Bautista Samperi | Sports Director
As the FIU volleyball team prepares to face the Liberty University Flames in the quarterfinals of the Conference USA Tournament, seven players earned postseason honors.
The league office announced on Wednesday afternoon the different honors and awards for the season and many FIU players made their mark. Senior libero Mandi Morioka was named CUSA Libero of the Year.
Senior middle blocker Magda Stambrowska was named the Newcomer of the Year and Kira Givans earned First Team All-Conference.
Rebekah Pfefferkorn was named to the CUSA All-Freshman Team, while Jillian Huckabey and Savannah Cook, and Morioka were selected to the Second Team All-Conference.
Now comes the conference tournament, where No. 4 seeded FIU (18-11, 12-4) will face the No. 5 Liberty Flames (20-9, 8-8 CUSA) on Friday, Nov. 21, at 2 p.m. at the Ocean Bank Convocation Center.
The Panthers obtained their best record since the arrival of coach Cristina Robertson, and with a winning record for the first time since 2018. Now, they will look to improve on last year’s performance where they were eliminated in the first round.
Following their last game of the season at home against Middle Tennessee, senior Kira Givans highlighted how the team has grown and how the program has evolved since the arrival of coach Robertson, “We’re really proud of ourselves and each other. It’s been a long journey of rebuilding and all that and it can be difficult but we stuck to it and I think we are finally seeing the results.”
Givans, who has played her entire collegiate career under Robertson, talked about the significance of hosting the postseason tournament, “It’s our first time hosting since I’ve been here so we’re all really excited to be home and we’ll have a crowd here and our families so it should be really fun.”
FIU will look to bounce back at the beginning of the tournament as they lost their last two matches of the season. Against Liberty, the Panthers came up with back-to-back 3-1 wins against the Flames.
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