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GCCC volleyball starts season
Published 8/21/2008 in Sports : GCCC
By MIKE KESSINGERmkessinger@gctelegram.com
Garden City Community College volleyball coach Nikola Petrovic doesn’t hide anything about his team having just nine players. He knows it’s a small number, but it’s something he can work with.
“It is hard to play with just nine,” Petrovic said. “We can’t have an injury. That’s why we’re working to prepare our bodies really hard in the weight room and on the court right now. We have to really last for a whole season.”
With four sophomores returning, the Lady Broncbusters will have some reliability as far as experience, but with that goes breaking in five new faces in a program that finished last season with a 24-12 record and fourth place finish in the Jayhawk Conference Western Division. The challenge is far from bothering any returner though. The way the veterans see it, the team has progressed well over the first two weeks, which in the early part of the schedule consisted of three-a-day practices
“They’re really good girls and we don’t have any problems with them,” sophomore Jovana Radojevic said of the freshmen. “They all obey all the rules and we’re all here for the same goal and that’s all that matters. I think they fit nicely in here, and they’re ready to work hard.”
Radojevic, a 6-foot-3 native of Belgrade, Serbia, is part of the one area Garden City will have an advantage over many of the opposition — height. The Busters have three players 6-foot or taller. Freshmen Rikia Thischuk and Brittany DeGagne, both from Canada, stand 6-0 and 6-1. All though Trischuk won’t be counted on to be as much of a presence at the net defensively, the setter gives the Busters plenty to rely on.
“Rikia has beautiful hands,” sophomore Chancey Sebranek said. “She can set shots really quick. She can jump set really well, she can push them out, so it’s really good.”
Sebranek, one of two Garden City High School graduates on the Busters roster, will be one of the most experienced returners on the front line in the middle. Sophomore Audra Algrim, the other GCHS grad, will lend a hand to Sebranek as far as experience. That experience will go a long way for the young Buster team. Sebranek and Algrim were in a similar position in the 2006 season as seniors at the Garden City High School. There was just one other senior on the team besides Sebranek and Algrim.
“It’s really kind of easy, because you kind of feel like a senior in high school,” Sebranek said. “Being a freshman last year is really easy to know what they’re expecting and what you expect. For the (freshmen) to come in and be as good as they already are compared to last year makes it really easy.”
In the first three weeks, Petrovic has watched his team match up against other programs. The Busters ran a scrimmage Saturday inviting Colby and Dodge City to Perryman Athletic Complex. The third-year coach saw what he could have expected, and left the gym with the feeling that the team accomplished what they had hoped to.
“We did really well,” Petrovic said. “You could really see after four or five games played — after the first game we looked really raw, but by the end of the day we looked really good. The girls are really coachable and really accepting information as we’re trying to put everything together.”
The Busters will take to the court to open the season Friday in the New Mexico Military Institute tournament in Roswell, N.M. Garden City will start pool play at noon against Air Force Prep, then will play Seminole (Okla.) State College at 3 p.m. Round robin play will conclude Saturday against Frank Phillips (Texas) College at 8 a.m. and Trinidad (Colo.) at 11 a.m. The top two teams from the two pools will move into bracket play that starts at 12:30 p.m. The tournament is the first of three Garden City will play in this season. The will play in the Colby tournament Sept. 5-6, then the Pizza Hut Invitational on Sept. 12-13 at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colo.
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