Passion is like a fire welling up inside a person, an uncontrollable emotion for something very dear. Is it possible to have more than just one?

Junior Meagan Schoenrock would wave a flag marked “yes” emphatically. Not only is she a standout outside hitter for the NIU volleyball team, she also subscribes to another title: artist.

Not just an attack artist, as Schoenrock ranks third in the nation in kills per set, but also in a more traditional sense.

Designing one of the dogs sponsored by the athletic department for the Huskies on Parade program has put the Sylvania, Ohio, native’s artistic talents on display, as her canine creation stands proud outside the Sports Information offices at the Convocation Center.

The eye-catching Huskie, painted in cardinal and black, features screened-on, high-contrast photos of numerous athletes from different sports. The Huskie is aimed to communicate the strong sense of community the NIU athletes have established.

“It’s more of just a unity thing,” said Schoenrock, a visual communications major, of her creation. “I think we have a really cool athlete program here; we all support each other which is really cool. I feel like all of our sports teams come to our games and we go to theirs. We’re all like a big circle, so I thought it was kind of cool to have everyone on the dogs.”

The athletes’ supportive attitude, and Schoenrock’s ability to articulate it, was echoed by NIU head volleyball coach Ray Gooden.

“I think it’s a pretty cool way to depict the athletic lifestyle at NIU by showing athletes in their different capacities,” Gooden said. “There’s just so many different faces to NIU athletics, and I think it shows that. It’s pretty cool to know that it’s a volleyball student-athlete representing the entire department.”

Art has been an important part of Schoenrock’s life from an early age, and her love for it pushed her to pursue it further. This has led her to take up such projects as designing warm-up T-shirts and jerseys for the volleyball team, according to Gooden.

“I always knew that I wanted to be some kind of artist. People would always say ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I would say ‘An artist,'” Schoenrock said. “I really always loved it, I was always drawing on napkins and stuff and I had the bag of crafts and everything, like the airplane and stuff.”

The tools at her disposal have improved as she’s moved through her education, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a fan of everything at her disposal.

“I’m not a big charcoal fan,” Schoenrock jokes. “It’s just messy. That’s all we were allowed to do when we were freshmen, and my hands were always black, like soot and blackness everywhere. I got a lot [of weird looks] because there’s not many artists in the athlete department, so people always thought I had dirty hands.”

Schoenrock’s artistic talents may have even crept into her skills on the court, providing an interesting perspective on her dominant career, during which she has tallied over 1,000 kills.

“I guess I never really thought about [whether artistic talents translate to the court],” she said. “Probably somehow, I feel like there’s always those different views about how the musical part of your brain or the artistic part of your brain works.”

Her coach is more sure of the impact it’s had on her game, and has seen the influence it’s had on her.

“I think artists have their own unique way of going about things, you know, and for her, sometimes, she has her own unique way of going about things,” said Gooden. “I also think her ability as an artist to step into areas where people feel uncomfortable also is a sign of the way she plays volleyball, too. I mean, she takes pretty big and bold steps.”

Big and bold steps. When you’re passionate about something, those are steps you’re willing to take.