{"id":69,"date":"2012-07-30T06:20:03","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T10:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/sites\/gsm_sum12\/?p=69"},"modified":"2014-06-02T14:59:05","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T18:59:05","slug":"volleyball-eagles-travel-to-costa-rica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2012\/07\/30\/volleyball-eagles-travel-to-costa-rica\/","title":{"rendered":"Volleyball Eagles Travel to Costa Rica"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"vball\"<\/a>When Costa Ricans use the phrase \u201cPura Vida,\u201d it has a lot of different meanings \u2013 \u201cHello,\u201d \u201cGoodbye,\u201d \u201cThis is living,\u201d \u201cGoing great!\u201d or even \u201cAwesome!\u201d or \u201cCool!\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be surprised to hear \u201cPura Vida\u201d a lot in Hanner Fieldhouse when the 2012 volleyball season gets underway this fall.<\/p>\n

The phrase was just one of the things picked up by the Georgia Southern Eagles on their trip abroad to Costa Rica from May 15-23, 2012.<\/p>\n

The Eagles spent a lot of time taking in the sights and culture of Costa Rica on the trip, and got the opportunity to play three matches against the Costa Rica national volleyball team.<\/p>\n

Even with all the distractions of being in a new country, hearing the opposing team speaking Spanish and playing in an open-air gym, the Eagles locked in on the game when it was time to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust hearing a different language across the net from you was one of the things that made it such a unique experience,\u201d said Georgia Southern head coach Chad Callihan. \u201cWe have all these different things going on, and it\u2019s easy to get off track when you\u2019re in a different country. You\u2019re doing all these different activities and all of a sudden it\u2019s, \u2018Hey, it\u2019s time to play.\u2019 It\u2019s an opportunity to focus and concentrate on the game and say, \u2018Give the game three hours of your undivided attention, then we\u2019ll get back to doing something else.\u2019 You need to be able to flip that switch when the season starts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Off the court, there were plenty of teambuilding activities taking place, including a Tarzan swing over the Costa Rican jungle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was something the kids may never have had the opportunity to do without Georgia Southern volleyball,\u201d said assistant coach Crystal Poskey. \u201cThe fact that everyone in the group did it \u2013 we all did it together and nobody sat out \u2013 I think that helped a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t easy for everybody on the team, especially setter Kate Van Dyke.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey literally just pushed her off of it,\u201d laughed Callihan. \u201cShe was not a willing participant when she got up there, so they just gave her a little nudge to get her on her way. It was pretty funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

The teambuilding wasn\u2019t restricted to the activities, either. Callihan saw just how close the group has become, even based on their interactions while traveling Costa Rica on a bus.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody has their own little quirks, their own idiosyncrasies. We\u2019re so close as a team, we can just laugh about those things rather than taking it personally or too seriously,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought it was neat to see that we\u2019ve gotten to the point where we\u2019re close and everybody knows pretty much everything about the other person. Going into the season, we\u2019ve got a really tightly-knit group.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Eagles also swam in hot springs formed by Arenal volcano, one of the 10 most active volcanos in the world, went white-water rafting, visited central market, which is similar to a farmer\u2019s market with produce, seafood and knick-knacks, and spent time on a working coffee plantation.
\n\"vball1\"<\/a>
\n\u201cWe\u2019re still drinking that coffee at the house right now,\u201d Callihan said. \u201cWe had people who don\u2019t even like coffee who couldn\u2019t stop drinking it because it was so good.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Eagles found the culture to be relaxed and friendly, and the biggest adjustment was getting used to the Colon, Costa Rica\u2019s currency which translates roughly to 500 for each American dollar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of strange when you see a bill for 2 million,\u201d said Poskey.<\/p>\n

The Eagles returned home from the nine-day trip on May 23. The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) permits programs to travel abroad once every four years, and trips like the one to Costa Rica are still relatively uncommon to Georgia Southern\u2019s league.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may be the first time anyone in the Southern Conference has taken a trip like this,\u201d Callihan said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a growing trend, and if you fundraise well, thing like this trip become a possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eagles Travel to Costa Rica<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","tag-summer-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}