COLUMBIA — A week after her team’s season ended in bitter disappointment, Columbia College volleyball coach Melinda Wrye-Washington is still feeling the sting of defeat. She says she doesn’t expect that feeling to go away until the Cougars return to practice next August.
“I hate to lose,” Wrye-Washington said. “I’m a very competitive person, and I hate to lose. It kills me. It eats me up.”
Heading into the NAIA National Tournament last week, the Cougars were ranked No. 6 in the NAIA. But after struggling to advance out of pool play and into the quarterfinals, the Cougars suffered a crushing defeat to No. 17 Northwestern (Iowa) in five games.
Columbia College’s championship dreams took a big hit early in the tournament when senior outside hitter Daniella Brazolino suffered an arm injury during the first game and was injected with pain shots before each game for the rest of the tournament.
Brazolino’s injury was not an unfamiliar sight for the Cougars. Injuries plagued the team throughout the season. Freshman outside hitter Ana Paula Da Mota Silva, who was expected to be a major contributor for Columbia College, tore her ACL in the opening weekend of the season and was lost for the year. Senior All-American middle hitter Juliana Quadrado played through a back injury all season.
“We had a season where we weren’t real lucky, you know what I mean?” Wrye-Washington said. “I think that we did everything we could with the situation and the team that we were playing. Every coach has those seasons where people get hurt. Every team has injuries like that but those were pretty serious to our team as far as the people that it happened to at the time.”
Although Quadrado is graduating she will be back with the Cougars next season as an assistant coach.
“Julie will be our grad assistant next year,” Wrye-Washington said. “So she’s transitioning. Today (Wednesday) is her transition meeting. We’re going to transition her from player to coach and she’s going to hopefully accompany me to Brazil over spring break and look around (at some potential recruits).
Brazolino and Quadrado are the only seniors who the Cougars will lose to graduation but Wrye-Washington said that there are several more players who will not be returning next season.
“There are some girls that won’t be returning that have just shown up and taken up space all year and we can’t have that in this program,” she said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever had recruits come in physically at a high level but not been able to compete at a high level.”
Some major contributors will be returning for Columbia College including All-Americans Luana Branco and Yi Zhang-Li.
Wrye-Washington said she is hoping to strengthen Columbia College’s nonconference schedule next season but that limited funding can make that difficult to do.
“I sat down and thought about what I could have done differently, and I think that it comes down to the training and the scheduling and those things that aren’t necessarily coached but, you know, we didn’t play a tough enough schedule,” she said. “It’s really difficult to do that in our conference. But I can only do so much. I can’t make teams come in here and play us and our funds are limited, we can’t travel every weekend. No team can do that.”
But now Wrye-Washington becomes more of an academic coach to her players. Her major responsibilities involve monitoring her players’ academic progress.
“Your role as coach changes,” she said. “It’s always changing. I look out for their best interests. It’s not just volleyball. They need to graduate, they need to get good grades, they need to stay on track.”
NAIA ALL-AMERICANS: Three Columbia College volleyball players earned NAIA All-American honors on Wednesday.
Junior setter Luana Branco was one of 12 players to earn first-team accolades for the second year in a row. Branco led the Cougars with 11.5 assists per game and was third on the team in digs with 360.
Junior outside hitter Yi Zhang-Li was named to the third team after leading the team in kills with 3.1 per game.
Senior outside hitter Juliana Quadrado was an honorable mention selection after totaling 366 kills.