"Keep your hip down," a Penn State athletic trainer said to Dan O'Dell.

"Hip bone's connected to the -- thigh bone. The thigh bone's connected to the -- knee bone," O'Dell sang to himself, as his 6-foot-7 body lay prone on a wobbly old trainer's table in the South Gym of Rec Hall.

It was about 7:15 a.m., and it was just another Thursday morning in the busy life of Dan O'Dell.

O'Dell, a senior setter on the Penn State men's volleyball team, contorted into a few different positions, doing leg raises to strengthen his worn-out left knee.

"The beginning of the year it started to bother me and the pain started to set in right when I started playing," O'Dell said. "The muscle where the quad is all the way down to the patella tendon is all messed up."

O'Dell is normally the team's starting setter, but was sidelined for the entire week with the injury. So instead of setting balls at practice, he was busy with a number of different exercises designed to rehabilitate his knee.

After a few of these exercises, while his teammates' practice was in full swing, O'Dell felt it was his duty to playfully harass the training staff.

"He's a bit of a jokester," athletic trainer Dan Eck said. "He's testing us all the time." O'Dell was literally testing the crew of trainers -- grilling them on the history of baseball and giving them hypothetical situations to diagnose.

"If you're cold-blooded, your body temperature is affected by the temperature around you," O'Dell said, matter-of-factly.

When not busy pestering the training staff, the Rochester, N.Y., native acted as ball-gatherer for the team. Though not directly involved in the action of the practice, O'Dell was pleased with the way things went, but for a different reason all together.

"I'd say about 75 to 80 percent of the time [the Gatorade] is lemon lime," O'Dell said. Today, however, the staff opted for the purple-colored thirst-quencher.

"When Purple comes out, it's like Christmas morning," he said.

A brief walk through Rec Hall brought O'Dell to the Nittany Lions' locker room. An inconspicuous door that sits on the floor of the Main Gym leads to the cozy little room, walled with wood and white lockers. Crashed on the three navy blue sofas that formed a semi-circle around a big TV were O'Dell and teammates Max Holt, Travis Foltz, Ryan Sweitzer and Ryan Walthall.

On the ground sat an XBox and a Nintendo 64, while tucked in the TV's cabinet were DVDs and an assortment of video games. SportsCenter was on TV, but nobody paid it much mind.

"My friggen bike got stolen," Sweitzer announced, which drew laughter from some. He, out of admitted laziness, only turns one number when scrambling his combination, leaving the bike susceptible.

In the meantime, O'Dell iced his knee and changed into a blue T-shirt, jeans, white sneakers and a red hoodie. He slung his blue backpack over his shoulders and headed to Moxie, an eatery in Waring Commons. There he bought an egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwich and an everything bagel with cream cheese and stopped to say hi to Penn State women's soccer player Ali Krieger. O'Dell said a lot of the athletes from different sports become close because they live in West Halls in their freshman year and spend a lot of time around Rec Hall together.

He ate his breakfast back in Rec Hall's athlete study hall. He was there to print out slides for a class in which he had an exam later in the day. After logging in, a picture of a young boy popped up as his computer's background.

"There's my idol," O'Dell said, pointing to his 10-year-old brother, Steve. "I don't know, I just really look up to him ... I'm 10 years older then him ... it's kind of amazing."

O'Dell stumbled a little bit, his thoughts disjointed as he tried to articulate on the special relationship the two have. He said that Steve is an aspiring volleyball player and is the future of the Penn State program.

AOL Instant Messenger and Facebook.com came up quickly, too -- it would not be the last time O'Dell logged onto either.

"We're not supposed to go [on AIM] in study hall, but I don't care," he said. "I like to check away messages all the time."

With slides for his exam, O'Dell trekked to his townhouse, while reminiscing about high school memories.

Aside from volleyball, O'Dell played basketball for McQuaid Jesuit, which was then-nationally ranked in USA Today's high school basketball poll. His senior year the team played against Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- a team that was led by current NBA guard Sebastian Telfair.

Then, suddenly, O'Dell disappeared in a little break in a row of bushes. He walked down a brick path and arrived back at his townhouse. Kicking his way inside, O'Dell stepped over six unopened copies of The Wall Street Journal. Once inside, he still had to tip-toe through objects, this time though approximately 10 pairs of sneakers.

"We may have more shoes then some sorority houses," said Nate Meerstein, senior co-captain of the men's volleyball team and O'Dell's roommate.

O'Dell plopped down on a sofa in the living room with his legs up and his hands cradling his head. He was in the zone, studying his notes.

The recliner sitting next to O'Dell, which he smartly opted not to sit in, was a wreck. Electrical tape held the reclining portion of the chair and a big smiley face was in the middle of the back support. Above the smiley face was the Wal-Mart advertising phrase "Rollin' back prices," which was there courtesy of O'Dell's other roommate, Matt Proper, the other senior co-captain. Curious slash marks also tainted the recliner.

"Yeah, we took a knife to it out of boredom," Meerstein said. Meerstein would later clean up the dish-cluttered sink in the kitchen. He left the assortment of Saltines, Cheez-Its, cereals and other boxed foods near the pantry alone. He also didn't move the jar of peanut butter or George Foreman Grill that sat in the middle of their dinner table.

The white table had a big blue paw in its center and was picked up from someone who was going to throw it away. Many whom the roommates have hosted -- including University of California-Irvine outside hitter Paul Spittle, who was in State College last fall -- sign the table. Spittle's message reads: "Raging from Southern California."

Down in the basement -- or "The Lair" as the sign reads en route to the bottom -- is Proper's room. Proper's area is decked out with pictures of surfers, a few books on a nightstand and a globe, which sits atop a tall shelf.

Four years ago, Proper and O'Dell came to Penn State as the only two freshmen volleyball players. At first they didn't really click, he said, but their situation early on contributed to their closeness now.

"He was always shocked at me [in the beginning] 'cause I would sleep and play XBox all day long," O'Dell said. "He'd be like, 'What is wrong with this kid? What is he doing?' ... But the fact that we were the only two freshmen on the team together, we knew we'd had to trust each other to get along to make it through together ... Every year we've just gotten closer and closer. And we've come to be best friends."

Meerstein and O'Dell live upstairs. O'Dell's room is cluttered, with clothes flowing out of a closet near his bed. On the walls he's got posters ranging from the Care Bears to Phish and Bob Dylan.

O'Dell sifted through some clothes in his room and changed into white and silver gym shorts after stepping outside and deeming it "shorts weather."

He made his way to his first class of the day, an 11:15 a.m. industrial engineering lab. He's an industrial engineering major, and it showed -- sitting with his knees crowded under his desk, he pecked away at the keys of his computer while working on some convoluted computer code.

He was on AIM and Facebook in between writing the code. He became upset, though, when he learned that Meerstein was signed on his AIM screen name from their apartment.

O'Dell finished the lab with relative ease and headed to lunch at Waring Commons, where he met up with teammates Max Holt and Matt Anderson.

As the three sat and ate they ribbed each other and discussed the infamous Chicken Cosmo.

"I don't get the Chicken Cosmo," O'Dell said. "I'm not a chicken sandwich guy unless you get the right ingredients ... I like Buffalo chicken sandwiches, maybe some ranch and you gotta have a good roll."

Before the three split, O'Dell cracked a fortune cookie, which read: "You will attend a party where a stranger will come into your life."

He was displeased with the prognostication. "What a terrible fortune," he whined.

O'Dell made it back home to find Meerstein sprawled out on the couch. Meerstein, a fifth-year senior, only takes two classes -- one of which is fly-fishing -- and often finds himself with a lot of time on his hands.

"He has nothing to do all day," O'Dell said. "He watches a lot of movies."

Meerstein was flipping back and forth between MTV's Fat Camp and The Cosby Show. Meerstein eventually headed to his friends' sociology lecture -- even though he's not enrolled in it -- to keep himself occupied.

On top of the TV cabinet was a large white bucket-like piggybank that had arms, jeans and a chest drawn on it by Proper. Hanging from its neck was a gold chain with a dollar sign pendant. On top it said, "Feed 'em."

"We decided to make a house piggybank, basically," Meerstein said. "We just put all the loose change in there. And if your picture is in the Collegian or Volleyball Magazine you owe a dollar. If you're Player of the Week you owe five [dollars]."

O'Dell slipped a dollar into the slot because Proper served more aces then him in a practice drill.

O'Dell used the time in between classes to study more for his exam and catch a quick nap. He came downstairs and saw Boy Meets World on TV and immediately recognized the episode. "[Mr.] Feeney gets the girl," he said, before ducking out for class.

Two-thirty rolled around, which meant it was time for the exam. He sat hunched over his paper, bouncing his right leg up and down, perhaps out of nervousness, but O'Dell said that he was prepared and that it wasn't too difficult.

Once he reached the little nook that leads to his apartment, he threw up his arms. "No work till Sunday," he said, with relief. With only one match for the team on the weekend, O'Dell had the luxury of taking a weekend off.

"The amount of time you put in [as an athlete] is so much more than like anything," O'Dell said. "In-season you're putting in a lot of days ... But it's got its benefits. I would choose to be the athlete over any other way possible."

So the rest of the day was spent in a laid-back fashion. O'Dell went on AIM, watched TV and prepared for dinner and the post-dinner tradition in their townhouse: Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. The crew regularly gathers around the TV from 7-8 p.m. to watch the two shows and enjoy the company of each other at day's end.

"We're big Wheel of Fortune fans," he said.

After a night of Wheel, O'Dell and his roommates planned on turning in early. They anticipated the next morning's pre-match practice, before catching a bus later in the afternoon for the night's road match against Saint Francis (Pa.).

Monday morning at 7 in the South Gym of Rec Hall, O'Dell picked up his life right where he momentarily abandoned it for the weekend. He recognizes that the long journey is nearing its end and that his hectic schedule as a Penn State men's volleyball player is now only limited to a few short months.