In all college sports, teams are almost guaranteed to lose a few of players a year due to graduating seniors — it is considered the nature of collegiate athletics.
What coaches are not used to is losing nine players from one year to the next and this is exactly what Sanja Tomasevic was tasked with when she was introduced as the new head coach of the Sun Devil women’s volleyball team in December 2016.
Tomasevic was left with the challenge of turning around a team that finished its previous season 12-20, losing six of its last nine games.
Her first order of business was to put the past behind her and start building toward the future.
“We wanted to focus on future,” Tomasevic said. “What are we going to do to move forward ”
Part of focusing on the future was welcoming new players, as well as a new coaching staff to the team.
One of those additions was assistant coach Carlos Moreno, who said having a flux of new people was helpful to the coaching staff.
“I think it was good,” Moreno said. “We had a whole new village of people coming in and with that we could teach everybody at the same time.”
Moreno added that everyone on the team was learning the new system at the same pace, which had a positive effect on the team.
“It wasn’t only the 10 new girls; it was the whole team learning how to function as a team all together,” Moreno said.
Former Sun Devil volleyball player and assistant coach Macey Gardner said the team is functioning well off the court, as the players are constantly spending time with one another.
Gardner also said that while the players are competitive when fighting for a starting spot, they are also able to separate their life on the court from their life off the court.
“We’re competing but we’re still family, we’re still sisters,” Gardner said. “That’s been really cool to see them kind of grow through that.”
Tomasevic noted that a lot of the team comradery stemmed from upperclassmen, specifically senior libero Halle Harker.
The senior captain really took Tomasevic’s message to heart and in doing so she, along with fellow senior libero Blair Robalin, set the tone when the new players arrived.
Roblain, Harker and other players from last year's team showed the newcomers how to act off the court and taught them the do’s and dont's of Sun Devil volleyball.
This display of leadership allowed the coaches to concern themselves with issues on the court.
“It has been a lot easier for us coaches because we don’t have to preach about culture,” Tomasevic said. “They (Harker and Robalin) preach about culture, we preach about system.”
The culture the girls are debuting this season can be summed up in one-word: F.I.G.H.T, which stands for family, integrity, gratitude, humility and training culture.
In the spring of 2017, Tomasevic told the girls that the returners would be tasked with determining the culture and values of the team.
“They came up with five values,” Tomasevic said. “They went into depth about each of the five values, about why it mattered, what it meant to them and how it was important to them.”
However, ‘fight’ only works if everyone is on board, and according to Moreno, that is exactly what happened.
“I think the older girls, they are the ones that had the biggest impact,” Moreno said. “I think it was just a great example of leadership from them really being dialed in and they bought in.”
However, talking about changes in the preseason is one thing, but putting up results when the games actually count is another.
The Sun Devils have started out the season 3-0 with nine straight set wins, but Tomasevic was tentative when talking about the expectations for the season.
“This is absolutely a rebuilding year. It started in the spring and it’s going to take some time, but we got time,” Tomasevic said. “We are in no rush, Rome wasn’t built overnight.”
The Sun Devils are currently ranked last in the Pac-12 in the preseason rankings, a conference that plays host to six teams who are coming off a NCAA tournament appearance - including defending national champion, Stanford.
Tomasevic admitted that right now she is just focused on the Sun Devils’ next game and hasn’t really given the Pac-12 much thought yet.
But Tomasevic acknowledged that it was the best conference in the country, making it tough to rebuild in.
The newly minted assistant coach Gardner added that above all else they want to take things one day at a time and emphasized the importance of not setting the bar too high.
Gardner also said the newness of the team was not necessarily a weakness, as some people may think, but perhaps the team's greatest strength.
“The biggest thing is 'I’m new but so are you' kind of deal,” Gardner said. “We’re all new so ... we’re all figuring this out at the same time.”
Reach the reporter at jzaklis@gmail.com and follow @JoshZaklis on Twitter.
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