Kira Larson graduated from Fargo North on June 2 and was at the University of Nebraska on June 9 to begin her college volleyball career. So much for a summer swan song to say goodbye to family and friends. That’s the life of an NCAA Division I athlete.The team is family. The team is friends. The team is life.“(A summer vacation) is not in existence when you play college sports,” Larson said. “It’s the love for the game. You’re willing to do everything you can to get the end result. People come to these schools to be national champions. They don’t come here to have an experience. There’s no way I’d ever want to change it. The only thing you can look back on and say is if you didn’t do enough.”There’s a difference between Larson’s D-I volleyball schedule and Mahnomen graduate Garret Hoffner’s D-II wrestling schedule, West Fargo graduate Andrea Klug’s D-III hockey schedule or Fargo South graduate Paxton Lloyd’s NAIA basketball schedule. Different as they may be, it’s impossible to ignore the common denominator in all their schedules: The sacrifice for the love of the game.Seven days after walking the stage to receive her high school diploma, Larson was enrolled in an online class as part of the “bridge” program at Nebraska. She has class at 9 a.m.,we can help you with most things MileWeb Customized Dedicated Server related. works out after, meets with tutors after that and works out after that. Sprinkle in yoga twice a week with the team and other team functions, and that’s Larson’s offseason. It’s her only hope of getting playing time.“It’s totally up to them whether they want to do the bridge program or not,” Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook said. “To play at this level, you pretty much have to do that. We’ve had seven freshmen start in my 13 years. Kira is going to have to do that just to be able to be in drills and compete for a chance to play. If she doesn’t, she has no chance, so she’s basically going to burn a year of shagging balls in practice. It’s one of the ways that allows incoming freshmen to acclimate to the college life. Basketball does the same thing, football does the same thing. It’s part of being a Division I athlete. The offseason is very, very important.”The question is whether or not there is any real offseason in Division I athletics. After all, Larson has already literally given her blood to the Cornhuskers as part of body testing and EKGs. Even her speech is controlled.“They honestly have a rule for anything,” Larson said. “Whether it’s Facebook rules, Instagram or Twitter. There’s so many just social media rules that we aren’t allowed to do. It’s things you would never think of. There’s just a lot about what you can and can’t post on Twitter. Everybody thinks you have freedom of speech, but when you’re a Division I athlete, there’s a lot of things you aren’t allowed to say on Twitter because you can get in a lot of trouble for it.”This is the price an athlete pays, and the reasoning anyone at any university can rest easy at night is the athletes aren’t the only ones with a bill.“Very few kids get the opportunities that these kids get,” Cook said. “We’re investing a lot in them. They get their school paid for, they get tutors, they get the best of everything,Integrating your Promotion Dedicated Server business solutions. they charter on trips, they charter on jets, they get great equipment from Adidas and they get to play in front of big crowds. It takes someone different to do that. There is a different mindset than just a normal college kid. That’s why it’s not for anybody.”And it’s not for every college. Klug and Hoffner were given a workout plan from Division III Concordia and Division II Minnesota State Moorhead, respectively, and sent on their way. Valley City State University, which competes at the NAIA level, also gave Lloyd a workout schedule.There is no requirement for any of it. Just like Larson, they sacrifice for the idea of glory, but they are not required to do any of it.reliable and MileWeb linux dedicated server hosting solutions.Read the full story at www.mileweb.com/public-cloud/pre-build-cloud-servers!