One evening in the spring of 2017, head coach Sonja Tomasevic received an email from senior libero Halle Harker.
The email detailed five values that the ASU women’s volleyball team wanted to pursue as the driving forces of their culture.
Those five values were: Family, Integrity, Gratitude, Humility and Training culture – which conveniently spelled out FIGHT.
Tomasevic was touched by the late-night email.
“I was crying a little bit, they really put thought into it, it was important to them,” Tomasevic said. “It wasn’t like a mindless thing, it was something that meant a lot to them.”
This email stemmed from an assignment given to the team at the beginning of the spring semester in which Tomasevic challenged her team to create a new culture.
While she would determine playing style and game strategy, Tomasevic thought it was best for the team to create what kind of environment they wanted to play in.
“When it comes to culture, they should have a big say as players,” Tomasevic said. “We wanted them to feel a part of it because they are the culture of the team. They are the culture of ASU volleyball.”
Tomasevic said she was afraid the team would look for an easy way out by reusing ideas that had worked in high school and for other volleyball teams.
However, Tomasevic realized her team took the assignment to heart. The email was just a product of a process that took several months.
“It wasn’t just like an overnight thing, it took an entire spring semester of coming up with that acronym,” Harker said. “Honestly, we didn’t really plan that it was going to spell out FIGHT, it kind of just happened that way.”
Harker said she and her teammates put a lot of research into coming up with the acronym.
Each player was tasked with creating values that mattered to them, which were then combined on a sheet of paper that the team could review.
“We broke it (the paper) down one sentence at a time,” Harker said. “We made sure every single word kind of made sense with the other (words) and every single word meant something.”
Harker said coming up with the five values of FIGHT took from January until April, and the team was not done after they came up with the acronym. They talked about each of the values in a meeting held every week.
The next step was teaching it to the new recruits, which was something that the Sun Devils took a lot of pride in.
“They (the returners) made up the culture,” Tomasevic said. “So throughout recruiting, they talked to recruits about that.”
Harker expressed how important FIGHT was by stressing its importance to the recruits.
“All of us kind of live and die by the word 'fight' and this culture,” Harker said. “If you go outside of that, then no one wants you here.”
One of the new recruits was freshman setter Shelbie Dobmeier who has seen the culture implemented in her short time at ASU.
“The older girls remind the younger girls about FIGHT being family, being team, being intentional with everything that we do,” Dobmeier said. “That (is) what FIGHT is for.”
FIGHT is displayed on a banner in the Sun Devil locker room so that the team can be reminded of it everyday.
“You’re going to come into the locker room, and you’re probably not going to want to go down to practice sometimes,” Harker said. “You can look at the board and you can remember, 'Hey this is why I’m doing this'.”
The FIGHT culture is not just a one-year deal for Tomasevic – she plans to continue to use it for her whole ASU coaching career.
“The cool thing they (the players) talk about is that they were the original ones,” Tomasevic said. “As long as I am going to be here ... FIGHT is going to stay here.”
Tomasevic said that while the five values will remain the same, each new group of players will add their own meaning to FIGHT.
“I told them this is going to be your legacy,” Tomasevic said. “This is something you’re leaving here besides the wins and losses.”
Reach the reporter at jzaklis@gmail.com and follow @JoshZaklis on Twitter.
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