During Živa Recek’s first match as a Gator, she was having trouble with the change of pace. In the first set alone, she had one kill against an error in seven total attacks.
Although she may not be fully adjusted yet, Recek needed less than 15 hours to start improving.
The Slovenia native, who’s used to playing in front of a crowd of 400 people back home, helped the Gators (3-0) win both of Saturday’s matches against Florida A&M and Florida Gulf Coast in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.
“[The freshmen] did a really awesome job,” senior Betsy Smith said. “Obviously there were some jitters for all of us. But they played through it, and the three matches were big for us being able to get all that experience under our belt this weekend.”
The 3-0 (25-11, 25-11, 25-14) win over the Rattlers showcased Recek as she led all hitters with 12 kills, hitting .455. Recek also tied a team high of 12.5 points.
Fellow freshman Berkley Whaley followed up Recek’s performance by hitting .412 with eight kills and three aces.
“We had an advantage there because of our size,” coach Mary Wise said. “When you can control the ball, control the first contact and we passed so well, it allowed us to use our size to an advantage.”
Recek had a repeat performance in the second match of the day.
Against the Eagles, the freshman hit .455 with 12 kills in Florida’s third straight sweep of the weekend (25-16, 25-19, 25-16).
The Gators held both FAMU and FGCU to a combined average of 14.5 points per set and didn’t allow more than 19 points in a single set. Florida kept both teams hitting percentage down to a combined .069, while they averaged .346 for both matches.
Despite the success from the pin hitters, the serves fell short of expectation for Florida. The Gators racked up 15 service errors against FGCU and another four while playing FAMU.
However, Wise credits sophomore Taylor Unroe and the floor defense for picking up the slack.
“There are going to be some service errors,” Wise said. “(We) probably strung together a few too many in a row... but it was our defense, especially our floor defense that kept us in play. At one point, we were digging at 85 percent.”
Now that the Gators have wrapped up the Campus USA Credit Union Invite, they will be heading to Pennsylvania for the Nike Big Four Classic where they face off against Texas and Stanford next weekend. Wise has already prepared the Gators to not expect an easy match.
“Every point is going to be one we’ll take,” Wise said. “One point is a celebration because they are going to be so hard to come by, with teams that are bigger, older, more experienced than us. But we’re going there with nothing to lose, and it’s only going to help us down the road.”
Contact Katie Agostin at kagostin@alligator.org.
Živa Recek
