Despite a valiant effort, the Florida A&M University women’s volleyball team fell short in the first game of the season against Florida State University at the Tully Gym Aug. 29.
In the first half of the game, FSU’s Brianna Barry took the first kill of the game.
By the first time-out, FAMU had one kill and three digs, while FSU was leading with four digs and four kills. FAMU’s Jovanna Blazeski had the most kills by the first half..
FSU took the first game with a 25-13 win over FAMU. By the second game Blazeski was leading the lady Rattlers in digs and kills, but the lady Noles were still reigning. FSU took the last game 25-16 and had a 3-0 win over FAMU.
“It’s a disappointing lost, something’s happen in the off season that we couldn’t fix,” said head women’s volleyball Coach Tony Trifonov.
Coach Trifonov is going into his 12th season as head women’s volleyball coach at FAMU and he said this season has been one of his most enduring seasons.
“It’s been several years since we have played FSU especially under these disappointing circumstances,” Trifonov said. FAMU volleyball team only has seven girls on the team and it takes six to play in the game.
Trifonov said he signed four girls in the off-season, but three were denied admission because of their scores on the TOEFL entrance test.
The three girls who were denied had higher scores than girls who played on the team in past years,” Trifonov said. The lady Rattlers have held the MEAC championship title for the past seven years. Coach Trifonov said that his hopes are not too high for this season.
” We have gotten a lot of budget cuts and because of those cuts I was unable to recruit as many girls as I wanted for this season,” Trifonov said.
Trifonov said that Jovanna Blazeski is one of his top players on the team.
” I was excited about going into the game against FSU, I was surprised I made the most points,” said Jovanna Blazeski, 20, a sophomore criminal justice student from Serbia.
Blazeski also said team is getting stronger and could have done much better
Some of the players feel that it is a new season and a new start.
“This season we have new players and we have to learn how to play together in the game,” said Maria Gomez, 20, a junior economics student from Ecuador.
Gomez said she hopes that the team can win their 8th MEAC championship can go to the NCAA Tournament. With all that has happened to the lady rattlers in the off-season Trifonov still has hope for the team.
“Our goal is winning the conference tournament, it has never changed. Hopefully we can advance to the MEAC Championships,” Trifonov said.
FAMU’s next volleyball game will be Sept. 5-6 at the University of Florida.