The Right Side of the Net
Rams prefer having Buzkova as a teammate
Mike Brohard
Radka Buzkova. You either love her or she irritates the heck out of you.
She may be one of the sweetest, kindest people you know. Or she is your main source of frustration. The in between is the net.
What side are you on?
The women who make up the Colorado State tennis team are more than thankful to have her as a teammate. She is the quiet leader, the one who sets the example. You can’t beat her in conditioning, but she gives you the ultimate target for which to set your aim. At practice, she comes with a plan which she executes no matter how she’s feeling. On match day, same thing.
“She’s a team player. She doesn’t care what position she plays in,” head coach Mai-Ly Tran said. “She’s played in the top three spots, and she always shows up and you can always count on her. She’s very reliable. She doesn’t make many mistakes and she’s very stable, and it’s great for a team to depend on her. It’s nice to be able to depend on your players and know what they’re going to show up with.”
Buzkova was actually on campus before Tran was, a transfer out of Florida Atlantic looking for a fresh start. Quite honestly, someone who was looking to enjoy the sport to the fullest once again. She felt comfortable right away at Colorado State in the transfer process, even more so when she found out Sarka Richterova – also from the Czech Republic – was going to transfer to the Rams as well.
Tran’s arrival as the new head coach over the summer has made the transition complete for the senior.
“It’s definitely been better, coming from a school where I didn’t have a really good relationship with the coach or didn’t have as good as a relationship with all my teammates. This has been all I can ask and even more,” Buzkova said. “I know some of my friends in college don’t have the same experience I have. This school is just great.
“Every player dreams of being ranked and improving and being seen. It was always my dream to be ranked, and I didn’t expect we were going to achieve that here because the program wasn’t that good. Looking back, it’s been crazy. I definitely didn’t expect to achieve all the things that we did. I think it’s all been something extra to the basic stuff. We have fun together. We have good relationships. Everything is a healthy environment, and that’s what I wanted in the first place. Secondly, the winning adds to the overall experience.”
For the past two seasons, that’s basically all Buzkova has done. She has provided Tran, a coach hired to breathe life into a program, an anchor.
As a junior, Buzkova went 25-5 in singles play, tied for the third-best total in program history in a single season. This year, she’s won 24 matches (against nine losses), the fourth-best output. She and Bobbe Vasos are the only two Rams to have two seasons rank in the top 10, Vasos winning 21 twice.
Buzkova will also be part of the program’s lore, having done something with her first doubles partner, Matea Mihaljevic, no other Ram had done – win title at an ITA Regional tournament. They won the doubles crown – beating teammates Richterova and Somer Dalla-Bona of all people – for the title. They had been the first teams to even reach a semifinal at the tournament, let alone a final. It also earned them – both teams – an invitation to the ITA Fall Nationals. She was also just the fifth Ram to be named all-conference as both a singles and doubles player in the same season.
Buzkova and Mihaljevic were ranked as a doubles team last season, reaching a program high of No. 32, and Buzkova finished 2021-22 with a regional ranking of No. 5, a highwater mark for the program. This season, the Rams cracked the ITA team rankings for the second time in program history and have stayed there for nine consecutive weeks.
She is irritating, totally. She doesn’t miss. Ever. She returns everything.Sarka Richterova
This year has just been an extension of what she brings to the roster. Not that any of it is new to Richterova.
“She would say she used to be better. She was always really good,” said Richterova, who played with her at the same club back in Prague. “She was a beast. There’s not a big difference now.”
Buzkova is not the biggest player on the court, and she never has been. She’s also not the most powerful player. Looking at her may give an opponent seeing her for the first time a sense of security.
One teammate Zara Lennon knows firsthand to be false.
New to the team this season, Lennon played Buzkova last year while at Long Beach State in a tight match that, for her, depicted exactly who Buzkova is on the court and why she prefers being a teammate.
“She’s so consistent. Radka is the type of player who doesn’t make mistakes,” Lennon said. “She’s pretty aggressive, but consistent aggressive. To win a point against her, you need to be very patient, and you need to outsmart her in a way. It’s not easy, because she can run down any ball, she can honestly hit any shot and usually her balls are pretty deep and neutral, so you can’t really attack on it. You have to wait for the right ball to go for it, and she’s everywhere on the court. It’s rare to see Radka take a winner against her.
“I feel like she demoralizes a lot of her opponents because they’re like, ‘what am I supposed to do?’ If somebody actually wins a point, it takes so much I’m sure in their head they’re like, ‘I have to do this again and I have to do this for an entire match.’”
To get a peek into Buzkova’s success, go to practice. Make sure to get there in time for conditioning.
If the team is running sprints, she’s winning. Handily. Footwork drills, she’s lightning quick. While some on the team take it as a challenge and try to beat her, others know it is a lost cause. Making it worse, she does it without breaking a sweat.
“Ky (Ecton) can compete, but that’s really about it,” Lennon said. “It’s kind of a joke, where we’re all trying to beat Radka, but she’s fast and she can last for hours, and she loves it. She’s crazy.”
She likes to run, and she can run all day. She feels she has an unfair advantage because she not only ran track growing up, she liked it. A lot. And when she goes home for the summer to Bohutin, situated up in the hills about an hour away from her tennis club, she will run more than anything to stay in shape. She’ll actually run more than she plays tennis.
She finds clarity when running, and as she explains, it gives her a break from the court she needs mentally. Some days, she’ll just take the dog for a walk, but mostly, she finds time to run. Jason Phillips, the head of CSU’s Olympic strength and conditioning program, smiles at the mention of her name. For him, it’s not only that she gives her all when she’s in the weight room, but also, she takes immense pride in her efforts. He said it’s unfair to compare her to track athletes, but taking them out of the equation, he firmly believes she is easily one of the fittest athletes on campus.
“I mean, I used to do track when I was younger. It’s a little bit unfair to them because I grew up running every day,” Buzkova said. “Maybe other people didn’t do that when they were younger, and I think I have good genes from my family. It’s funny because my teammates tell me you run so much, and I don’t even feel it because I’m used to it. I don’t get the feeling I run extra in a match, but they see it.”
Now, add a ball and a racquet and get to the moment when you feel you’ve laced the perfect shot down the line. Easy winner.
Then it’s coming back. That’s what it’s like to play her.
“She is irritating, totally. She doesn’t miss,” Richterova said. “Ever. She returns everything.”
Buzkova said this is the way it has to be for her to survive in college, with no mention of the fact she’s actually thrived. It became part of her pattern in her youth, but it’s her intelligence on the court which makes it effective.
Tran considers her to be a high-IQ player. So does Lennon and Richterova. Being able to run is one thing, knowing when and where to run is another. Buzkova is not only adept in reading patterns, but actually forcing an opponent into them. The more she’s played in college, the more it’s become her calling card.
“I think I’m pretty smart on the court, and I think that’s thanks to my coaches when I was younger,” she said. “They always wanted to me to play smart. It’s hard to play your opponent if you’re not adjusting your game depending on who you play. I think I have a lot of experience and I’ve had good advice from the past about how to play different players, so I do think that’s one of my strengths.
“I feel like I’ve found my staple performance mode. Playing in the No. 1 spot most of the time, I’m playing against good players, so I think I’ve found something I haven’t found before. It’s mentally and physically, so I think I have made improvements here. I’m more consistent, and the environment here supports that.”
At Colorado State, Buzkova will tell you she’s found who she is as a player and raised her game a bit. She likes being depended on by her teammates, wearing it like a badge of honor, not a burden. She’s not outward about it at all, which Lennon said makes her unintentionally funny at practice. Buzkova doesn’t say much, but when she does, it normally catches her teammates off guard.
For the record, Buzkova knows exactly what she’s doing. And, no, she wouldn’t want to play herself, either.
She’s unapologetic about it, too.
“I hope to be like that on the court. It’s something other players don’t like to play against, and I personally don’t like playing against,” Buzkova said. “It might be irritating, but it’s good for me.”
For a fact, Tran knows the person is good for the team, and the team relies upon her as much as the player.
When you inherit a roster as a coach, step one is getting to know each and every one of them. Her journey with Buzkova has been one of her favorites, taking a deep dive into her personality, what she was looking for in a program and who she was as a person. Tran found she was somebody who was more than willing to give than expect something in return.
“From the beginning, it was very interesting to hear her story. How she came to the US to start playing college tennis, and as I got to know her, I came to see her as an extremely sweet person who works really hard,” Tran said. “As time went on, obviously I found out how much attention she received in the portal from other coaches and people speaking so highly of her.
“She’s a great person and she cares about other people. She just has an extreme work ethic that’s contagious across the team, on and off the court. It’s been great to get to know her personally. It hasn’t always been easy for her, and I appreciate her sacrifice for the team. It’s an emotional relationship; I’ve felt really close with her and it’s nice to see her succeed and do well and be happy.”
In a way, it’s been the same for Richterova. They played and practiced together growing up, but they lived far away from each other, so it wasn’t as if they were hanging out all the time. Buzkova loved chatting with her in the locker room in those days, so she felt like she really knew Richterova.
Reunited in Fort Collins, they’ve been able to develop a very close friendship, living together and helping each other through those awkward first few months. Talking to somebody in your native language is also a plus. Talking has never been an issue for Richterova, which also works out well for Buzkova, who is not shy, but not exactly a chatterbox.
In some ways, it’s better here than back home. At least for Richterova.
“It’s more fun,” she said, “because you don’t have to play her.”