Husker volleyball players must find confidence

At this point, the 2009 season has been the worst in Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook’s tenure.

For a coach and a team who have relinquished the Big 12 Conference championship only once since the 2000 season, the current struggles show how tough the game of volleyball can be. Cook knows his team is struggling with confidence, and there’s nothing he can do about it. He said confidence is something you can’t coach.

“We’ve got to find a big win,” Cook said. “That’s how you take care of it.”

Sydney Anderson agreed with what her coach has been saying the last few weeks.

Her team needs a win that combines everyone’s efforts, Anderson said, to rebuild the confidence that was depleted during Nebraska’s season-opening loss in straight sets to Michigan and has since been battered by mistakes and the addition of five more losses.

“(Confidence) is something you can’t teach,” Anderson said. “It’s something you’ve got to find in yourself and believe in yourself. That’s what we’re working on now, to find each other’s strengths and really letting that person know. It can be tough, but it really comes into play if you want to change and you want to be confident.”

Some of the confidence issues, Gina Mancuso said, have been linked to teammates putting pressure on themselves by needing to be perfect. She said it has caused her teammates to lose aggressiveness during matches and practices.

When asked about the expectations the team leaders have acquired through their roles and their experiences on past Husker teams, Mancuso said the strain has stemmed from a number of things.

“It could be the fact that they’ve been on a more solid team,” Mancuso said. “I really just think that it’s just deep within that they feel like they need to be perfect, and they don’t. We’re growing and were building every day, so we’ll get over that.”

In order to obtain a big win, Anderson said the Huskers would have to play together and feed off of each other. In order for a win against a middle-of-the-road team like Missouri on Wednesday to qualify as a big win, she said the team would have to be unified and play well as a whole.

Anderson contrasted her team’s need to the way it played against Texas Tech a week ago.

“Against Tech, we beat them in three (sets), but it wasn’t fun,” Anderson said. “We came into the locker room feeling like we lost with our head down. Feeling like a team and feeling like we left it all out there, I think that’s going to be our biggest push forward to actually getting the big win.”

Playing consistently has been a problem for Nebraska, Cook said Tuesday. In order to fulfill his expectations of going undefeated the rest of the season, he said his team would have to stop worrying about their own performances first.

Once that happens, according to Cook, the rest of the season will fall into place.

“We’ve got players worried about ‘am I going to mess up, am I going to be the one to mess up? Can I get this done?’” Cook said. “Once we get beyond that point, I think you’ll see a higher level of play for a longer period of time.”

For the Huskers, the hope is for that higher level of play to translate to confidence, wins and a regional.

“If we can get to Qwest, magical things happen there,” Cook said.

As far as his team’s confidence right now, Cook said it comes down to each player.

“It starts with the individuals, and then once they’re comfortable with it, the whole team can feel that,” Cook said. “That’s the fine line that you’re always treading. I think any athlete in any sport is always wavering above that line of confidence. The more you have, and the stronger it is, the easier it is for you to make the player next to you better.”

davehoufek@dailynebraskan.com