Anneka Harris is an international student majoring in Science, Technology, and Society at NJIT.  Other than being an extremely hardworking student, she is also an extremely skilled athlete.

Anneka is the Co-Captain and middle blocker of the NJIT Women’s Volleyball team. She states that her passionate personality both on the court and off is the main factor in how she received her leadership position. She states, “I’m able to hype up the team and they thrive on that energy,” when asked about how her personality affects the team.

Anneka was born in Kingston, Jamaica and was first introduced to volleyball at her sports-focused high school, Excelsior High. She states that she started playing late compared to others, since she was 17 years old by the time she first began playing volleyball. But even with this late start, Anneka’s natural talent and hard work would eventually proceed to earn her the opportunity of a lifetime, as she was invited to train with the national Jamaican volleyball team. As volleyball was not an overly popular sport in Jamaica, Anneka took her talents to the United States and enrolled at Florida State College where she then transferred to NJIT. She states that two of her influencing factors on joining our community was the weather and the location. She loved how NJIT had the potential to offer her many opportunities when it came down to receiving the best education and job internships.

Anneka has big plans for this team: she wants to improve the team conference record over last year. She highlights USC Upstate, Stetson, and Lipscomb as some of the teams she is looking forward to winning against this season. With the new additions of this years talented freshman class Anneka is hopeful that they will all develop into amazing players. She emphasizes this when she stated, “They shifted better than I expected when they transitioned from high school to college level volleyball, honestly just really amazing.” Anneka is an exciting person, as she not only enjoys, “hitting someone in the face with the ball” but she also enjoys eating the national Jamaican dish, ackee and saltfish. When asked how she’s able to keep up with school work and sports, she stated, “Time management is the key, the life of a student athlete is hard…Waking up early for practice, traveling, you really need to treat it like a job.” She also works two jobs and preaches that Google ™ Calendar is the greatest tool in her life. As for her message to the community of NJIT, Anneka wanted to let the students and faculty know “Life’s not too hard, college is not too hard, you just have to push yourself harder in order to achieve your goals.”