FIU Volleyball looks to bounce back after injury plagued season

After a season when everyone but the coach was injured, the FIU volleyball team is hoping for a fresh start.

A new head coach, a conference and a schedule with many different opponents, FIU will have only four teams on their schedule this season from their former Sun Belt Conference. Those teams include North Texas, Florida Atlantic, and Middle Tennessee, who all have joined Conference USA this season.

Head Coach Rita Buck-Crockett,who coached FIU sand volleyball in their first season,  isn’t fazed of facing brand new opponents that C-USA will present.

“For me every team is new, and every year that is the mentality we have to have,” Buck-Crockett said. “Every year the teams are different because they bring different players to the roster, some have different coaches, so for me every team we play is new as we are new too.”

While Buck-Crockett downplays the factor of new teams, sophomore Lucia Castro and sophomore Gloria Levorin had mixed feelings about facing a new conference and many new opponents.

“For the new teams, thank God we have coaches who will do all the scouting and we can just listen to them,” Levorin said.

Buck-Crockett’s first season with the Panthers will start with four tournaments in which the Panthers will host two of them. The season starts with the Gamecock Invitational in Columbia, S.C. on Aug. 30. Then the next two tournaments will be at FIU with the FIU Classic on Sept. 5 and the FIU Invitational on Sept 12th, before traveling to West Lafayette, Ind. for the Active Ankle Challenge on Sept. 20th. Castro, Levorin, and Fouts look forward to the idea of hosting two tournaments as last year the team was on the road for all three of their tournaments last year.

“Those tournaments are very important, it is our preseason, and it’s where we learn about our team,” Buck-Crockett said. “We want to be able to gain momentum as head into conference.”

“I’m looking forward to being at home for two tournaments as last year we were away from home for a while and we couldn’t have the support of our home fans,” Castro said.

Some of the teams that the players look forward to include instate teams FAU and Florida Gulf Coast, which is part of a four game home stand ranging from Oct. 11 to Oct. 18, in which they will also face UAB and Tulsa, two other teams that Levorin and Castro look forward to playing.

“Tulsa is tough, but the goal is to get it done, and if we are doing the things we are supposed to do then we can be a strong team,” Buck-Crockett said.

“I’m excited about playing FAU because that is like our rival and we had two close games against them last year and I would like to do well against them this year,” Levorin said.

The longest stretch without a home game is 16 days. After Oct. 18th the Panthers won’t see their home court again until Nov. 3 when they take on Rice. Then they close the season with three of their last four games on the road. Fouts doesn’t see it being much of a challenge at the end.

“I feel we will all pull together and just gut it out and the end of season it’s more exciting and we have all our line-ups set already,” Fouts said.

In total, excluding the tournaments, the Panthers have 16 games with nine on the road and seven at home with the nine road games all coming in sets of three straight at three different points of the schedule.

“We have to be consistent whether at home or on the road, that is the key for us,” Buck-Crockett said.

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