Operating on as little as three hours of sleep is a challenge. Competing at the top of your game on the volleyball court and in the classroom with three hours of shuteye is nearly impossible.
 
For volleyball senior Emily Boylan, the second statement was often her reality as a freshman at Louisiana Tech in 2017.
 
"It hit me hard," said Boylan, who is a fourth-year biomedical engineering student with a concentration in tissue engineering. "Freshman year was definitely a struggle because I was good at math in science in high school, but I really just wasn't good at time management.
 
"You can't really do everything and still get the work done, so I had to learn how to prioritize what I wanted to do."
 
Despite adjusting to the challenges of a difficult major and hours of weekly work for volleyball, Boylan never complained about her situation. Similar to her work in a classroom, she searched for solutions to her problems.
 
The main problem she wanted to solve was getting more sleep on a regular basis. Averaging four hours a night like she did freshman year was not going to cut it. She began prioritizing schoolwork, meal prepping and even occasionally deleting apps like Netflix or Tik Tok off her phone to give her extra time to focus on volleyball and school.
 
Boylan again had to adapt to another change following her sophomore season, which was when head coach Amber McCray and her coaching staff arrived. A new style of play, new coaches and increased time to hone time management skills led to an excellent sophomore spring for the Mandeville, Louisiana native.
 
"Coach McCray put a lot of trust into me, and that motivation made me better," Boylan said. "She put that trust into me and gave me an opportunity when she first got here.
 
"The confidence the entire staff instilled into me helped me get better skill wise as well as leadership wise."
 
McCray's confidence in Boylan began early in the head coach's tenure, but Boylan's key role in the starting lineup and as a leader accelerated in the team's spring tournaments in 2019. McCray said the team's last spring tournament at SFA, coincidentally the spot of LA Tech's first official matches this spring, was when Boylan emerged as one of the team's go-to hitters.
 
Boylan carried that momentum into a breakout junior season, setting career highs across the board. Boylan's 96 sets played this past season were 13 more than she had played in her first two years combined. She also set single-game career bests with 16 kills against Southern Miss and nine blocks against Middle Tennessee.
 
In the classroom, Boylan earned a spot on the C-USA Commissioner's Honor Roll and inched one year closer to finishing her biomedical engineering degree. Her changes off the court meshed with her breakout campaign on the court to set her up for a standout senior season.
 
"What I love most about coaching Emily is that she is never a student-athlete we have to worry about what kind of day she has had dictating her practice," McCray said. "Despite her packed schedule or anything else going on, she comes in every single day with a genuine smile and ready to work.
 
"That kind of consistent example of leadership makes the whole program better, and it's also how I know she is someone destined for future success in whatever she chooses to do."
 
Boylan has not decided which area of biomedical engineering she wants to go into after college, but she would like it to include a crossover with her career as a student-athlete.
 
For Boylan's senior design project, her group is developing a wearable device to reduce the risk of UCL injuries, an injury that has long affected baseball players who put strain on their elbows. In whatever her next step is after college, she wants to gain experience to find a space best suited for her.
 
"That's why I love biomedical engineering because I can go into the research side first, but then I can move on from it if it's not the best fit for me," Boylan said. "I can do the stepping stone process until I find what I want to do for my career."
 
The lone Louisiana native on Tech's volleyball roster will finally get the opportunity to close out her career with the Lady Techsters starting later in January. Her leadership and ability to adapt will help guide a roster with nine newcomers, including eight freshmen.
 
"I know a lot of the seniors have had a lot of experience in conference," Boylan said. "A lot of us got to play as freshmen, so just starting out I remember being a freshman and playing my first game and just being so nervous.
 
"You're finally a Division-I athlete in that moment, and I want to instill a lot of confidence into our freshmen and our incoming players and give them as much advice as I can so that they can improve on their skills and confidence and reach a point to where they don't make mistakes that I made as a freshman."