Embracing Change to Make a Difference
Courting success is what this season is about for Rams
None of them really picked each other, but here they are.
A tennis team, with the majority of the roster being transfers who signed on with the previous coach during the 2020 season, and the new head coach, who was hired during the course of the summer. It’s an arranged marriage of sorts, which is not uncommon at all in the world of college athletics. Changes happen, and for many of the parties involved, that was what they were seeking.
Change is exactly what Radka Buzkova wanted when she left Florida Atlantic, and she had always been fascinated with Colorado. Her childhood friend, Sarka Richterova, wanted change, too. She left Drexel, looking for a school in a smaller community which felt safer and gave her access to nature. And both of them said a key part of selecting Colorado State was the previous coach. It always is.
Then there’s the coach they will actually play for, Mai-Ly Tran. She came to Fort Collins from Drake, excited about the challenge of turning around a program which has never won a conference title.
So here they are, and Tran’s first goal was to get a read on the roster she inherited. One which will dramatically change next year with five players set to earn degrees.
“The challenge is getting to know all the different personalities, how they communicate, how hard you can push them and get them to trust you,” she said. “You have to build trust and respect, day by day, getting to know them. I think that’s been the biggest challenge in a short amount of time, building that trust and respect and then pushing them to their max. It’s also understanding we have a team with five girls who are going to graduate, so figuring out what their goals are for that last year and what we can accomplish in that short amount of time.”
Tran knew of two players – CSU returners Tracy Guo and Anastasiia Kotsyuba – because the Rams played (and lost) to Drake in a dual last season. The rest, she didn’t. She’d never coached against them, never met them in the recruiting cycle. Even with an incoming freshman, a coach has a sense of knowing a player, having had the chance to talk with them and their family as they were being recruited. And at first, all the introductions were taking place via Zoom, not face to face.
When everybody was finally on campus in August, they finally had a chance to get to learn about one another.
Naturally, Richterova needed answers to questions swirling through her mind.
“Up until we got to know Mai-Ly, you don’t stop being concerned before you meet the coach,” she said. “It was like going through the process and reshaping my expectations. You commit to something and it’s different. You have to change in your mind, and now we’re doing this, what are the goals, what are the positives?”
One of the main objectives Tran has for her program is to build a roster which plays for the team. Tennis is very much an individual sport, and it is what they’re all used to doing growing up. They are out on the court themselves, and the results, good or bad, they have sole ownership. In college, all of their results go onto one scoreboard to determine dual wins and losses.
So while Tran is trying to get to know her team and how to push their buttons to make them better, she has to help them navigate coming together as a group with a common goal as part of their individual pursuits. The ask is to have two returning players and five transfers get to know and understand each other, too. Then they’ll do it again when Sarah Weekley, who signed two years ago from New Zealand and still hasn’t been on campus, arrives.
Young women will admit they can create drama. It can happen in a group of three, let alone seven with multiple languages being spoken. So far, so good. Most of them live in the same complex, so they spend time together outside of just being on the court.
“I love all the girls, and we’re having so much fun and helping each other,” Buzkova said. “I think it’s difficult, because you have eight girls, so there’s always something, but I think we’re an amazing team.”
We are like building out of nothing, and I kinda love it. You can come to a team where everything is set and you just go with the flow, but we can build this.Sarka Richterova
This is good, and maybe worrisome, from Tran’s perspective.
It is good they are friends. It is not good when they are friends on the court, and that, she said, needs to change.
“If anything, they’re too nice right now to each other. They’re giving each other a lot of respect,” Tran said. “Our goal right now is building up the competitiveness. I told them they’re just being nice to each other to show respect for each other before they go after each other.
“That’s the thing, is that balance: Being a good teammate, but when they’re playing head-to-head to go after each other. We’re working on that part. I think that’s the way it should be, build our team up together, then we’ll work on the other part of pushing each other in practice. I truly have confidence when we head into our individual tournament they’ll compete. I think they’re just holding back right now.”
Again, this may be part of the overall learning process. Their opinions on what is competitive are different when explained from differing viewpoints.
The girls themselves have a different take on the situation, but they understand why Tran is seeing what she sees. Buzkova and Richterova have been playing together since they were 12 in the Czech Republic, and they say what may look like a friendly game isn’t exactly what it may appear. Where they’re from, it just looks different.
“Well, I don’t think that’s true. I think Mai-Ly has different expectations for us,” Richterova said. “We almost all come from Europe in base, so we play a lot of practice matches, like everywhere. We were raised all together, and even when you play a practice match, we give our best, we want to beat our person, but it’s still like a practice match and we want to be friends. We don’t separate friendship and then it’s a match and we want to kill each other. We’re still doing our best, and we want to compete each other in the best way, but we will talk to each other through it.
“We’re still learning about her, and she’s learning about us. It’s a process of getting to know each other.”
This weekend will be the first chance for Tran to see them in a competitive situation against somebody else as they travel to Colorado Springs for the Bedford Cup, four days of singles and doubles matches. It also represents the first results on the board for the program Tran now leads, one for which she has a very clear vision of how she wants to see it built, to be able to sustain success for the long haul and change the reputation of Colorado State tennis.
Again, five of them are going to leave, but they are just as important in the process as are Buzkova and Richterova, who will remain.
“I think it can be hard. I think they’ve done a good job of jumping in and representing CSU right away and understanding they do represent this school,” Tran said.” I’ve tried to instill we’re going to make history and this is going to start here. This team does have experience and are mature enough to represent their school well. I think they’ve done a good job of being all in.
“There are some things we’re building. We’re figuring out our culture, our identity within this team, coaching staff as well. So together we’re building that. I do think we have the ingredients to win right away. I’ve told them that. I think together as a team they all came here for a reason. Normally on another team, you have to be realistic, you’re not setting those lofty goals, but I think knowing this team, what they’re capable of, what they’ve shown from their results and their history, they can do it. We have the right parts.”
And Buzkova and Richterova want to be a big part in helping her set the foundation. They fully understand they’ll have a swarm of new teammates in a year, and they want to be able to set an example of what Colorado State tennis should look like for years to come. That’s not lost on them.
Coming to Colorado State represented change, more than they initially expected. In fact, they’re both embracing it. Now, instead of joining something full established, they automatically become pioneers.
“I think my personal responsibility is to shape the culture on the team,” Richterova said. “Because right now, it’s completely a new team, basically. We have two seniors who know each other. I know Radka, there are other girls who were teammates before, but this is a completely new team. I don’t think this happens a lot, new coach and new girls. We can shape the culture in the right direction.
“We are like building out of nothing, and I kinda love it. You can come to a team where everything is set and you just go with the flow, but we can build this.”
Recruiting takes place year round, and Tran has to use it to bring balance to the roster. She doesn’t want to see a mass exodus like she’ll experience this year, and she expects it will take two or three recruiting cycles to even the scales and keep them there for years to come. She will need a blend of freshmen and transfers this next class, and she’s already asked Buzkova and Richterova to keep an eye out for possible additions.
It will be the first time she gets to select players for her program, but what she has come to realize, the team she has is a collection of players she would have sought out.
“I would have recruited every single one of these players,” she said. “I feel lucky, grateful, for each and every one of them that there is the potential for a good start.”
If there’s one thing the players have learned about Tran, she is competitive. Ultra competitive. They all appreciate that, because they can already see changes. They are pushed in practice, and some of them are practicing more than they have prior, and that’s just during the portion of the year when the team has eight hours a week on the court. Those practices are intense, too, another good sign to them.
Buzkova may be an outlier, because she says she likes change, actually needs it at points in her life. At Colorado State, she experienced more than she believed she was signing up for, but in the end, she says it has all been good. She’s embracing it, and she’s seeing others around her do the same.
“It was an interesting situation,” she said. “I wasn’t really worried, and we had our first meeting with Mai-Ly, we saw that she was really nice, and I was excited to work with her. I think every single one of us on the team is super excited. She pushes us really hard, so we’re all working really hard. I think we’re going to be an amazing team, thanks to our coach.
“I think she’s super competitive, and I can see that she wants us to be like the best in the conference. If you see that your coach really wants it, that’s good. She really knows what she’s doing, and we’ll see the results of that, for sure.”
They may not have picked each other, at least not at the start. They are, however, drawn to each other through the mutual goals they share. They may have brought them to the table separately, but the outlines have all merged together quite nicely.
The reason may be simple. They all came here for change. For themselves, and more importantly, for the program. To do achieve something which has never happened for the Rams before.
To win. And win a lot. To chase something historical.