Free State High volleyball player Kelsey Harrison isn’t going to Winthrop University only because it has won the last five Big South championships.

The most important reason for her wanting to travel more than a thousand miles from home was sitting among all the family and classmates surrounding the table at which Harrison, along with Free State’s Jessica Scott, Jenna Brantley and Allie Hock, were signing letters of intent Tuesday.

Winthrop’s Kelsey Hall had made the trip from Rock Hill, S.C., to see her future college teammate sign her letter to the D-I school.

But this won’t be the first time the two play volleyball together.

Harrison and Hall – who prepped at Shawnee Heights in Tecumseh – played for the Topeka Juniors club team the last four years and now plan to play alongside each other for four more at Winthrop.

“It was just pushing the decision a little more with knowing that I’m going to know somebody on the team, let alone somebody that actually goes there,” Harrison said.

Hall, who graduated high school early and started at Winthrop this spring, was happy to have Harrison heading out to South Carolina.

“I’m really excited because over the past four years we’ve bonded and really gotten to know each other and she’s just an amazing player,” Hall said. “With being so far away, I noticed it was hard for me and I got homesick a lot. I think since I’ve already experienced it I can help her through it, and if I need help I can just always go to her.”

The two players are joining the program in a year with a lot of turnover, starting with a new coach in Sally Polhamus, a former Georgia Tech assistant who is replacing Joel McCartney, who left to become Georgia’s coach.

“She’s a really good coach, she knows a lot about the game,” Hall said of Polhamus. “She’s very intense but is always positive.”

Harrison and Hall will be part of a good-sized recruiting class coming in under Polhamus that will force them to battle in order to establish themselves in the program.

“There’s actually five freshmen coming in this year, so we’re going to be pretty young,” Harrison said. “But if I work hard this summer I should be able to play a little bit next year. But I’m not going to get my hopes up or anything because with being a freshman I have to go back down to the bottom.”

While Harrison could see some playing time next year, Scott will be toward the end of a University of Tennessee-Chattanooga volleyball roster consisting of six seniors.

Scott said she had other schools she was interested in attending, but they would have just been for academic purposes rather than athletic.

“I wasn’t ready to give up volleyball,” Scott said.

UT-Chattanooga has had Scott on its radar for the last three years, but didn’t fully catch her eye until her senior year.

“I talked to them a little my sophomore year, but then I kind of lost touch until this year,” Scott said. “I saw them in a tournament and just started talking again, went for a visit and it just worked out. They’ve been top-four in their conference (Southern Conference) for years.”

While Scott and Harrison are traveling to the southeast to play NCAA Division-I sports, Brantley and Hock will stay closer to home and compete at the D-II and D-III levels.

Brantley is the only one of the four who will stay in Kansas, joining the Pittsburg State basketball team.

“I really liked the town, I loved the coach, I loved the team,” Brantley said. “I made my decision the first day I went there – before I even talked to the coaches, just when I was driving around by myself looking at the campus.”

Just like Harrison at Winthrop, Brantley will be heading into a transition period for the Gorillas’ program with the retirement of coach Steve High after 18 seasons.

“Nobody really knows what to expect,” Brantley said. “I know we’re going to play an up-tempo game like we did here at Free State, so I’m really glad that I can be able to play at the same pace and everything.”

Of the four Firebirds, Hock looks to have the best possibility of starting from day one, as a catcher on the softball squad at Simpson College – a D-III school in Indianola, Iowa.

Hock is coming to the program just as its two-year starting catcher is graduating.

“There’s a big opening right there and the coach I’ve talked to is pretty sure I’ll be able to slide right into that spot and take over for that,” Hock said. “The school’s beautiful, it has great academic history and the softball team has got a good reputation, too.”