There’s not much difference between the numbers six and seven, or nine and ten, but in Eagle volleyball, those numbers represent the difference between the future and the past.

Kym Coley (No. 6) and Jamie DeRatt (No. 9) have been leaders for kills on the team since 2012, but this year, they were joined by two new players, Megan Chevalier, number seven, and Cathrine Murray, number ten.

Murray, a true freshman, and Chevalier, a redshirt freshman, got their first taste of college volleyball against the tenth best team in the nation, Florida. Not only were they going up against the red-hot Gators in their first college match-up, but they were doing it in Gainesville.

“Stepping on the court and watching Florida on the other side, everything was blowing past me, but once I got in a couple plays and I could slow things down, they were just another team. I think if we played them again, we could beat them” a confident Murray said.

“I looked at it as being a challenge. We played a lot of great programs this year, so going into it, we looked at them like any other team. We knew to play our best and we expected their best,” Chevalier said.

Obviously, being a redshirt freshman, Chevalier has already gotten to train and practice with the team for a full year.

“I got to learn the speed and how it’s different coming in from high school or a club. It’s a lot faster here, so it prepared me a lot more for this year.”

However, if there’s one thing that both of these girls have in common, it’s their love of volleyball.

“It’s always been one of my goals or dreams to be a college volleyball player. I’ve been playing since the fifth grade and I’ve been playing ever since, so it’s great to finally be here,” said Chevalier.

“It’s always been a dream to play in college, and this has really just been like a dream come true to me,” followed Murray.

This season obviously hasn’t gone the way either player would have liked it to with the Eagles having a 7-18 record at the time of writing this, but Murray still has big goals for her time at Georgia Southern.

“I would like to win a Sun Belt Championship,” she said when talking about her goals here.

One has to imagine that a Sun Belt Championship won’t be far off with the two athletes having a combined 387 kills for the season. So while the present team is led by numbers six and nine, it won’t be long until we hear more and more about seven and ten.