Playing multiple sports as a kid is pretty routine but as you get older into college, athletes tend to go a bit more sport specific, and really focus on one sport. It truly takes a special type of athlete to be able to play multiple sports at a college level and that’s exactly what we came across this week with our conversation with dual sport athlete at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL, Chapel Cunningham.
Cunningham grew up in the Chattanooga area and had a great experience calling the Scenic City home.
“It’s been great, honestly, born in GA but moved here (to the Chattanooga area) when I was seven… lived on Signal Mountain for a long time…” She continued, “The community here is awesome, everybody here wants to help each other out. The athletic world here is super skilled, I feel like as well. It’s been a big blessing to be around all of these really good athletes too.”
She also became a major player and contributor to the GPS Bruisers and while she attended school there one of her coaches had a major impact on her to help her fall in love with the game again…
“Coach Crownover… She’s what made me fall in love with softball again. She’s an incredible coach.” Cunningham continued by talking about why she looked up to her so much, “She leads by example and that’s something that I try to do as well, she encourages and pushes everybody to their limits, she believes in everybody even when you’re down on yourself, telling us that she’s got more confidence in us than we do and that’s super cool coming from a coach.”
As she was re-falling in love again with softball, she also found a love for volleyball that she didn’t know was quite there…
“Junior year, my high school volleyball coach was like, ‘if you really want to play in college, which I totally think you can, I think you need to play club so you can get exposure to college coaches and stuff like that’. A lot of recruiting for volleyball is through club tournaments so I quit basketball to play club volleyball. I got some looks, I played for A5 and that was super fun but then COVID happened, and we didn’t get to finish out our season.”
At this point Chapel had the the fire lit to play both sports at the next level but the question was now, could she find a place that would allow her to do both? That’s where Southeastern University came in.
“So, I went to a camp at Southeastern over Christmas break… It was after I went on a visit to Boston University and I was gonna go there, I don’t like cold weather, so I was a little skeptical about that, I was a little hesitant.” However, BU didn’t have a volleyball team with that her skepticism grew larger and she knew that she needed to look elsewhere. That’s when she caught the eye of SEU.
“I played in some softball tournament with my travel team and Southeastern’s coach was there, and it just so happened that the SE coach and my travel coach were good friends. So, I went up there for a camp and I did super well at the camp, I don’t know what got into me that camp, but she was super interested in after that.” From that point the recruiting pitch was on. “Maybe like two weeks later she calls me and she’s like, ‘So what’s going to take for you to commit? Do you want me to talk to the volleyball coach or what?’ I was like, yes, please talk to the volleyball coach!”
From there Chapel would take a trip down to Lakeland to practice with the team and play some beach volleyball with them, something she had never done before playing beach volleyball. Then she took part in a recruit only practice and right after the practice she offered Chapel a spot on the team. The dream was coming together well for her.
“I showered in the locker room and then signed for both sports after.”
What a dream come true.
Chapel just completed her sophomore year at SEU. As a volleyball player she contributed to the team going 35-27 and for the No.20 ranked softball team she has a career .407 average, 114 hits, 67 runs scored, 31 RBI’s, 57 stolen bases, and an on-base % of .443.
Watch the full conversation here:
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