Chandra Roberson of City Honors won a full athletic ride to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and she couldn't be more excited.

"Volleyball wasn't something I had even thought about doing before high school and then I started playing and I was having so much fun with it - the more I played the better I got - so it has just been great since then," Chandra said.

In the spring, she commuted to Rochester to play for Volley FX, the 13th-ranked club team in the nation. Chandra then went to two volleyball camps, making the last week of July her first real week of summer. Then she began preseason training.

Three days a week "I [had] to get up and lift and do my conditioning/running - we do bench presses, squats, jump shrugs, basic stuff like that," she said.

Chandra will be expected to be able to run the 800-meter dash in 3 minutes and 30 seconds when she arrives on campus. Weeks before other students arrive, she will have practice twice a day with a third session of "team building" at night. Volleyball at SIU is both a fall and spring sport and thus the season is essentially year-round.

Does that sound like a big commitment? Meet Natalie Hojnacki of Nardin, who will play soccer for Lehigh. A typical summer day for Natalie consisted of strength and conditioning camp at Sahlens Sports Park from 10 a.m. to noon, a brief lunch and shower and then a 90-minute car ride to Rochester where she trained from 4 to 6 p.m. for the Open Empire State Western Region Soccer team.

"I'm used to being very committed [to my sport] because I play for the Rochester Rhinos (a club soccer team). That was a lot of commitment coming from Buffalo," Natalie said.

Though Natalie played at a very high level of soccer throughout high school, she anticipates that college soccer will be something new. "I think it's going to be a lot faster, a quicker speed of play. The girls [will be] a lot stronger," she said.

Antonio Sirianni, a 2006 Canisius High grad who will row for Yale in the fall, agreed with Natalie. "The difference between high school and college [sports] is that in high school you get back in shape during the first couple weeks [of the season], but in college, they are expecting everyone to be in tip-top shape as soon as they get back to school," he said.

At the moment, Antonio is rowing for the Junior A Men's team at West Side Rowing Club. Practices last for two hours, six days a week. Antonio is also following a "top secret" training program sent to him from Yale in early June. His greatest challenge this summer has been maintaining his weight. Recruited as a lightweight rower, Antonio is expected to weigh under 160 pounds to qualify as a lightweight at races. "I kind of wish I could go out partying all summer and not worry about it, but I can't," he said.

Maria Forti will play rugby for McGill University.