Florida Tech Panther Scholar-Athlete Spotlight Recognizes Volleyball Player Lilian Muszynski

Cajuste is majoring in Computer Science

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Being a scholar-athlete at Florida Tech takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to excel both in the classroom and on the field. We caught up with Panther volleyball player Lilian Muszynski, a junior majoring in sports management, for this edition of Scholar-Athlete Spotlight.

The Pickerington, Ohio native has tallied 332 kills, 115 block assists, 47 block solos, and 38 digs in three seasons in the Crimson and Gray.

Muszynski was named to the Sunshine State Conference Commissioner’s and Florida Tech Athletic Director’s Honor Roll after each of her first two seasons.

We sat down with Lilian to talk about how she balances it all and what she wants to do with her degree.

Tell us a little bit about your major, what made you choose it and what do you want to do with it?

So, I’m currently starting my senior year, going to do my sports management degree.

I have grown up playing sports, my older brother grew up playing sports as well, so I would watch a lot of his games and a lot of the time, I just was always competing for different things whether that was on a swimming team or playing volleyball.

Our parents always had us trying all different kinds of sports, so it’s just always been a really close part of my life and so I knew that I wanted to do something in the sports industry, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I was thinking.

I knew I didn’t want to play after I finished my collegiate career, but I thought sports management would be a good way for me to kind of stay in the sports industry and still kind of pursue a business degree and that passion for being a part of the game. So, I think my goal is to hopefully work for a professional sports team here in the next year as I’m going to graduate in December and so I’m looking forward to finding an internship this summer and hopefully work for a pro sports team.

■ Volleyball’s season starts almost as soon as students return from the summer, how do you make sure you stay on top of your studies as you jump back into your sport after break?

We kind of are lucky because we get to move in a couple of weeks earlier than everybody else, so we kind of get to get readjusted to our schedule a little bit. I get time to get my room situated, figure out what it’s going to be like with new roommates around, different things like that, so that’s kind of a positive.

It helps too because every year since my freshman year, I’ve taken summer classes kind of leading in so I’ve stayed on that school mindset a little bit and just haven’t really ever stopped, so it’s been kind of good to just stay on a consistent path moving forward.

It’s also nice because we get our preseason out of the way, we have two practices a day every day for a week and a half leading up to when school starts, so I get kind of used to being on the schedule.

So, it’s kind of nice to stay busy that whole time and it gets you in the mindset of you have things to constantly do and then you add in assignments and things like that, it makes it easy to transition right into games and traveling at the beginning of the school year.

■ Is there a teammate or fellow athlete who you’ve become study buddies with?

A lot of the time, all of us who are in the business school, whether that’s someone who’s younger than me or someone who’s a lit bit older than me, we all kind of talk to each other about ‘Hey, have you had this professor?’ or ‘Hey, have you taken this class?

What type of thing did you do?’ So, we all kind of work together in that aspect and that’s not only people who are on the volleyball team, but other athletes as well. We all kind of collaborate as one big group and are really good about working together with sending information or ‘Hey, do you want to be in a group project together?’ So in that sense, kind of everyone in the athletic department, all of us business kids kind of work together on different projects and schoolwork and assignments to help us get through our busy, crazy schedules we all have.

■ What are some things you need to get the most out of study time? Do you have a playlist or need to be by yourself in a room?

If we’re on the road, and we have assigned study time, which we do usually get on one of the days if we’re staying at a hotel, is I’ll turn on a good playlist or I’ll turn on a TV show in the background and I’ll kind of just run noise almost to get me focused in. Then I sit down and start working and I try to break it up into small groups.

So, if I work for 30 minutes, I take 10 minutes to myself and kind of reset my brain a little bit. If I’m at home, I’ll turn on a movie in the background and I’ll just kind of run it on the TV and let it play.

It’ll be something I’ve seen multiple times and I’m not really as engaged with it, but it keeps me focused and keeps me moving through a process and I try to spend the least amount of time on an assignment so I’m not getting super distracted moving forward with multiple assignments in a row.

■ How has being a collegiate athlete prepared you for what you’re doing now and are there lessons from the court that you apply to your studies?

Oh, of course. I think sports is something that will prepare me for everything in life. I mean there’s been struggles, hardships, we have highs, we have lows, there are things that you can only get from being with a group of teammates who are pushing you to be a better person.

I think between our coaches always striving to see the best of us and your teammates making sure that we’re holding ourselves accountable to be at that high level, it really helped me understand how to collaborate in a team, how to work under pressure, how to manage my time really well.

Our schedules are basically set for us 24 hours a day, down to when we’re gonna have time to sleep. I think it’s really good because it helps me understand how I’m able to keep myself focused and motivated and task building, goal setting things, like that. All of those things, along with team collaboration and setting individual goals for myself have all kind of played a role into what makes an athlete stronger and better and what will help me excel in the future workforce

■ What advice would you give to an athlete coming to Florida Tech that has an interest in Sport Management?

If you’re looking to do sports management, I think you’ll have a love for the game, you’ll have a love for what you’re doing, you’ll have a love for being in that organization where people are competing and they’re striving to be their best and it pushes you to want to be your best.

I think if you love that drive of being in a high-level atmosphere that’s constantly changing and moving and things are at an all-time high when you could be winning a national championship or at a low when your season could be 0-27 or whatever that might be, you have to know how to adapt with that.

If you love that pressure and high intensity, then you’ll love going into sports management and you’ll love working with different groups of people, whether that’s marketing, media, operations, whatever you might feel you like those can all play a big role into your career in sports management.

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