One Winning Streak Over, LIU Brooklyn Volleyball Looks to Start A New One

The LIU Brooklyn women’s volleyball team that takes the Steinberg Wellness Center court today at 1 p.m. to face Robert Morris will be noticeably different from the squad that beat the Colonials 3-0 in the finals of the 2014 Northeast Conference (NEC) Women’s Volleyball tournament.

A new coach, Ken Ko, will be patrolling the LIU sideline. Three freshmen — Viktoria Fink, Dolores Kopren and Jiayi Zhang — will look to replace graduates Vera Djuric (4-time NEC Setter of the Year), Annika Foit (3-time NEC Player of the year) and Mia Radisic . The WRAC even has a brand new floor, the result of a mid-summer renovation.

But the biggest difference is that the Blackbird’s 47-match NEC regular season winning streak is over, courtesy of a surprising road loss to Bryant last Sunday.

To put this in context, the last time LIU dropped a conference match — 3-2 to Sacred Heart in November 2011 — Bobby Valentine, now the Pioneers athletic director, hadn’t yet been hired for an ill-fated managing job with the Boston Red Sox.

Dale Starr, Robert Morris’s head coach since 2010, saw the value of the Blackbirds’ streak, despite often being on the wrong side of it.

“LIU’s win streak was great for our conference,” Starr said by email. “It brought recognition to a conference that gets very little recognition on the national stage.”

Coming into this season, the Blackbirds were 62-2 their last three years of NEC play. As part of their success, last year LIU beat #25 Michigan State, the first time a NEC women’s volleyball team had ever beat a highly-ranked opponent.

When head coach Kyle Robinson, the winningest and most decorated coach in LIU volleyball history, left to take a job as a top assistant at Oklahoma, Ken Ko, an assistant at the University of San Francisco, became the program’s seventh coach.

LIU (2-11; 1-1 NEC) has predictably suffered from Robinson’s absence. Playing one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country, the Blackbirds opened the season 1-11, including losses to Arizona (13th ranked team in the country), Ohio State (#15) and Oregon (#11). LIU opened its NEC schedule last Saturday with a 3-0 road win over host Central Connecticut State. Then came the shocker against Bryant, which had beaten LIU only once before in thirteen matches.

Will parity finally come to the NEC? Dale Starr believes so.

“It was obviously a big win for Bryant and their program that signifies the conference will be as competitive as it has been since I have been at RMU (2010),” the Colonials coach said. “There are teams who can beat anyone else on any given night, and for the past three years, I don’t think that has been very possible. LIU was dominant during that streak, and I think the conference will have much more parity this season.”

With today’s match against the Colonials (6-9; 1-0 NEC) and one tomorrow against Saint Francis, PA (2-14; 0-2 NEC), LIU has a chance to get back to its winning ways. But the message for the Blackbirds’ NEC rivals is clear: while still favorites to capture a fourth-straight NEC crown, LIU can be beat.

“We are a very young team with at least 3 freshman starting for us,” Starr said. ”They are aware of the history, but also hungry to write their own chapter in this rivalry.”

Perhaps starting today.

Long Island University Brooklyn women’s volleyball vs. Robert Morris University, Saturday, October 3, 1 p.m. and vs. Saint Francis, PA, Sunday October 4, 1 p.m. The Steinberg Wellness Center, 161 Ashland Place (between DeKalb Avenue and Willoughby Street). Admission is free. For information contact Greg Fox, LIU Associate Director of Athletics at gfox@liu.edu

PHOTO CAPTION: LIU Brooklyn Women’s Volleyball celebrating the 2014 NEC Championships
PHOTO CREDIT: © Bob Dea