our first look at the rosters most teams would have for the season and the level of competition.  Coming off two years of watching from the stands the game looked very physical and competitive. This is something that it definitely took time to get used to and be comfortable with. 

Looking back on the actual season my team finished with a 16-15 record with 5 wins over ranked opponents. The biggest highlight was easily our five set win against BYU at BYU in front of 3000+ fans. We were down 2 sets and fought back to hand BYU one of only two losses in a span of 19 matches. This game was very special for our coach who had played at BYU and coached there and our captain who transferred from BYU, and gave the team a new sense of confidence that we belong at this level. 

So after three after three years I was able to go begin to achieve something I’ve wanted since I was 14. But I would caution people, that things will never be the way you imagine them and sometimes I’ve struggled with this. So just being content at where you are is really important. I’ve worked to be competing at the D1 level and I’m proud of that and blessed for all the support I’ve received over the years. 

So after a long and tough season I’m keen to rest and recuperate and lift a lot over my break to come back ready to push next year and coming into my fourth year I’m not going to let any freshman try and take my spot now  that I have one. 

A piece of advice for any young aspiring GMVA athletes, in the words of Kendrick Lamar stay ‘Humble’. Unless you’re Wilfredo Leon then you are not the best player in the world and hence you have something to learn and to improve. It definitely can be hard at the college level or any level for that matter to come to practice each day so focused and ready to focus on getting better and not being stressed about assignments or homework or simply life. The life of a student athlete is a tough, but nearly almost all athletes watch Netflix and try and be social just like normal students so it’s only going to be as tough as you make it for yourself. You have to find ways to shut everything out when you step onto that 9 by 9 court and not think and just play because you’ve put in the hard work in practice.

One of my friends who was part of the team this year told me about a very interesting thought of a 15 week college semester being compressed to four weeks, based around the fact that most students will get the work done - even if it’s on the night before. So I never really stress I won’t finish something it’s more just stress you places on yourself when you leave assignments to the last minute. But studies show that it is extremely hard for humans to put long term gratification over short term gratification. Thus why people put off assignments for one episode of The Office, however in this case if you have not watched the office stop reading this blog and start watching and when Michael Scott leaves the show skip straight to the finale of season 9.

Well I think that’s plenty for now, I hope that you’ve enjoyed my perspective on college and volleyball. I know that not everything may have sounded rosy and cool like college sports are but that’s because behind the coolness of being a student athlete there is hard work and dedication and stress. Please be sure to tell Linford Bennett to come to me if he needs tips on getting back into the blogging game. If you have any questions, concerns critique for my writing style please contact me. Especially parents if you have questions about your son or daughters interest in college I would be happy to answer your questions. Thank you for reading.

-Darcy Taig

Hey everyone, I'm back at it again with the blogs. Although I don’t own a pair of white vans. I have just my final exams for semester 1 and thought I better finally finish this first blog that I started a while back. So starting from the beginning is in a sense starting from the end, but let’s not get into the inception of my blog series. A third semester of my college experience has flown by very fast. In terms of Volleyball the semester comprised of 6 weeks of lifting/conditioning 5 days a week, then 5 weeks of practicing every day with 2 lifts a week and 3 days of scrimmage thrown in amongst all that. After that it was “Gobble Gobble” day otherwise known as Thanksgiving, and from then till the 26th of December we have had a break where we can choose to lift which most guys do. Then obviously finals week and its break time which is the last real break we will have before the end of the volleyball season. 

One of the best parts about my time in the US thus far has been the vast array of things I get to experience and be a part of here. I will try and list a few of them for you now: because my team won the NCAA Div. 1 championship last year we were invited to dinner at the president of our universities house which was a quite formal event. I've been lucky to enough to go on two pedal wagon tours which is a large 15 person bike of sorts which you ride around and go to different food and drink places in town and both were a lot of fun. The pedaling was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. I got to spend thanksgiving in Chicago, where I saw the famous Bean – much bigger than the beans most kids don’t eat as kids. We also tried their famous deep dish pizza which was very very good. Pizza here is almost a national language, around campus there must be only 12 pizza places on the edges or within campus. As part of our recognition for winning the NCAA last season we got free tickets to a night football game which started at 8pm and then finished at 11:45pm which I stayed till the very end with my Roommate from last year partly to just see how late it would finish. But also when you get free tickets to an OSU football game in a really good section you take the most of that opportunity because it doesn't happen every day. I more recently went on a gallery hop in a trendy area of Columbus called the Short North. Thanks to my girlfriends Internship at the local NHL team I was able to watch the one and only LeBron James in a Cavaliers pre-season at the Basketball stadium here on campus. Just recently I explored more of campus and buildings I had never been in to find a good place to study for exams, and still have much of campus still to explore thanks to the sheer size of its which I am now kind of used to but with the recent drop in temperature and snowfall it makes walking places seem a lot farther. 
I've also recently began working at the closest food establishment to my dorm, at the Marketplace on Neil you can find me making toasted sandwiches (which they call Panini’s here) on a Friday and making pizzas on a Saturday night. So with school, volleyball and work weeks were quite busy in the thick of the semester but as bad as you think it will be beforehand you get by day by day, you get good at napping and learning how to skim the thin line of too little sleep and just enough. I now have a better understanding why the blog extraordinaire Gerrard Lipscombe with his eloquent blog posts were only once a year. Because as busy as this semester was the spring semester will be more busy and for the entirety of the semester. 
Well I hope this again gives an insightful glimpse into what college in another country is like to you all. Don’t be afraid to share this blog with friends and family because it’s nice to think more than 10 people read this. But I won’t stop writing so don’t worry if you are one of the keen followers, I know Linford Bennett is one of those ten so shout out to him and give that guy a high five if you see him around. To all the young guns and kids at GMVA keep getting to practice early, keep grinding through the repetitive and consistent skill training drills because I still see the difference that makes with certain skills such as being able to be confident of setting a high ball in non-perfect situations during games at the level I’m at now; and you can never stop improving both physically and skill wise. Well hope you’re all well and enjoying the warmth of summer, enjoy a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

Darcy Taig

Hello again,

¬Welcome to the fourth installment of the blog series which is better than my friends Linford Bennett’s blog. Although please don’t expect a level of coherence of an English paper because I do not get marked on this as I do in my English classes and have written this over a couple of sessions and don’t always remember what I have already talked about. Anyway… This semester has been quite busy and long so far. The weather slowly transitioned from winter jacket to pants and a sweatshirt to finally just recently shorts and a t-shirt and from what people tell me I escaped my first year with a very warm winter by Ohio’s standards. Many times people here explain the strange weather by saying that Ohio for you or something along those lines, but coming from Melbourne where it will be sunny, pouring down rain and then sunny again in the space of an hour the weather here is nothing. I continue to learn new sayings and pronunciations of different words constantly,  when I went to blaze the other day - a make your own pizza place - I had significant trouble telling my name to the person I eventually had to call my friend Kevin to pronounce my name to them. 
In terms of volleyball my team is going very well and are about to start our post season Conference tournament in which we go in ranked number one and are slotted at number two nationally on the coaches poll. Since January myself and the other red shirts have been doing some sort of lifting/conditioning on every weekday and I don't believe we have missed one day. Combine this with practices and school made for a tough first half of this semester and spring break (a week off classes) could not have come soon enough. Coming out of my first season of being involved in college volleyball I am in the best physical shape of my career with more important improvements I will be striving to make over the summer which will be winter back home. 
I don't say this to show myself off its simply what happens when you put in the work and lift heavy weights against gravity often and is a benefit of coming to a program like the one I am privileged to be a part of. At the same time I have no doubt that our conditioning is helping to keep me as injury free as a volleyballer can be. As my first year counts down the time till I leave seems to be moving slower and slower as it gets closer and probably still seems a while away because I have a few assignments which I have to finish in the next few weeks and I really don’t want to do them. This is a very common situation in college where person x gets work y but the person really doesn’t want to do the work so in an attempt to get it done does not do it until the last minute. If you are an engineer student this becomes a way of life not because you are procrastinating but from the sheer work load you are given on a weekly basis. But don’t worry I’m sure if you want to be an engineer you’ll enjoy it … hopefully ;) 
One funny thing about coming into college after going to a high school with a uniform is that you have to learn the ways of wearing what you want to everyday- so after arriving with what I thought was a reasonable amount of clothes I have since significantly increased my wardrobe on top of a few items we receive as part of the team. After 8 months of eating at the dining halls here I can safely say I’m very much looking forward to eating some home cooked meals when I get home. Well I think I have covered all things of interest from this Spring Semester here in Ohio, and am looking forward to being home shortly. Before I finish I have to give a big Shoutout to Gerrard Lipscombe fellow GMVA blogger and Victorian who after the regular season was selected in the MIVA all-conference first team, this is awarded based on a votes from all the coaches in the conference. It’s pretty cool seeing a fellow Australian making a mark like this on the college scene so great work Gez! Thanks for reading everyone- hope you laughed or learnt something new from this post. 
Darcy

Hello everyone I hope you all enjoyed a relaxing Christmas and a happy transition into the New Year. It has been a while since you have heard from me so I will try and give you a detailed lowdown on what’s been happening here whilst still staying succinct and not write for pages and pages. In In chronological order here is what I have been up to over the last three months:

Thanksgiving; where I was lucky enough to be taken in by one of my freshman teammates families in Anaheim, California. While there I was shown around some very nice areas near the beaches and over-indulged at ‘In-n-out’ a very popular fast-food restaurant which we are deprived of here in Columbus, Ohio. Thanksgiving itself is a holiday filled with food, football, shopping bargains based around Black Friday and Cyber Monday and more food. The day itself is similar to Christmas in which you have a big meal with family and being an outsider all the stories were being told to me for the first time unlike my teammate and his sister who looked as if they had heard these stories hundreds of times previously. 
Everyday life during the semester doesn't alter much; go to class/eat/practice/lift and mainly wait out for Friday's to come as they signal the weekend every week a college student’s weekly serenity

Our college football team lost their final regular season game in a very close affair with Michigan State, who won in the final seconds of the game from a field goal and knocked us out of contention for the national championship. To many fans and people involved in the university this is a big dampener and means students may have to actually do homework on the weekend instead of soaking up the game day experience. 

As I may have mentioned before – but can never be over stated – the best thing about my experience here in the states so far is easily the great variety and surplus experiences to be had, things to do and people to meet. I have gone to see a student run dance group performance, I’ve met hundreds of new people countless of whom I don’t remember their names, I’ve played (although not very successfully) in a corn-hole competition, I’ve met people from Brazil, France, England, Ireland, Russia and all over America and I’ve met countless other athletes here at Ohio State. 

The last 2 months have been relatively quiet with the initial practice block finished we practiced once over six weeks from the end of November until the 27th of December. This was a very nice break that encompassed thanksgiving, lifting, final exams, Christmas and much rest. 


Final exams here brought back the memories of High school VCE exams with the Library finally being used for studying and everyone expressing their nerves in different ways. Once done with exams I was able to have a 10 day break from dorm life, where my roommate and freshman teammate and his family took the local Australian into their homes. The way people welcome others into their homes and just in general here is something never lost on me and is not taken for granted, the best part was they understood that in our time off we did not want to do anything and let us do that! On the 27th of December we resumed Volleyball practice in preparation for the season which started January 2nd. 

This season I will be red shirting and just a very brief description of this is I will not play in any matches, but my athletic eligibility is not used up so I have another four years to play. There are many other factors that come into the decision and I encourage anyone that has any questions/concerns about this to not hesitate to contact me because the last thing I want is to put anyone off coming to college in the states because of this one detail.
 
Classes start back next Monday and I’m looking forward to them because I will have things to keep me busy, also the cold is finally starting to set in with temperatures negative overnight and max temperatures are teasingly staying above zero for one more week I believe. When I’m dressed up for the cold here I feel like the bad guys from the Home Alone movies. 

Well I think that’s more than enough for you to read in one sitting. I will try and post a blog at the end of February which will feature the experience of catching up with a fellow Australian volleyballer Gerrard Lipscombe when his Grand Canyon University Lopes play here at OSU on February 19th and 20th. So until then, stay safe and enjoy the sunshine and warmth!

Darcy Taig

Tomorrow will mark 2 months of my time here in the States and what an experience it has been so far. As promised in today’s edition I will explore how to speak and be American and gain the locals trust through use of common vernacular, slang terms and behaviours that are common here.
Let’s start with the basics, I have already been called out when I referred to flip-flops as thongs the old el classico when you think of things that they say different. I can no longer just chuck on my trackie dacks because here you wear sweat pants and a sweat shirt. One of the smaller differences which has really thrown me is when you say thank you to people here it is not uncommon for them to say “aha” or “yes” in reply to your thanks instead of a ‘you’re welcome’ or no worries which I am used to. Then as you would expect certain words cause confusion simply because of my smooth accent, words such as “thirteen” or even my name itself have caused unease because of the way we enunciate the “t” and “d” sounds, it is quite comical when two people can be saying the same word but they don’t think they are because of the accents – this has happened in the case of my name several times. And to finish a sentence here you place a period at the end not a full stop and brackets are called parentheses, this one I just think is ridiculous but nevertheless you endure.
Scones here are called a biscuit, see saws are referred to as teetor totters which really grabbed my attention when I figured it out and if you say to someone I want to get new ping pong bats they look at you like you’re crazy as they only use paddles here. Don’t get me started on the rule differences for American 8 ball pool (billiards) it’s as if they just make it up as they go. I’ve had to get used to walking on the opposite side of walkways around campus but even when you do that someone will probably still try and run into you as the rules of the universe states. I have although successfully ridden a bike around campus roads on the right side and have not been honked or crashed yet so that’s a win! 
From the Volleyball side of things, tomorrow we will begin practicing every day Monday-Friday and have 2 sessions of yoga away from the court to taper off from our 6 weeks of heavy lifting that finished up very well. I know that with practice every day the challenge to keep niggles and muscle soreness away gets ten times harder but I think with the motivation to keep improving amongst this team I will get my point of relieving and rolling in to make sure I can maximise my improvement in this first training phase. 
The academic/college side of things is chugging along with midterms scattered around for everyone and papers/projects due amongst your normal classes.  Some of the guys in the team who are doing difficult majors do a good job of making it seem quite manageable around practices etc. My roommate however who is an aerospace engineering major does not make it seem easy and studies very hard and often he is up till the early hours of the morning… on weekdays! So as long as you don’t do aerospace engineering you’ll be fine. However it all really depends on how well you want to do at school and it is definitely more than possible to do that and play your sport; because that is why you come here so you can do both at the same time. 
Part of college as hard as it may be, is living without your mum; or as they say “mom”. You have to shop for clothes by yourself and do your own laundry and then wash your sheets and make your bed; who I am kidding with no one complaining about my bed being made it does not magically make itself each morning. So don’t worry all you boys reading this because if you come to college you can leave your bed untouched after you sleep and no one will tell you otherwise. However girls do tend to notice the smell and appearance of your room much more than other guys so you have to be strategic about when you clean/vacuum etc. 
Well I think I’m about out of things to say right now, once you get into rhythm here its much like anywhere else the weeks blend together and there’s not much more to tell you. Although I’m sure with practices starting every day the weeks will feel a little bit longer and the weekends that much more of a blessing. Well next weekend at least because after that we have four weekends in a row with practice matches and after that stretch is the famous thanksgiving holiday here which I am looking forward to as I’m told it’s a 5 day weekend simply for eating. Eating food cooked in a home not the dining halls here on campus so I am looking forward to it immensely. 
Once again I hope this gives everyone a detailed insight into college life and everything that goes with it. Stay safe and enjoy the sun as it starts to heat up in Melbourne as it has only just started to get cold here but I now own winter boots and a winter jacket so I am ready for winter! I’ll leave you with a common and interesting American sign – off.
“Best”,
Darcy Taig

It has now been three weeks since I landed in Columbus, Ohio and much has happened in that time so I will start from a logical place to start the beginning of my journey.
As I embarked on my 21 hour transit to Columbus, Ohio I was filled with nerves and and anticipation of things I had only imagined thus far, these things were about to become my reality very shortly. Once I had navigated the giant maze which is LAX Airport I was boarding my plane bound for Columbus the place which I was to call home for the next nine months. As I landed I was picked up by a freshman setter from my team who lives in Columbus, his truck was about twice the size of any 18 year olds car in AUS. The next few days were full of orientations, buying textbooks and a couple of Open Gym sessions which are just scrimmages ran by your captain as in the off season the coach has only about 3 hours a week they can be with the team due to one of the many very specific and strange rules enforced by the NCAA. To give you a taste of the Volleyball side of things over here; the setter who has started the last two years on my team is my height, we have a sophomore who is from France and has (only) been playing Volleyball 12 years, we play with the molten volleyballs which have a heavier feel than mikasas and you can generate a lot more speed off the ball when spiking and serving which makes jump serving very popular over here. 
It was comforting in our first team meeting when our Strength and Conditioning Coach came out to speak he was as buff and stocky as I had imagined, but he seems very switched on and from what we were told our first few weeks of pre-season should have been terrible but with changes from the way the strength work will go compared to previous years we did three reasonably hard circuits and today we started our structured lifting which will be 4 times a week. But I am very looking forward to that in fact and knowing that with such tailored guidance I will get stronger and fitter and be closer towards playing in NCAA Division 1 volleyball, as the physicality not just being huge but how toned and well they move around the court is something I have already picked up on in our Open gym sessions. If you are worried about coming to college because your mum does all your washing you need not worry as all the gear we train with is placed on loops and after each practice or lifting session you throw your loop in the magical laundry basket and then the next day all your loops will be back in your locker clean and dry.
On the college side of things I am attending (The Ohio State University) a school in the top 5 largest universities in America based on population, the school has 1200 student ran organisations and about that many student-athletes as well, the pride people have being here as students – a lot of them knowing they wanted to go here for all their lives – is incredible, and people really buy into having so many people on campus. 
Thus far I have had two 1 hour trainings with the coaches and a bunch of open gym sessions and its nice to be given very fresh advice on techniques and ways to play the game, some of these things are hard to implement when you have been learning certain things for so long and all of a sudden you are told to do something different but it is a challenge I am looking forward to taking head on. 
The dorms I have been placed in are only 50 years old and I am yet to have any posters on my wall so I call upon the help you my fellow GMVA athletes to mail me a poster and if I happen to receive too many(which would be impressive) I will let my roommate choose which ones get on the wall or perhaps implement a rotation policy, I will post my postal address for my time in the states at the end of the blog. 
Some classic American things I am learning to deal with is the American handshake which is a mix of high-five and then clasp it looks very sporty when done correctly, the all you can eat food places I go to the majority of the time sometimes are a challenge to eat healthy but its getting easier everyday, as you will have always been told Americans love our accent and its totally true and thus far I have only had one girl give a neutral reaction when I said I was from Australia, statistically she was a major out-liar. But on a serious note for College life, coming straight into a sports team is awesome because you have 20 other guys that quickly become your good friends and sets you up nicely to make many more.
The way that the upperclassmen have let myself and the four other freshman on the volleyball team into their community is really cool and they’re starting to feel like a really big family really quickly. In summary and for those second guessing coming to college here in the US or Canada; before I left everyone was telling me you’re going to have the best time of your life over here and I was too busy overthinking everything and worrying to believe that; but I can safely say that after only 2 weeks and 6 days here I am having the time of my life. There were a lot of little things I had to to get here but now I’m here and it was all worth it, so I would urge anyone considering college to just do it as a cultural/live/volleyball experience you can’t go wrong.
 That’ll be me for now and I’ll hopefully blog every month and post some links on the GMVA facebook page; and if anyone considering/thinking/daydreaming about college has any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me on facebook or email (taig.1@osu.edu), I know when I had questions I referred to the every rangry Gerrard so maybe I can be someone’s Gerrard, just without the bad haircuts! I think that’s enough from me for now, to all those at GMVA make sure you look after Luke as he’s surely lost without the full time boys being there everyday to brighten his day :D 
The Next blog I will explore the American lingo I have been learning and all the adjustments you have to make over here e.g. walking on the right side of the sidewalk! 
Until you hear from me next – Take it easy everyone!
My Address:
Room 908
196 W 11 Avenue 
Columbus, Ohio
43210
United States