ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 5, 1996 TAG: 9611050051
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
THE SALEM NATIVE quit basketball to excel on a different court.
Normally, Shannon Harrison is sequestered to a volleyball court, either hardwood or sand. When she can get away from Bridgewater College and come home to Salem, she heads to the Roanoke River to fish.
But the waters of the river can't compare to that mud puddle she found near the American Legion fields in Salem in the summer of 1994.
Those warm months brought a chilling reality to Harrison and her Bridgewater volleyball teammate, Sydney Fultz. ``I told her it would keep her skills up to date,'' Harrison said.
To their dismay, many dates on the calendar passed before they won a tournament. They finally did it in the rain at the Commonwealth Games. Then they did the puddle.
``We just dove and sprawled in it,'' Harrison said. ``We had it all over us.''
``I made them take a shower in the front yard,'' said Shannon's mother, Dianne. ``They looked like two little pigs.''
That victory was the first of many over the next two summers. Even more have come in the fall with the Eagles.
This year's team, captained by seniors Harrison and Fultz, is entrenched at the top of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Harrison, an outside hitter, leads the league in service aces with 78, is fourth in kills (3.19 per game), fourth in individual attack percentage (.303) and fourth in digs (3.72), her specialty.
``It's amazing what she can get to,'' said Mary Frances Heishman, Harrison's coach.
Harrison has made so many of those amazing plays that on Sept. 28 against Greensboro College, she became the first Bridgewater player to ever make more than 1,000 digs in a career.
``She's our best all-around player,'' Heishman said of the two-time all-ODAC selection.
Although she also was a two-time Blue Ridge District volleyball player of the year, Harrison didn't go to Bridgewater with intentions of continuing in the sport. She actually had been recruited out of Salem High School for basketball. By the time she arrived at college, however, she was ``burned out'' from basketball.
Harrison said she had no idea Bridgewater had a volleyball program, much less a successful one, until she began her post-basketball life. At the time, smashing and bumping a ball was more enticing than dribbling and shooting one.
``All sports seemed to come easy to her,'' said Dianne Harrison, herself a USTA Volvo Tennis player. ``For some reason, she blossomed in volleyball.''
Harrison's college playing career will end in a few weeks. Next spring, she'll leave Bridgewater with her boyfriend, Dan Atwell, and pet ferrets with plans of building on her biology degree.
``I hate to think of her graduating,'' said Heishman. ``I'd like to keep her around a little longer.''
Unfortunately for Heishman, the river - and perhaps more mud puddles - await.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON\Staff. Shannon Harrison, the firstby CNBBridgewater player to register 1,000 digs in a career, leads the Old
Dominion Athletic Conference with 78 service aces. color.