COMMENTARY: Rough road ahead for new coach

With the exit of Danijela Tomic as head coach of the University’s indoor volleyball team, who is now the coach at Bowling Green State University, FIU faces a dilemma.

Currently in the middle of a national coaching search, Director of Volleyball Operations Rita Buck-Crockett is looking for a coach to not only duplicate what Tomic did as a coach at FIU, but to also bring the program a greater deal of national attention.

Good luck.

The shoes that the next coach will fill will be large ones. Maybe to the outsider looking in, what FIU has done in the past seven years may not be spectacular, but look closer.

Tomic did what most coaches can’t, allure talented student-atheletes to a school with crummy and outdated facilities. A place where no four-star recruit in their right mind would choose. But Tomic did it. She was able to convince three All-Americans, yes three, to come to FIU.

With a star-studded lineup in 2009, she coached the Panthers to a remarkable 32-4 record, including a perfect 17-0 in conference play. Tomic also doubled the amount of NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship tournament appearances. If there is a knock on Tomic, it is that she was not able to win the Sun Belt Conference championship in the seven season’s as head coach.

So in essence, Tomic was able to turn around a program that most people could care less about.

In a school, more to a degree a city, that lives and breathes football, volleyball is the last thing on people’s minds. She was able to get people in the seats for a team that was exciting to watch. She was able to do this in one of the worst facilities in the Sun Belt conference.

The fact that the University has decided to burn money with a new “emerging” sport is an entirely different argument. Yet hiring from the outside for a position that was made up on the fly will cause the University to not only spend unnecessary money, but also take a few steps back in a program that took so many forward.

What is not being made enough of is the fact that Tomic left after seven winning seasons, with four new recruits already signed to play next season. Questions on whether she was forced out, with the hiring of Buck-Crockett as director, have risen, and do hold some validity.

Instead of promoting Tomic to the position, Director of Sports and Entertainment Pete Garcia hires a former coach with a 50-123 record while at Iowa, until she stepped down in 2004.

Although Buck-Crockett was a nationally recognized volleyball player, including winning the silver medal in the 1984 Olympics, that has no correlation to being a good coach or recruit.

Buck-Crockett will have to make sure that the next coach has the confidence and strong mentality to know that it will not be easy to coach at a University that expects greatness without full support from the school, students or fans.

Luckily, for both Buck-Crockett and Indoor Volleyball coach X, Garcia is fully invested in the new “baby” of the school; sand volleyball.

He won’t let it fail, and in turn won’t let Buck-Crockett fail. She will have time to fail, as to where Tomic was never given a chance to fail and she never did.

Volleyball has seen it’s best days at FIU and it will never get close to it for a long time.

Email at rico.albarracin@fiusm.com