There couldn’t possibly have been a better way for UCLA
women’s volleyball coach Andy Banachowski to become the first
women’s collegiate volleyball coach to earn his 1,000th
victory.
The No. 21 Bruins (16-8, 8-6 Pac-10) became the first team all
year to defeat the No. 2 Huskies (23-1, 14-1) on Saturday night at
Pauley Pavilion, winning the match in a five-game thriller filled
with twists and turns.
“In pre-game practice, we had such a good feeling about
this game,” said junior middle blocker Nana Meriwether, who
tied a school record with 17 blocks in the match.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had that feeling
playing a good team like this before. To add on to the outcome, it
was (Banachowski’s) 1,000th win.”
With the victory, Banachowski becomes only the second coach in
men’s and women’s collegiate volleyball to reach the
1,000 win milestone, the other being UCLA men’s coach Al
Scates with 1,109.
“1,000 wins is a huge accomplishment,” said
Pepperdine women’s volleyball coach Nina Matthies, who played
for Banachowski at UCLA in the 1970s and was an assistant coach for
him over the course of six seasons from 1977 to 983.
“To be able to do that now is just incredible. For one,
the longevity of his coaching is amazing. There are so few of us
coaches that have stayed with it and continue on and are successful
and healthy and still enjoying what we do. So just that there in
itself is a tremendous accomplishment for him.”
Banachowski has coached the UCLA women’s volleyball team
since its inception as a club team in 1965, while he was a player
for the men’s team. He then took two years off as coach
directly following his graduation in 1968-69 before returning for
good to the women’s team in 1970.
As a player for the UCLA men’s team (1964-68), assistant
coach for the men’s team (1972-77), and head coach of the
women’s team, Banachowski has accumulated 12 national
titles.
Six of these titles have come with Banachowski as the
women’s volleyball head coach, and UCLA has finished as the
national runner-up six times under his guidance.
While it seems obvious to imagine what a mind-boggling task it
has been for Banachowski to net 1,000 wins, the coach downplayed
the achievement in an interview done prior to this weekend’s
matches.
“Getting 1,000 wins is not really a major focus for
me,” the coach said. “Maybe I’ll look at it once
a year at the start of the year and think, “˜If I get this and
this, then we’ll get there.’ Then I’ll just
forget about it and go on through the season and really don’t
think about it.”
Despite the staggering accomplishment and the almost surreal
fashion in which Banachowski reached his milestone, the legendary
coach was quick to deflect attention from himself after the match
and give credit to his team for putting together such an inspired
performance.
“It will be easy to remember the 1,000th win,”
Banachowski said, “But that’s not really what it was
all about tonight. It was about our performance and the way the
team played.
“It was about the way we matured as a team and the way
we’re coming together.”
The maturity happened fast for the Bruins, who were convincingly
swept 3-0 (30-24, 30-18, 30-22) by the Huskies in Seattle last
month.
“I got really upset with the team up in Washington because
I thought that we stopped competing against them,”
Banachowski said.
Nothing about the match-up with the Huskies looked promising for
Banachowski and his Bruin team coming into Saturday night. UCLA had
lost outside hitter Colby Lyman to an elbow injury two weeks prior,
and without her, the Bruins had to come from behind in the fifth
game to beat a lowly Oregon team and a mediocre Pepperdine team.
Lyman was not available for the Bruins matches against Washington
and Washington State this weekend, either.
Moreover, on Friday night, undefeated Washington was leading the
Pac-10 in virtually every statistical category, had won 19 of its
23 wins with three-game sweeps, and was coming off of a dominating
sweep of USC, to whom UCLA has lost two matches this year. Add to
the fact that UCLA had not beaten a team ranked ahead of them this
year, and it appeared as if Banachowski’s first real shot at
his 1,000th win would come on the road this Friday against Arizona
State.
“You always go in thinking you have a chance to win,
obviously” Banachowski said. “But (Washington’s)
No. 2 and we’re No. 21, so there was a huge gap
there.”
The fact that the Bruins’ victory beat all the odds, that
they had to overcome a streaking Washington team that had won Games
3 and 4 and jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the deciding fifth game,
made this match the perfect setting for Banachowski’s 1,000th
win.
“It’s like a movie,” redshirt sophomore
Rachell Johnson said. “It’s not real. I’m very
pleased, to say the least.”
Perhaps inspired by the opportunity for their coach to reach a
career milestone, several of the UCLA players had career
performances themselves.
Junior middle blocker Katie Carter had a career high 23 kills,
smashing the last three kills of the match. Freshman setter Nellie
Spicer had a career high 71 assists in the match, Johnson had a
career high 21 kills while hitting .333, and Meriwether’s 17
blocks tied a school record.
“They’re better than they were the last time we
faced them,” Washington coach Jim McLaughlin said. “I
like their setter (Spicer), and they’re going to be OK.
They’ve had some injuries, and we went through that last
year, but Andy’s has done a good job of keeping them
together. Andy knows what he’s doing.”
For juniors Carter and Meriwether, the emotion at the end of
their biggest win of the season was overwhelming.
“I really wanted to beat this team,” Carter said.
“It’s Andy’s 1,000th win. I woke up this morning
and thought that it would really be something if we beat the
undefeated, No. 2 ranked team at home.
“I feel like I have my 10th wind right now.”
Meriwether had similar feelings about the match.
“That was the most exciting game I have ever been a part
of,” Meriwether said. “We were all so tired by the end,
but our mentality was that we gotta win and we did.”
But the play of the night may have come after the match was
actually over. After the announcer at Pauley Pavilion announced to
the crowd that the victory was Banachowski’s 1,000th of his
career, the team rushed onto the floor with a Gatorade cooler in an
attempt to dump the ice cold liquid on top of the coach.
Displaying the nimbleness of his playing days, Banachowski
anticipated the rush and was able to sidestep the dump, escaping
with almost no damage done.
“Fortunately I saw it coming, and although I’m not
as quick as I used to be, I managed to get away from it,”
Banachowski said.
QUICK HITS: UCLA beat Washington State on
Friday 3-0 (30-17, 30-24, 30-26) … In their victory against
Washington, the Bruins increased their winning streak to five
matches, tying their season high. In three of those five matches,
including the match against Washington, the Bruins escaped deficits
in the fifth game to win.