Challenges don’t scare Roxanne Hernandez.
Ever since she can remember, Hernandez has welcomed the feeling of having to perform at the highest level when faced with a deadline.
Like most people, Hernandez acknowledges she has the worries, butterflies, and doubts she will be able to complete her work. When those thoughts bounce around in her head, all she has to do is come back to the words of her mother, Linda, and she is fine.
“My mom always has said I do best when my nose is down and when I am faced with a challenge,” Hernandez said Friday morning in the lobby of Pohl Gymnasium on the campus of The Mississippi University for Women.
The setting was appropriate because Hernandez, 24, was sitting outside of the volleyball court where her players and her team will play in the 2017-18 school year. On Thursday, The W announced the hiring of Hernandez as its new volleyball coach. The hiring is the school’s latest step in its process of bringing back a women’s intercollegiate athletic program and creating a men’s program for more than 2,500 undergraduates. The W will compete in baseball, softball, men’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross country, and women’s volleyball beginning in the 2017-18 school year. It will add more sports for the 2018-19 year as it continues the process to gain NCAA Division III status.
Hernandez comes to The W after working as an assistant volleyball coach at LIU Post University in new York and as a graduate assistant at Dowling College in 2015. She also worked as a coach of the 13 Red girls team at The Island Volleyball Academy in Long Island, New York.
As a player, Hernandez saw action in 104 matches in her four-year career (2010-13) at Canisius, which is a member of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) and is located in Buffalo, New York. A native of Medford, New York, Hernandez had more than 130 kills in each of her last two seasons at Canisius. She improved her block total each year, and finished with 115 total (15 solo) as a senior.
Hernandez majored in communications at Canisius. She was a three-time team MVP and two-time team captain at Longwood High School. She also played club volleyball at The Island Volleyball Academy.
But Hernandez started her studies at Canisius as an education major. She said she started her college career thinking she would become a teacher. But she said “it didn’t feel right” and changed her major and took several sports-related courses. Those classes helped her realize she wanted to find a career in sports.
“I never really considered how closely related education and coaching really are, and being a coach and a teacher are really the same thing,” Hernandez said. “Once I got the ball rolling with that, I knew it was the right fit for me and it was something I wanted to make a career out of.”
Hernandez said she realized coaching was the path she wanted to pursue after she made out her first practice plan for her players at the Island Volleyball Academy. She said she will focus on player development and that she will try to incorporate elements from coaches she has played for into her coaching style. She said her time as a graduate assistant coach at Dowling, her work at LIU Post, and her time at the Island Volleyball Academy taught her the importance of connecting with players. She said her passion for volleyball will help her relate to players and get them to share in her love for the sport.
“When I imagine a coach-player relationship, it is exactly that, it is a relationship,” Hernandez said. “There should be a give-and-take aspect. It’s not just me standing in front of a classroom or a gym telling you this is what you have to do. I am going to create an environment that makes the players want to play for me.
“I find a lot of excitement in it. I am so passionate about it that all of the work is not going to be a ton of work at all. It is going to feel good. It is going to feel like progress. It is not for everybody, but I feel it is for me. Meeting people, getting a feel for the community, all that has been extremely helpful and enjoyable. People here are so warm and welcoming. The buzz around the excitement of the return of athletics has gotten me really, really excited.”
Hernandez said there are bound to be bumps in the road in building a program as she tries to learn about the area. Even though she has been in Lowndes County for less than a week, Hernandez already is working to meet people and to build contacts. She said she attended the South Lamar-Caledonia volleyball match Thursday night and met Caledonia coach Samantha Brooks, who played volleyball at The W. She said she met Larry Stone, who is a area director for Mississippi for the National Scouting Report, which calls itself the “world’s largest high school scouting organization, recruiting student-athletes to colleges in the United States, at the match, too. She also has talked with potential coaching candidates who will help her build a program at The W.
“I am going to breed success,” Hernandez said. “I am going to create an environment where my players want to come to practice and they are going to want to work hard, not only in the classroom and on the court, but also become better individuals as part of the community. That is one of the biggest lessons I took away as a student-athlete, I am a part of something bigger than myself. I think that is something to have a lot of pride in, not necessarily be pressured by. That is something I hope to spread to my players.”
Hernandez said recruiting and scheduling will be her biggest priorities moving forward as she goes about “selling” herself and finding the right players to join her program.
All of that work will keep her busy and her mind racing. There might even be times when she thinks it is overwhelming. If she does, she will remember what he mother told her one night when they were eating dinner at a Ruby Tuesday’s around the corner from her house. Faced with the stress of having to meet a couple of deadlines when she was working toward her master’s degree at Dowling College, Roxanne recalls her mother saying, “You’re going to be fine. You do so much better when you’re faced with a challenge, a hard deadline, or some kind of obstacle.”
Turns out her mother was right. Roxanne said she earned A’s on the two papers and an A on the other project.
“I tend to be pretty hard on myself,” Hernandez said. “I try not to let that show too much, but deep down I do hold myself to a high standard and put a lot of pressure on myself. Conversations with my mom and my older sister typically are always the same, ‘You’ll be just fine. You’ll be just fine.’ I am always worried. Even though the interview process for this job, I was freaking out and they were like, ‘What is not to like? You know what you’re talking about,’ although sometimes maybe on the inside I don’t feel so as much. They said, ‘You’re fine. You do great. You speak well. You relate to people well. You will do just fine.’
“Anytime I am feeling down or anytime I feel extra stressed, or I feel myself putting pressure where it may not be needed, I resort to those words.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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