Volleyball: Koncir getting adjusted in first season

The fluorescent lights spread throughout the room on what was, by all accounts, a typical Wednesday night in early August. Under the soft glow sat a unit of 16. Fifteen were teammates. The 16th was the newcomer. Most of the 15 had just gotten into town. For all intents and purposes their vacations were over. Some people might find that to be an unwelcome change. But not this group. The new guy had also come just two weeks prior. July 24 marked his arrival, and after a month without anyone to call 'coach' the group met the figure with whom they would embark on their upcoming campaign. Paul Koncir had finally arrived. "[I] just gave them a packet that we made up for preseason and our expectations and our goals and had a pretty straightforward discussion about what we expect," the first year head coach said. "That was really it. There was not much fanfare or any of that. I almost treated it as if I had been here before." While his only contact with the team prior to that night was a lengthy e-mail (some players received news of Koncir's hire from the Towson athletics Web site), there was a degree of familiarity that stemmed from his friendship with former head coach Chris Riley and his roots in the CAA as a George Mason alum and former assistant coach. With preseason practice starting the very next day there was no time to waste with long introductions. "Since we were all here last year we all knew kind of how to handle a new coach and take on that challenge with the new guy," sophomore outside hitter Maddie Haseltine said. Having just come off of its second straight appearance in the CAA Championship match, Koncir knew the team was certainly not in need of a fresh start. Nonetheless, from the players' standpoint they were given a blank slate. If a loss in the 2005 championship match to VCU wasn't motivation enough, they all had the task of proving themselves once again. "It's like starting over, like everyone was a freshman again because the coach hasn't seen you, hasn't seen you play," sophomore libero Alison Essink said. "Everyone had to prove they were worthy of being on the court again." That didn't take very long. Koncir challenged the team right out of the gates, and his squad adjusted with little trouble. "I made a conscious decision before we started to really overwhelm them with information," Koncir said. "The first few days we were a little wide-eyed, but the group really took it very well and once they started seeing changes and seeing improvements, which happened quickly within days." Then, just 17 days after they all gathered for the first time, on campus in the sixth-floor lounge of Tower C, the season was finally underway. "I didn't really have an expectation for what matches we would win and lose in the first half of the season," Koncir said. "Just more building an idea of how we were going to play and how they were going to approach these situations and continuing to keep putting the idea of challenges and tests for us forward." One of the biggest tests in the program's history presented itself on Sept. 12, when the third-ranked, three-time national champion UCLA Bruins visited the Towson Center. The result was part of an ongoing learning process. "I think they surprised themselves with how they played very early on against Ohio State and certainly against UCLA," Koncir said. "The group's really figuring itself out to some degree, but I think we've all been a little bit surprised of how well we've kind of risen to these challenges." The early success is a testament to the comfort the players developed very quickly under Koncir. "We've done a lot better this year for the first third of the season than we did last year," Essink said. "We've adjusted to him really well and he's a really good coach." With the out-of-conference tests behind them the focus turns to league opponents. But unlike much of what the team has faced thus far, this test will be nothing new. "He knows what all the other teams are like rather than having someone come in from a different conference that doesn't know anything and we have to tell them," Haseltine said. The challenge is to get to a third straight championship match. The goal is to make the most of that opportunity and win Towson's second conference title in three years. "He knows what he's talking about and he knows what we need to do to get that far and his goals are the same as all of ours, as the whole team's," Koncir said. "He wants to get to that championship game and win that championship game. So, I think with him at the head coach we have a very good chance of doing that." Koncir has been around the college game long enough to realize that a league title is not something to be taken lightly. "It's very difficult to go all the way through and win the last match, so I think the coaches that have done it really realize how tough it is and how special it is," Koncir said. "This team, every year, expects to win [the CAA], expects to be in the championship match and have a shot at it. Not every program is like that." And not every program would have provided him such an easy transition into his first year at the helm. Koncir is well aware that ultimately the focus should be on the players, and credits them for what has, to this point, been a successful season. "The group as a whole has made my job very easy," Koncir said. "I haven't told them that so this will be the first they hear it if they read this, but there's not a situation I can think of where I'd be a first-year head coach in a program and the team would make it any easier than this." The 15 wouldn't have had it any other way.

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out