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| Photo courtesy ksuowls.com |
KENNESAW, Ga. – Kennesaw State University student balances
challenging academics with a strong softball performance.
KSU senior softball player Bianca Durant works hard as a student
athlete. Recently accepted into the school’s nursing program, Durant gives it
her all on the field and in the classroom.
Durant was born and raised in Douglasville, Ga. where she is
part of a large family. She is the daughter of Jonathan and Donna Durant who
also parent her three sisters (Taylor, Jasmine, Monique) and three brothers
(Michael, Anthony, Jonathan Jr.).
“I love my family. We always have a lot of fun together,”
Durant said. “I think I have the best moments when I’m with them.”
Durant started playing softball at an early age when her
father enrolled her and two of her sisters.
“My dad put my oldest sister Jasmine in [softball] and she
wasn’t very good, so he ended up putting me and my little sister who’s a year
younger than me in it,” Durant said. “We both started playing when I was six
and she was five, and that’s how I started. We did slowpitch all the way up
until we were 12 years old and then we switched to fastpitch.”
Durant attended Chapel Hill High School in Douglasville
where she lettered in softball all four years. While at Chapel Hill, she
received various awards and honors. She was named to the Georgia Dugout Club
All-Star Team and was a First Team All-Star honoree. When Durant was a senior,
she helped her Chapel Hill team to place third in the state. Over her summer
breaks from school, she played for club softball teams. Durant played with
Georgia Impact for one summer and Georgia Elite for three.
“High school is kind of a joke because the teams aren’t
really that good, so you go and try out for summer teams and you try to get the
big names,” Durant said. “I played for the Georgia Elite and I think that’s how
Coach Holly or Coach Whitlock saw me, playing for them over the summer.”
Durant signed with the Kennesaw Owls in 2011 and started in
50 of the season’s 55 games as a freshman. Her batting skills cleared the bases
for the team. That year, Durant was one of just five players to have five or
more multiple-RBI games. She has remained a key player on the Owls’ starting
lineup in the years since.
Assistant coach Tory Acheson frequently works with Durant on
her hitting and says her greatest attribute is her skillful ability to swing
the bat.
“I think Bianca’s a very talented hitter,” Acheson said. “I
think that she’s one of those players that has a lot of gifts when it comes to
swinging the bat and doing a really good job of helping our team offensively.”
Durant is in her first year of Kennesaw State University’s
nursing school and says her proudest moment was when she was accepted into the
program.
“That was a big moment for me because I was pretty nervous
about that for three years,” Durant said.
She explained that gaining acceptance into the nursing program
is a difficult and competitive process.
“You take all the required classes and you really need to
have the best grades out of the people around you,” Durant said. “I got A’s in
my chemistry and anatomy classes and I think that’s what made them choose me.”
Juggling the responsibilities of sports and studies can be
difficult for any student athlete, but is especially challenging for those with
demanding majors like nursing. KSU softball head coach Wes Holly Jr. regularly
works with Durant to keep her time and efforts balanced.
“The thing is, they are student athletes so they’ve got to
put the student before the athlete and the higher you go up, depending on your
major, that can become a little more difficult. She’s one of them that took
that role,” Holly said. “She has to really have a lot of time management and
she has to sacrifice several things so that she can try to pursue a softball
career because nursing does take away a lot.”
Durant said that after completing the nursing program, she
will start her career wherever she can but hopes to one day become a surgical
nurse.
