Photo by Rebecca Villafane
By: Eduardo Almaguer / Staff Writer
No electronic whistle. No white board covered with plays and statistics. No sneakers screeching on the court.
If you walked inside the U.S. Century Bank Arena on Oct. 4, all you saw was a vast emptiness.
After an embarrassing loss on Oct. 2 at the hands of Middle Tennessee that left the team without a single set win all weekend, head coach Danijela Tomic declared she was going to cancel the next practice.
She kept her word.
“I felt that they had to really self-reflect and do some soul searching and ask themselves why they’re playing the game of volleyball,” said Tomic over the phone.
The Panthers rolled over and dropped three straight sets against Middle Tennessee, highlighted by the 25-12 score of set two. That marked the biggest margin of loss in a set all season for FIU.
Tomic resumed practice on Oct. 5, but refused to speak to the players before then. Some of them had tried reaching out to her via text messaging, apologizing for their lack of effort on Sunday’s game and vowing that it was a small mistake, never to be repeated.
“They can tell me all that stuff, but they need to show me with their actions,” said Tomic. “They need to walk the walk.”
According to Tomic, they had a closed-door, players-only meeting immediately following the loss, and another one on Oct. 4. She was not sure what was said in the meeting, nor who called for it.
On numerous occasions over the past month, many of the Panthers had repeated that they needed to “get back to basics.” Whether it was learning the fundamentals of receiving an opponent’s serve or where to stand in certain situations of a game, refining the building blocks of volleyball was a priority for the team.
Tomic thought, however, that they had already left that stage for the season when Missouri swept them in the Blue Raider Bash Tournament on Sept. 3.
“There’s not much we can do in practice anymore,” said Tomic. “It’s their mental approach. You either have heart or you don’t have heart. Good teams cannot let their performance drop so dramatically.”
“You can have a bad game, but the game on Sunday was unacceptable. We disrespected the game of volleyball.”
Whenever something goes wrong for the team, the very first thing Tomic does is analyze herself. She wants to figure out if she is making any errors as a coach that are preventing her from seeing results in games. But it is quite different this time around.
“I told my assistants that I’m not taking any responsibility for Sunday,” said Tomic. “The only responsibility I’ll take is to scout better players next time.”
The Panthers first step in, getting back on Tomic’s good side, comes Oct. 7. They will square off against Florida A&M University, a team the Panthers trampled on Sept.11.
“We better win,” said Tomic.
She plans on making some changes to the lineup for the game, though she did not wish to discuss what the changes were beforehand. Tomic hinted, however, that she was going to give the playing time to those that wanted it the most.
“If the freshmen are the ones that want it [playing time], then I’ll just give it to them,” she added.
About Post Author
