When she first came to UST in 2006, Hardy was the very first student-athlete to be recruited for the university’s first-ever intercollegiate volleyball team. Since then, she has watched as the Lady Celts have built themselves into a winning team, and she will be the first athlete from the program to graduate after spending all four years on the team since it began.

“When we first started, we only had two girls on the team who were real experienced volleyball players,” Hardy recalls. “But we all had the same heart and desire to win, and we all fought hard. The next year, it was a whole new team, and we just got so much stronger. To see these girls grow, knowing how it was in the beginning, is so special for me. We’ve come a long way.”

And indeed they have. This fall season, Hardy led the Lady Celts team to win the Association of Independent Institutions (AII) Conference Tournament for the second year in a row and again made an appearance at the NAIA Volleyball National Championships.

Off the court, Hardy is a business management major and self-described extrovert who loves to shop and spend time with her family. Committed to her Catholic faith, she considers religion a significant priority in her life, which is part of the reason she values her experience at St Thomas.

“I have a very close relationship with God, and without Him, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” she said. “I consider myself very blessed.”

Hardy’s post-graduate goals are to succeed in the business world, a path she hopes to begin with a summer internship with Exxon or Center Point Energy next year. One of the reasons why she chose to attend St. Thomas was because of its academic prestige, something she said she knew would become a tremendous asset to beginning a career in business.

Of course, making the move to the small campus of UST was quite a transition for Hardy both academically and athletically, considering she came from Humble High School with a graduating class of nearly 1,000 students.

“It was a shock for me to come to this small community compared to the huge 5A high school I came from,” she said. “Especially when it came to sports, I knew right away that it wasn’t like I had known it to be in high school, where the entire school was all about sports. Here, with volleyball having just started, there was no real team spirit or excitement about sports. But in time, people on campus became more active and supportive of it.”

Looking back on her career at UST, Hardy admits she gets a bit emotional, but only because she is so proud to have been a part of such memorable experiences both in the classroom and on the volleyball court.

“These past four years of my life here as a student and an athlete have been a very big part of my life,” she said with tears in her eyes. “It’s an experience I will never forget.”