Colorado University Athletics
LOOKING BACK - 1993 BIG 8 CHAMPION VOLLEYBALL TEAM
The 1993 Colorado volleyball team had a lot to celebrate - a 26-6 record, its first Big Eight Conference title, a Big Eight Tournament championship, an NCAA berth and its first trip to the Sweet 16, plus individual accolades and achievements too numerous to list. But the Buffs sure had a strange way of celebrating.
For current CU head coach Pi'i Aiu, who served as an assistant to Brad Saindon during that championship season, the spontaneous celebration shared by the team is his favorite moment from that year, a year that remains the most successful in CU volleyball history.
"We were at the Big Eight championships in Omaha, Neb., and Omaha has this city park called Riverside Park, and there are these huge, huge slides there," Aiu recalled. "The night after we won the Big Eight Tournament, a bunch of us just ran down to these slides and started sliding. Of course, (junior middle) Janine Zumerchik has to do everything different so she comes down head first and just beat the crap out of her chin.
"The next day at practice, nobody wants to tell Brad (Saindon) that we all went sliding the night before, but Brad sees this huge bruise and asks Janine, 'How'd you get that thing on your chin?' Janine says, 'Oh, don't you remember that ball I dove for the last Nebraska game.'"
Fortunately, Saindon bought the story, and Zumerchik's chin injury was short-lived, not effecting the Buffs' preparation for the NCAA Tournament. After a first-round bye, Colorado opened with a win over Illinois, the second time they had beaten the Illini on the year.
Colorado 's season would end with the next match, as the Buffs lost a five-game heartbreaker to Penn State, ending what had been a Cinderella season.
"Colorado hadn't done that before," setter Nicole Vranesh said. "That was one of our goals that was really important to us, to be able to advance in the tournament against teams we hadn't necessarily played before."
Vranesh, the only senior on the roster, graduated the following spring after capturing first-team all-conference and all-district honors along with junior outside hitter Karrie Downey. Zumerchik was a second-team all-district selection.
From a coaching standpoint, Aiu remembers the turning point of the season coming almost before the season began, when, during pre-season workouts, Downey, Zumerchik and fellow junior Staci Wolfe took control of the team and set goals loftier than Colorado volleyball had previously seen.
And they helped to maintain that focus as the Buffs rattled off a 12-4 record before facing Nebraska at home on Oct. 13. At the time, the Cornhuskers had won 17 consecutive conference titles, and were the only team with their name etched on the trophy that was supposed to travel to the championship school each year - but which had never left Lincoln.
The No. 12 Buffs won the match in five games, delighting the home crowd and upsetting the No. 11-ranked Cornhuskers.
Colorado would split the season series with Nebraska, dropping a three-game affair just 17 days later in Lincoln, but that would be the only blemish on the Buffs' conference record en route to their title.
"I remember looking at the trophy and they wrote the winning team on the trophy each year," Vranesh said. "It just had Nebraska, after Nebraska, after Nebraska. It was definitely an achievement to win the conference, and thankfully it was us that beat them out."
"I still can't wear red to this day," she added.
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