This season has been one for the records for UTRGV Volleyball with outside hitter Sarah Cruz setting a personal best with 1,095 kills, putting her ninth in program history, and head coach Todd Lowery holds 14 school records, more than any coach in program history.
Cruz, who joined the team in 2018, reached ninth place on Sept. 10 during the game against Montana University.
“It was crazy because I didn’t expect this to be, like, at the beginning of the season,” she said. “I was working towards that. I wanted to reach that goal during the season. But then I was very shocked when they announced it, and then they [gave] me the ball. And then it was also very exciting. So I was very happy for that.”
Lowery achieved his 14th record for most neutral site wins when the team won the game against Oral Roberts University at 10 a.m. last Friday in Lubbock.
His other records are wins, winning percentage, home wins, home-winning percentage, road wins, road-winning percentage, neutral-site-winning percentage, conference wins, conference-wins percentage, conference home wins, conference-home-win percentage, conference road wins and conference-road-wins percentage.
The head coach credits his success to everyone, from assistant coaches to support staff.
“Ultimately, whoever [is] sitting in the head seat gets a lot of the credit, but it’s never that way,” he said. “I always say it’s like a turtle sitting on a fence post, you know. They didn’t get on a fence post without a lot of help. And that’s kind of how I feel, everything from players to assistant coaches to support staff. That’s ultimately what allows us to win and win at a high level.”
The team consists of 12 international and five American athletes.
Lowery hopes to continue fostering the diversity and quality of players who are both international and American students.
“It’s not easy to just go out and grab talent from the state of Texas or whatever it is, or across the country,” he said. “And now, what it’s grown into is we’re starting to attract some next level of Texas kid or the next-level American kid. And that’s what you see in the gym right now, is people like Perris [Key] and Natalie [Reyes] and Sydney [Schoen].
“And that blend of inner high-quality international kids with the next-level American kid and blending those two things together have allowed us to create a lot of depth in our program that we weren’t creating early on.”
In the theme of moving forward and evolving, assistant head coach Vinni Baigan has come up with different practice techniques for the team.
“I’ve been playing volleyball since I was 9 years old,” Baigan said. “I could write a bible of volleyball drills. There is a point in time that you get bored of the same stuff, so you have to constantly be innovating and creating new stuff. I feel that this is [where] some coaches, they get lost.
‘They’re very traditional and they don’t want to change it, but everything changes. We’re in 2022. Whatever was happening in the world in 1970, it’s completely different than what it is now. So for you to not get caught and be stuck, you have to constantly be open to change and see what’s working.”
Like any team, there are bound to be some bumps in the road. Cruz said meetings address those situations.
“So, we have team meetings if something comes up,” Cruz said. “So, we talked about it, like, in our small little group as a team. Or if it’s just personal, like one-on-one [situation], then we just talk to each other [on] a personal level. We try to figure it out. … That’s how we fix things.”
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