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Post by Deleted on Dec 19, 2005 12:59:00 GMT -5
Remember when Orange Crush was drinkable? Blech.
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Post by chipNdink on Dec 19, 2005 13:26:04 GMT -5
Hey, I don't understand why the Husker fans are so upset about Tomasevic's comment; when in fact, Sanja is being very magnanimous in trying to help Nebraska. When she found out that Nebraska needs quotes from opponents in order to get motivated to play well in a Championship match, I think it was very generous of her in offering the quote:
"But now I can say out loud: We crushed Nebraska," she said. "So now they can put it up on their lockers, and I hope they get excited for next year."
She obviously wishes Nebraska does well next year, and since losing to USC last year and losing to UW this year obviously aren't enough motivation, so Sanja is trying to contribute anyway she can to help Nebraska. :-)
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Post by johnny on Dec 19, 2005 13:28:40 GMT -5
All I know is that Snaja Tomasevic is a beautiful women with a beautiful heart and anything she said that may have been taken negatively was false.
I'm positive that anything said about crushing another team was done as a positive motivation for her and her teammates, not as a putdown to opponents. She has her team in mind all the time and she plays to win.
There's nothing wrong with what she said.
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Post by Chance on Dec 19, 2005 13:48:31 GMT -5
Good for Tomasavich! I applaud her comment. I'd be pissed too after being misquoted and then have a coach who should know better used her misquoted statement as motivation for his team... I havnt seen the original quote in it's original context. But if it really doesnt clearly relate to nebraska (like she says it doesnt) then i agree with the paragraph above. " Tomasevic says it involved UCLA and repeated that assertion Saturday night.
"But now I can say out loud: We crushed Nebraska," she said. "So now they can put it up on their lockers, and I hope they get excited for next year."" That's pretty funny right there. Yeah it is funny that is came from a 25 year old WOMAN that at that age should know better. I liked Washington up until that point. I think Stanford should petition to get Logan Tom back for one more year with all the drama of the war in the United States the past few years and all. Maybe it's because I mostly follow men's sports, but i think everybody is making WAY too big a deal about all of this. None of the Nebraska players are going to be emotionally scarred by any of this, they are going to use it as motivation or forget it. And i don't think any of the UDub players are hurt by Pavan maybe not shaking their hand. Maybe they hold a slightly lower opinion of her know, and maybe you do too. OK, that's fine. But it's not a huge scandal or something...
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Post by PukaPants on Dec 19, 2005 13:57:26 GMT -5
“That was a mistake for her to say that,” said Nebraska sophomore Sarah Pavan. “When you go against a team like us, you don’t say that we can’t do something, because we’re going to go out and prove them wrong.”
Pavan, it was no mistake.
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Post by fromohtosf on Dec 19, 2005 14:02:12 GMT -5
Good for Tomasavich! I applaud her comment. I'd be pissed too after being misquoted and then have a coach who should know better used her misquoted statement as motivation for his team... I havnt seen the original quote in it's original context. But if it really doesnt clearly relate to nebraska (like she says it doesnt) then i agree with the paragraph above. Yeah it is funny that is came from a 25 year old WOMAN that at that age should know better. I liked Washington up until that point. I think Stanford should petition to get Logan Tom back for one more year with all the drama of the war in the United States the past few years and all. Maybe it's because I mostly follow men's sports, but i think everybody is making WAY too big a deal about all of this. None of the Nebraska players are going to be emotionally scarred by any of this, they are going to use it as motivation or forget it. And i don't think any of the UDub players are hurt by Pavan maybe not shaking their hand. Maybe they hold a slightly lower opinion of her know, and maybe you do too. OK, that's fine. But it's not a huge scandal or something... That's a true enough statement, point taken. Thanks.
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Post by pumpkin on Dec 19, 2005 14:09:08 GMT -5
S.T. has a bad addittude Anyway I've seen her litterally cuss out the Reff's at time over calls, but nobody seem's to remember the BAD just the GOOD., S.T. was to busy talking her %*$# on camera and celebrating with everyone., the longer you pro-long a hand shake at the end of a GAME the more time you give the losing TEAM time for all the Emotions are sink in, the last thing you want to do is be the last one waitting for someone to finish there celebration after you have just lost...
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Post by DaDawgFather on Dec 19, 2005 14:10:48 GMT -5
" Tomasevic says it involved UCLA and repeated that assertion Saturday night.
"But now I can say out loud: We crushed Nebraska," she said. "So now they can put it up on their lockers, and I hope they get excited for next year."" That's pretty funny right there. Yeah it is funny that is came from a 25 year old WOMAN that at that age should know better. I liked Washington up until that point. I think Stanford should petition to get Logan Tom back for one more year with all the drama of the war in the United States the past few years and all. That's not even funny considering the war occurred in Sanja's home country.
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Post by Chance on Dec 19, 2005 14:14:09 GMT -5
i mean, she still might have a bad attitude (i dont know her), but i just dont think it's a big a deal as the whole board is making it out to be
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Post by PukaPants on Dec 19, 2005 14:27:31 GMT -5
Here's the original quote:
Coach fine-tunes formula for UW's volleyball success By DAN RALEY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Volleyball?
Not interested.
Jim McLaughlin had a wave to catch, if not a drained swimming pool to navigate.
No chance that playing volleyball could measure up to these adventures. Sean Penn, pre-film stardom, was a surfer pal. Bob Dylan owned an inviting pool down the street, though the singer wasn't thrilled to see his then-teenaged neighbor flying up and down the steep sides of it on a skateboard.
"He saw us and it was, 'Hey, get out of my pool, you're ruining it,' " recalled McLaughlin, given access by Dylan's daughter, Maria, a classmate. "I think Penn was with me then, too."
Gradually, this California kid with long, blond hair running down his back would push aside his celebrity connections, hang up his various recreational boards and submit fully to the sport he once shied from.
From an accomplished volleyball player he became an even better volleyball coach. After directing men's teams to ultimate heights he smoothly shifted his inspirational leadership to the women's game. Lately, he's turned a once-floundering University of Washington program into a national power.
Over four-plus seasons, McLaughlin, 44, has crafted together a UW team that has no equal among the school's other 16 athletic offerings in terms of talent and results.
"The real studs are out here," UW men's basketball coach Lorenzo Romar said admiringly while wandering past a recent volleyball practice.
The Huskies are ranked second nationally behind the Nebraska Cornhuskers for reasons that aren't entirely clear. They have breezed through 20 matches with hardly a challenge. They have lost just five of 65 games with no harm done. They've been so overwhelming at times they trailed No. 22 UCLA only 7-6 in the first game and 1-0 in the second while beating the Bruins 30-24, 30-18 and 30-22 at home.
"Obviously, we feel dominant," said senior Sanja Tomasevic, a 6-foot-1 outside hitter from Serbia and Montenegro. "We know we're better. We know if we do everything we should, we know we're going to crush them."
Tomasevic and her UW teammates are cognizant of this for one reason. As sure as the tide goes out and comes in each day, McLaughlin promised them it would happen.
Hedges hired him twice
Volleyball was a girl's game. McLaughlin kept telling himself that.
Growing up in his parents' Malibu home, the one with the ocean view and located across the street from Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood, all he really wanted to do was put a board in the water. His playground was right in front of him. He'd surf every day for 45 minutes to an hour, starting at 5 a.m., then catch the bus or car-pool to school with Emilio Estevez, another serious actor in waiting.
It wasn't until McLaughlin encountered a salty youth coach before his senior year at Santa Monica High School -- Sam-O as everyone called it -- that he altered his athletic pursuits.
"The coach said to me, 'What are you doing?' " he said, tugging at a motivational memory. "I said, 'Surfing.' He said, 'What a waste.' That made me mad."
McLaughlin turned out for the Santa Monica football team and played in six games as a starting linebacker and backup quarterback before hurting a knee. His surfboard remained idle. He recovered sufficiently from his injury to try another sport before he graduated, following friends onto the volleyball team and sharing in a state championship.
Progressing rapidly, McLaughlin spent two seasons on the volleyball team at Santa Monica College, collecting another state title, and two more at UC Santa Barbara, receiving All-America honors. He made the national team and played in the World University Games. He was hooked.
Like everyone else in his neighborhood, McLaughlin had a little Hollywood in him. He was interested in film and spent 18 months after college working as an intern cameraman for the NBC-TV affiliate in Santa Barbara. He got to ride around in a four-wheel drive with the logo on the door and chase stories. He remembers goofing up a Space Shuttle assignment but getting it right most of the time.
McLaughlin could have kept going as a journalist, but he was offered a volleyball job at Pepperdine as a men's assistant coach. In his first year, he shared in a national championship. By 1990, then-USC assistant athletic director Barbara Hedges had hired him as the Trojans head coach, and he won another national title in his first season there.
Coach Jim McLaughlin goes over the game plan with his UW volleyball players and first-year assistant Jose "Keno" Gandara, back, prior to their home match with UCLA.
He was on a fast track, but he wasn't content. He kept studying the sport intensely. What he learned was this: He was on the wrong side of the net. There are 311 collegiate women's programs in operation compared to just 56 for men. McLaughlin readily made the switch to the female ranks, joining Notre Dame as a one-year assistant and rebuilding Kansas State's once sorry program for four seasons.
In 2001, he was involved in a coaching clinic in New York when his cell phone rang. The 206 area code wasn't familiar to him. It was Hedges, then the UW athletic director, looking for a new volleyball coach.
"I said I could make some recommendations," McLaughlin said. "She said, 'No, I want you to check it out.' I said, 'No way.' I was at a Top 15 program and I had worked hard to get it there. She said, 'You have to listen.' "
He heard everything Hedges said. He took over a UW program coming off three consecutive losing seasons. Once in town, he arranged for lunch with retired Huskies football coach Don James, someone he had heard of but never met. He had seen James' intricate practice notes in a Husky Hall of Fame display case. He had to know more. They talked for hours.
McLaughlin met with his inherited players, ninth-place finishers in the Pac-10. He informed them that change was coming in everything they did, that it would be difficult at times.
"I told them it was going to be uncomfortable," he said. "I told them early on that there is nothing comfortable about being great."
Molding a winner
McLaughlin's day starts at 7 a.m., running on a treadmill for an hour. He works into the evening. He doesn't do lunch. Too busy watching film or scripting a workout plan. Too busy obsessing over every detail. No detail is too small when you're building a national champion.
Leslie Tuiasosopo, former UW middle blocker and All-Pac-10 selection, had never heard of McLaughlin before he called her up and offered her an assistant coaching job. She still wasn't sure about him early on. He used a middle defense; she was used to rotating. He wanted to swing block; she had always slid.
"It was, 'Why do that?' " Tuiasosopo recalled.
None of it made sense, and then gradually all of it did. He charted and simplified everything. He turned his nose up at traditional methods and the Huskies made steady progress. They went from 11-16 to 20-11 in McLaughlin's first two seasons.
As a young coach, he learned through trial and error. He wrote down what he considered the 10 most important questions about coaching and started seeking answers. He visited or called up four of volleyball's leading teachers, including the cerebral Carl McGown, formerly the coach at Brigham Young. He received harsh feedback, with McGown tearing apart a study McLaughlin had painstakingly pieced together.
"In three hours, I learned more from him than in my whole coaching career," McLaughlin said.
Other coaches advised him that there weren't enough volleyball players in the Northwest to build an elite program at Washington. Nor would the better athletes elsewhere want to come to Seattle. He didn't listen to that.
Annually, the Huskies now receive 450 letters and e-mails from volleyball prospects seeking scholarships, and politely say no thanks to the vast majority.
"One percent of those have a chance to make our team," McLaughlin said.
The UW coach has four players who have earned All-America recognition of some sort over the previous two seasons. The elite players include Tomasevic; sophomore Christal Morrison, an outside hitter from Puyallup; junior Courtney Thompson, a setter from Kent; and senior Candace Lee, a defensive specialist, or libero, from Eugene, Ore.
So much for the local blackout.
"Morrison was a great get; that put (McLaughlin) over the top," said USC coach Mick Haley, who tried and failed to sign her, as did UCLA.
McLaughlin doesn't beg anyone to join him. He sells his program with promises the players will graduate, contend for a national championship and be groomed for national team play.
You can't get financial aid unless you're capable of starting for McLaughlin.
You can't join the team in any manner unless you're capable of fending for yourself in a match. The coach wants it competitive.
He found Lee playing out of position in high school, barely drawing any recruiting interest. He promised her a scholarship for three years. She had to pay her way as a freshman. She could be a future Olympian.
Tomasevic, named national player of the week after the Huskies swept California and Stanford in the Bay Area, was McLaughlin's first big recruit. She's a national team player in her country and older than most after letting three years pass before pursuing college. War prevented her from readily taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test. A knee injury wiped out a season. Still, up to 35 universities sought her services, whispering whatever she wanted to hear.
"Every other school was telling me, 'You're going to be an All-American,' " said the 25-year-old European player, a second-team All-American in 2003. "I didn't know what an All-American was. But I loved the attention."
Tomasevic and McLaughlin shared a 4 a.m. phone call, Seattle time, that didn't go well. There are some things the UW coach won't guarantee, whether it's morning, noon or night. Playing time heads that list. She asked for some assurance of her role. She got none.
"She said, 'Other coaches are telling me I'll be their best outside hitter,' and I said, 'Then go there,' " McLaughlin recalled.
"My dad gave me the lecture of my life," Tomasevic said. "He said, 'Can't you tell all these people are telling you what you want to hear, and he's the only one telling the truth?' "
Handwriting on the wall
UW volleyball players should get credit for taking a foreign language. Everywhere they go is a white board neatly filled with numbers, graphs and quotes, if not McLaughlin shorthand, written with orange, green and purple pens. One board covers a wall in his office. Another hangs in the players' lounge. Yet another is wheeled out to practice each day.
Everything is charted: Performance, schedules, goals. Every 15 minutes during practice, the coach leads his players back to a board for consultation.
The trick is learning to read this stuff, and most of his Huskies are serious students. It can be daunting to the program newcomer.
"When I first came here, (it was) 'What is this? Where is volleyball a science?' " Tomasevic asked.
"It took a bit of decoding," senior Darla Myhre said.
"I still don't understand it," freshman Jessica Swarbrick conceded.
If there were a movie made about McLaughlin, his character would be played by Matt Damon or Russell Crowe, guys who have portrayed genius before. The coach's handiwork resembles one big algebra problem, winding through layers and layers of information, demonstrating order and purpose.
As the UW coach explains the process, everything can be broken down into percentages, especially the fine line between winning and losing, and his players need to see it. The numbers dictate the lineup, not him.
"You can only blame yourself," said senior Brie Hagerty, a transfer from Ohio State. "Look at the stats. It's no surprise if you're not playing on Friday."
Players record results from drills on the board and know exactly what's coming in practice next because of the board.
"If I make one error, I have to make it up with two good plays; it's like a constant calculator in my head," Tomasevic said.
McLaughlin will tell you there was once nothing better than paddling into the surf off Malibu and zipping back to shore alongside his Santa Monica High buddies, most notably Penn, who was a year older. As a reminder, he keeps a framed black and white photo of himself hanging on his office wall. He's young, upright on his surfboard, on top of the ocean.
As a volleyball coach, he's riding a new wave now. McLaughlin doesn't want to get off any time soon, either.
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Post by Chance on Dec 19, 2005 14:33:42 GMT -5
yeah they way i read it it doesnt seem to apply to Nebraska clearly enough for Cook to do what he did.
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Post by johnny on Dec 19, 2005 14:54:57 GMT -5
I agree. It's fine to use an opponent's words as fuel to your fire, but it shouldn't be taken personally and it shouldn't be grounds to openly disrespect an opponent.
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Post by GatorVball on Dec 19, 2005 15:04:19 GMT -5
“That was a mistake for her to say that,” said Nebraska sophomore Sarah Pavan. “When you go against a team like us, you don’t say that we can’t do something, because we’re going to go out and prove them wrong.”Pavan, it was no mistake. I think that's the real reason Pavan didn't shake Sanja's hand. Sore loser.
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Post by Keystonekid on Dec 19, 2005 15:06:46 GMT -5
Tomasevic's comments in the article are no big deal, and certainly Cook didn't make it his teams sole ambition to make Tomasevic eat her words. Posting quotes from opponents is no ploy, it is just another way to try and keep kid's motivated and have some fun. As I said earlier when Tomasevic heard Nebraska took offense to it or at least was aware of it. She emailed Houghtelling, who she doesn't even know, and apologized if they took it as a sign of disrespect. I thought that was a very professional and mature way to handle it. End of story. Evidently the media in their infinite boredom, made a biiger story out of it and it probably got under Tomasevic skin. As Pavan did not shake her hand, and I will believe to till the day I die knowing Sarah, that it was in no way bad sportsmanship, if you look at her she is visibly heartbroken and also a little shocked. She shook everyone else's hand but those two, and remember Tomasevic was in the middle of a frenzied celebration just prior, as she should have been, she just won a title. I have no problem with any of all of that. Her comments to the press afterword, even if Sarah did display bad sportsmanship, were immature, and uncalled for. I think winning a National Championship was motivation enough, a silly article, and the response to it were no factor.
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Post by chipNdink on Dec 19, 2005 15:10:22 GMT -5
Nebraska will be back next year.................SO WILL THE PAC-10. Tomasevic's comments are inconsequential; you did not hear UCLA belly aching about this diss. No, all UCLA did was learn their lesson from the loss, then quietly go out and beat UW the next time they played. :-) Which turned out to be a valuable lesson for UW, and helped motivate them for the NCAA tournament. Too bad the lesson given by Texas wasn't enough for Nebraska.
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