Marquette University Athletics
Laura Farina's Coaching Diary
10/13/1999 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Every Wednesday for the remainder of the season, Laura Farina, Marquette University's head volleyball coach, will share her thoughts on the Golden Eagles' volleyball team.
OCTOBER 13
In terms of wins and losses, we are still above .500 even though we have dropped our last four matches. It can be rough. There's no doubt that any competitor does not like to lose, but I think we competed well this past weekend against UNC Charlotte and against St. Louis. We lost a disappointing five-game match to Charlotte and then in four games to St. Louis. The UNC Charlotte match sticks out in my mind. We were up, 2 games to 0, and lost the next three to lose the match. Exhausting to watch the wind taken from your sails. We didn't have the experience to come back after a hard loss on Friday and pull it together for Saturday, even though we did take St. Louis to four. When I talked to the team after each match, I told them that competitors don't have the luxury of believing that a winning record is carved in stone for the whole year or that winning comes easy. In Division I athletics, or for any athlete, you hold dear to your heart what it takes to get you where you are or to where you're going. We took for granted that UNC Charlotte would lay down and let us beat them. They did not and we were not focused to finish the match strong.
This team is competitively young, we will have moments of greatness, then moments of, "oh my gosh, why isn't this working!" Our push as a staff is about what it takes to compete and eventually win. Winning is work and it is the work that has to be enjoyed. My best analogy is that you know you have arrived at expecting to work to win when you have a practice that is light and you wonder what is the matter. Or you think to yourself, "this is no fun, we are wasting our time." Camaraderie and cohesiveness of a team comes from the mutual respect built on working hard together. Everyone is pulling her weight and understands that there are times when you pull your own weight and assist your teammate in pulling hers. As time goes by, the effort is a habit. You do not even think about it because you enjoy the thrill of what you are accomplishing.
This week in practice we have really broken down the game and I think some of our best teaching has gone on. It's not about skill instruction right now, it's about teaching the game -- patterns on the court, spacing on the court and how people fit together even when things aren't going well. For instance, when you have a bad pass, then this is what we have to do to overcome it. I really think that there has been some great learning going on and you can see the eyes light up with, "oh, now I get it." It makes me wonder if we should have gone over it in such detail earlier, but maybe now this is the perfect time to occur as we go into the last part of Conference USA.
We have three matches this week. We play pro the Pro League at home on Wednesday (Oct. 13), then host Houston on Friday (Oct. 15) before playing at South Florida on Sunday (Oct. 17). The team has been talking about the Pro League. Some of the players have seen the Pro League practice in Chicago and they know some of the players on that team. My players are looking at me in wonderment as to why we ever play a pro team. For us, it's an opportunity to play and to get better. It doesn't count on our record so why not play somebody who is obviously better than you. It can only make you better and this will be another of the learning phases for this team, standing up to good competition and seeing how they react. Are you going to wilt like a flower or are you going to fight back? My goal, as we build this program, is that we have people who have the character of fighters.
Houston is a good team. They are undefeated in the conference and they have three solid hitters who are on all the time. We're going to have to play a much better serving game than we've done and we're also going to have to open up the offense, the back row, put people in the alleys along the net that we haven't exploited yet. We've been talking about that in practice with our setters and with the team on how the offense flows and how it works.
We fly out early Saturday morning to Tampa to play South Florida on Sunday. South Florida lost its best hitter to an ACL injury earlier this year, but that team is competing hard. They are taking matches away from teams that maybe they shouldn't have with their best hitter out. They are never losing in three and it should be a good match.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about going on the road and the hardships associated with it. We're going to have to get better on the road and I think that South Florida is a place where we can compete well if we are able to the things necessary in order to achieve success.
