Two weeks.

In two weeks, Joey Benson was supposed to move into her college dorm, start her freshman year of college at the University of New Mexico and enjoy her first season as a Division I college athlete.

One phone call threatened to take a stick of dynamite to those supposed to’s. 

That phone call informed her that less than a year from now on July 1, 2019, UNM would no longer offer a beach volleyball program after the university’s Board of Regents unanimously voted to cut the men’s soccer, men’s and women’s skiing and women’s beach volleyball programs based on recommendations from athletic director Eddie Nunez and UNM President Garnett Stokes. 

Why? Because the athletic department owed the university $4.6 million and cutting the programs would save the department an estimated $1.148 million annually, according to the UNM Department of Athletics’s Analysis and Review report.

The Bensons had been promised this wouldn’t happen. 

“I was definitely just in disbelief, and then I just kind of broke down,” Joey said. “It was very devastating.”

Many of her teammates chose to abandon ship, to find a university that wouldn’t require them to transfer in a year if they wanted to continue playing beach volleyball. She didn’t blame them because there were times she didn’t want to play for UNM.

She had a big decision to make: stay at UNM for a year or find a new university. A new university meant Joey would have to start the recruiting process all over again.

It was the night before nationals for the Amateur Athletic Union’s Junior Olympic Tournament. Joey would spend the next two weeks competing in more tournaments in California. College recruiters would be there, contributing to her new added pressure. How was she supposed to find the time to make a life-altering decision?

“The recruiting process takes years, and now you’ve got two weeks to find another school,” said Lisa Benson, Joey’s mother. “I remember the pressure on her was just, it was unbearable, and it was so hard to watch as a mom.”

Pressed for time, Joey opted to honor her commitment to UNM for her freshman year. It would buy her more time to find another university that best suited her needs and interests. She knew a hasty transfer decision probably wouldn’t be the best opportunity for her, which could lead to her potentially transferring from that school, too. A year of experience under her belt could make her more attractive to other colleges.

“I felt angry a lot too, especially at the beginning, just angry at the athletic department,” Joey said. 

The season in Albuquerque would also give her the opportunity to train under Pauline Manser, the UNM beach volleyball head coach and a former Australian Olympian. Manser was the main reason Joey was drawn to the program. 

“I knew I wanted to play for that coach,” Joey said. “I was pretty set on that.”

The one year playing under Manser proved critical for Joey. She absorbed every morsel of information she could gleam from her coach, writing down every conversation they had in her phone. Manser taught her to prepare herself to play with her partner, breathe, take her time, enjoy the journey and process, take the match point by point and most importantly, to be comfortable being uncomfortable. 

Uncomfortable doesn’t just describe awkward and slightly painful situations. It describes anything that causes feelings of distress, annoyance, unease and stress. What could be more uncomfortable than watching the plan you’ve been working towards since you first started playing volleyball in middle school dematerialize in the eleventh hour?

“That was something that I definitely learned real quick freshman year,” Joey said. “College athletics are never going to be comfortable, and it’s always going to be changing, and you just have to be comfortable in the uncomfortable situations.”

The word temporary couldn’t escape Joey’s mind at the beginning of the school year, constantly clouding her mind and discouraging any desire to make friends or settle in since her time in Albuquerque was only temporary. 

I just felt like that all year, just kind of temporary, very temporary,” Joey said. “It was sad. I had to change my mindset on that because it actually ended up being a really good year for me.”

Competing in 24 matches for UNM, she finished the season 10-14. Knowing this was the program’s last season, the team rallied together to focus on learning and improving each day, rather than the number recorded in the win column.

“Most of the time your sports seasons, they’re focused on their record and winning and how to build better, but there, they knew it wasn’t going any further,” Lisa said. “So she was able to focus on the mental aspect of the game, and that coach really helped her with that.”

To find a home for her sophomore season, she had to cram recruitment visits into one day out of the weekend, instead of two, and research different universities’ programs in between school and team commitments. 

One of those visits was to Boise State University.

It poured on Feb. 1 when the Bensons visited Boise, Idaho, a stark contrast to the sunny weather of UNM’s Albuquerque and Joey’s native Arizona. The weather was the main reason Joey hesitant to go to BSU, but it doesn’t bother her now. She even purchased snow tires, something she never thought she’d own and her mom didn’t even know existed. 

“Boise State definitely felt like home,” Joey said. “It was just super rainy, and like the weather was not good. You would think like that would turn a recruit away.”

But the support from the administration, athletic department and community outweighed her trepidations about the cold. She wasn’t going to commit to another program, only for it to be cut, too, but she knew BSU was as committed to her as she was to them. 

“You could tell, like just the athletic department as a whole, they really cared about their athletes,” Joey said. “It was a really, really good supportive environment, not just like Boise State athletics, but like Boise the community. They love the Broncos. Just having the support, not just from the coaches but from that administration, was really important to me. I was like, ‘I’m not going through this again.’”

To kick off her first season as a Bronco, the team travelled down to Tucson, Arizona to compete in the Cactus Classic. Joey and her partner, Alyssa Wissinger, finished a team best of 2-2, but just as Joey started to settle in at Boise, a worldwide pandemic shut everything down. The night before they were supposed to leave for their next tournament, Head Coach Allison Voigt pulled the team into the locker room to inform them they wouldn’t be travelling. 

COVID-19 shut them down. 

Joey couldn’t catch a break. The rug was yanked out from underneath her again.

For the second consecutive season, Joey was told beach volleyball was cancelled. Fortunately, this time it was only temporary, but it still thrust Joey and the rest of the world into an uncomfortable situation. The Bensons decided Joey would spend the pandemic in Boise, where she worked out in her apartment, went sightseeing and hiked to stay busy.

Like it was the case for several athletes, the pandemic challenged Joey mentally, but once again, she learned how to be comfortable in this uncomfortable situation. She discovered how to take care of her mental health. Taking a break to go for a walk became her number one outlet ­­­– besides calling her mom, of course.­

She likes to climb the 55 steps, which remind her of the steps leading to her high school to the top of Camel’s Back Park, where she sits down on a rock and looks out at the city, or she’ll visit Boise River’s Greenbelt Park and watch the river flow by.

“It’s been really mentally refreshing for me to just be out in nature and take time away from my phone, my schoolwork [and] volleyball,” Joey said. “In one part of my mind, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is taking time out of my day, like this is an hour I can be doing homework,’ but I know I need that hour to just take time away and refresh myself.”

Sometimes it seems the outside world is oblivious to the limitations and the mental health needs of athletes. As an athlete, even her coaches expect unlimited stamina and endurance from her, thinking she never needs to take a break to stop and breathe. 

“We’re not machines and objects,” Joey said. “We’re people.”

Beneath that unbreakable façade the world has placed on them is a human being dealing with the same stresses and emotions as the rest of us. There’s a human being competing for a spot on the roster, fighting to maintain their scholarship and trying to get the best Name Image and Likeness deal.

“There’s no time to come up for air,” Joey said. “Every day is a tryout for your spot. I don’t ever need any pressure from anyone else because I put enough pressure on myself.”

That pressure fuels Joey’s competitive nature, which is the same competitive nature that led the kinesiology major to decide to use the extra year of NCAA eligibility given to spring sport athletes affected by COVID-19 and suit up for the Broncos for one final season.

 “I don’t think she would be satisfied with not being a student athlete and going to school,” Lisa said. “I think she would miss that.”

COVID-19 wasn’t all bad. It was another opportunity to be comfortable being uncomfortable – something Joey made the most of. It gave her time to take care of herself mentally. It bought her more time to figure out life after beach volleyball. It rekindled Joey’s love of the sport and reminded her why she plays.

“I feel fulfilled,” Joey said. “You’re in the sun. Your cheeks are rosy. You have sand all over you.”

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