{"id":4,"date":"2025-01-30T19:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T19:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/?p=4"},"modified":"2025-01-30T19:47:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T19:47:47","slug":"get-to-know-ben","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/2025\/01\/30\/get-to-know-ben\/","title":{"rendered":"Get to Know Ben"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>My passion for sports goes back to as long as I can remember. Growing up, there was always sports on my TV, so I couldn&#8217;t help but become interested in it all. I started playing soccer around 5 years old and didn&#8217;t stop playing until high school. I started playing basketball in 2nd grade, and I still play to this day. I played lacrosse and baseball for my high school team, never having played those sports before. After high school, I fell in love with the sport of volleyball. My friends and I would go to a rec center every Monday and Wednesday for pickup volleyball, and we did this so many times that I lost count. For the longest time I wanted to be a professional athlete. First I wanted to go pro in soccer, then basketball, then lacrosse, and now volleyball. Being a professional athlete has been a lifelong dream of mine but unfortunately I tore my ACL in the fall of 2023 and have had a tough time getting back into the swing of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38345\/2025\/01\/IMG_5404.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"750\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38345\/2025\/01\/IMG_5404.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5\" srcset=\"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38345\/2025\/01\/IMG_5404.jpg 750w, https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38345\/2025\/01\/IMG_5404-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38345\/2025\/01\/IMG_5404-600x400.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My passion for sports goes back to as long as I can remember. Growing up, there was always sports on my TV, so I couldn&#8217;t help but become interested in it all. I started playing soccer around 5 years old and didn&#8217;t stop playing until high school. I started playing basketball in 2nd grade, and&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/2025\/01\/30\/get-to-know-ben\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":30472,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":1},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30472"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8,"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/student.wp.odu.edu\/bduff004\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}