By Casey Dolan ’17
Sport Media and Public Relations Class
Being away from home is never easy, as anyone living far from home will tell you. I am from Forty Fort, Pa., a very small town. I am currently a sophomore and play field hockey at Old Dominion University. Being far away from home is never an easy task. Student-athletes have a difficult task to accomplish when they are in college, especially at a Division I program.
Meg Byas, from Driffield, England, is a sophomore on the Old Dominion field hockey team. The head coach of the field hockey team is Andrew Griffiths, who recruited Byas. She is a very dedicated and smart student. She is in good academic standing and is majoring in sport management. Byas came in as a freshman and gained a starting position on the team. As an athlete with a dream to succeed at such a high level, the dream was taken away from her without notice. Heart broken, she continued to fight. “This tore me apart, but made me a stronger person all around in the end,” said Byas.
Byas is a left back, who has amazing power behind the ball and great vision on the ball. It was a cold and rainy day on September 20, 2013 at the Marshall Center Field Hockey Complex in Louisville, Ky. It was our seventh game into the season when Byas endured a horrible injury.
She fell to the ground and everyone heard her scream as she went down. Byas described the agony of waiting until she returned to get the results. “I had knots in my stomach hoping that it wasn’t too serious, but with the way I was feeling I didn’t think it could be good” said Byas.
When the team got the news of a torn ACL back a few days later, any athlete could empathize with the pain she was feeling. “I was heartbroken that my season was over, but I knew this was when I had to fight back to be healthy again,” said Byas.
From that day on she was determined to get back on the field. She got her surgery about a week later and once surgery was over, she started rehab.
Byas said, “I would never miss a day of rehab, each day, no matter how hard it was, I was one step closer to where I wanted to be.” Byas was in the training room everyday for three months straight doing her rehab with the trainer, who at the time was Erin Ludwig.
“Erin was a great supporter and helped me through the pain every day,” said Byas. Since she was so far from home, it was important for her to find support here as well. “The team was one of my biggest support systems,” said Byas. “I still had to manage school and try to maintain a social life as well. It became really difficult to manage it all effectively, but I had to just stay organized and make sure everything was done on time to ensure that everything went according to plan,” said Byas.
Not being able to be in the same routine as the team anymore made things lonely for her. “It got very lonely at times, especially when the girls were practicing or training. It was hard to be included with everything, along with activities with the team outside of practices and games, since I had many restrictions from my injury,” said Byas.
The most impressive thing about her outstanding recovery, as her mother simply put it is, “she fought through everything and still managed to stay positive. “My team definitely helped me a lot, keeping me very involved with in the team and helped me through the hard times of being inured,” said Byas.
This past season, she was the starting center back for the Monarchs and became a leader on the field. She had three goals and three assists, and was named All-Big East Second Team and NFHCA All-South Region Second Team, Byas was also named Big East Player of the Week on September 10, 2014.
Her story is something that is always going to be a part of her. It shows how strong mentally and physical she is from it. It is one of the reasons the team looks up to Byas so much.
“Somehow I grew from this experience, I became stronger having to grow up a bit faster than normal in this difficult time in my life,” said Byas. “This experience is one of many things that has shaped me into the person and player I am today.”
Being a student-athlete isn’t something everyone can do. With Byas going through such a difficult time, every athlete should stop and think for a minute, and to be thankful for the opportunity we are given to be playing everyday. It’s not only about being a student athlete, but being apart of a prestigious field hockey program like Old Dominion who has the most NCAA national championships in NCAA history. As a player here, I feel honored to put on our jersey every game representing our school. It makes us want to play not only for ourselves, but also for each other.
“Sport Management students in Brendan O’Hallarn’s Sport Media and Public Relations class came up with ODU Athletics feature story ideas, then reported and wrote these pieces for a class assignment. The assignment was created to provide feature content for the ODUSports website, and offer students the real-world learning experience of writing a story for the ODUSports website.”