Between the steady crashing of the waves and pleasant burn from the sun, the college campus, sitting almost right on top of the beach was the cherry on top for high school senior Jordyn Anderson. It was perfect, almost too perfect to give up. And with the end of her high school years rapidly approaching, she knew the choice was clear.
“It was the perfect fit for me,” Anderson said. “I would get the college experience and play volleyball, which I was not ready to give up from high school.”
That was three years ago, when Anderson first joined City College as a student and athlete in fall 2020. Now, she is a third year student about to graduate and transfer to a four year university. She has been playing on both the indoor and beach women’s volleyball teams for the Vaqueros, and has played volleyball since she was little.
“It started off as playing something called volley-tennis when I was about 6 years old, when I started playing at the recreation center and eventually kept signing up to play more and more,” she said. “Then at 11 years old, I knew I wanted to play competitively, so I started playing club volleyball, and eventually I started playing with the traveling teams.”
Anderson was recruited for the City College’s team by Head Coach Katherine Niksto, dubbed “Coach Kat.” During Anderson’s final year of high school, Niksto reached out via email after watching her play at a tournament in Las Vegas and invited her to visit the City College campus.
Her first year, however, was when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Anderson recalls how her experience practicing was less than ideal.
“We had all these rules and regulations that didn’t let us practice properly,” she said. “We had to wear masks and our coaches had to wear gloves. We couldn’t even touch the same volleyballs.”
Anderson and her teammates however, used it as an opportunity to get an eligibility year so they got to spend one more year on campus and have the two full years of playing.
She plans on transferring to San Diego State University as soon as the year ends to pursue her passion for kinesiology and sports medicine. Anderson explains that she switched from a biology major after getting an internship at the training room on campus.
She also shares that transferring to SDSU would mean the end of her volleyball career.
“Being a kinesiology major, there are just so many science and math classes that I didn’t see myself continuing in these high level classes with internships and jobs while being able to stay playing competitively,” she said, adding how she would still play for fun, but being a student athlete is a lot more time consuming than she thought.
