September 27, 2002
| Junior middle blocker Tara Pulaski talked with AggieAthletics.com about playing in a competitive league like the Big 12, improving her defensive skills, becoming an accounting major and playing beach volleyball. How tough is the Big 12 and how much do you enjoy the intensity of the Big 12 season? "The Big 12 is awesome in volleyball. I have a lot of friends that play at other schools, and they don't even get up for more than half of their games because they don't have to. They're the dominating team in that league. They might rival with one or two other teams for that No. 1 spot. But in the Big 12, we have teams that finished eighth or ninth in the conference the year before still contending. Any given night one of them could beat us, or we could beat one of them. It's kind of a free-for-all. "It's nice in the fact that you know that's going to happen. You're not necessarily going to get surprised by the teams, because you're expecting them to every time be really good. It kind of gets tiring though when we have to play hard week after week. But, it's great. That's what gets us ready for the NCAAs. We come in [to NCAAs] and play teams that have seen three strong teams all year, and we've played [strong teams] twice a week. I guess it really helps us in our preparation for the postseason." Seems like you've become a more intense player as you've gotten older. Can you attribute that to anything? "I am a more intense player. I was a freshmen on a court with no other freshmen, and then I was a sophomore on a court with no other sophomores. I guess I never felt the need to be that intense player. We always had a ton of intense players. Erin [Lechler] was on the court, and Michelle [Cole], and it wasn't ever necessary. But now, being one of the older players on the team, you're supposed to take on a stepped-up role."
You're getting to play more back row now. Are you enjoying that? "Yes, I love it. It's a lot of fun. That's been one of my goals since I've been on the court, to complete my game and be able to play all the way around. I've always been able to do it, but we've always had people to go in for me. So, we'll see what happens." Did you find it hard to get back to playing the back row or did you kind of pick up where you left off? "All the work, and the getting better, came from my work in practice when we did defensive drills. That's what I focused on. I wanted to make sure that if I ever got stuck in the back row, which has happened, that I could actually do it. Usually that would be in a crucial match, so I wanted to be able to play back there. [Coach] Laurie [Corbelli] always told me to focus on my front row, so that's what I've been doing lately." What's been is most memorable moment at A&M? "On the court, it was last year beating Wisconsin at Stanford [in the NCAA Regionals]. I was there when we beat Hawaii to go to the Elite 8 [in 1999], but I was a redshirt freshman. As much as I was into the game, and as great as it was, it was so much of a different type of feeling when I actually played last year. And we won. They never had a chance. It was a dominating feeling, like 'Wow, we just dominated the No. 6 team in the nation'. That was my favorite." How does a team form that "we are going to win" mentality? "That comes from your seniors, mostly. It's a last-ditch chance to prolong their season, and it comes from that senior leadership. It's happened both those years [1999 and 2001], it's the seniors that took that team and said 'We're not losing, because if we lose we go home'. So, it definitely weighs a lot on the senior leadership on the team. We have some great seniors on our team this year. So get ready!" What made you pick accounting as a major? "I actually came in wanting to do business and wanting to do finance. In my Intro to Accounting class, we did this really cool thing called 'Billy's Video'. I liked it, and I decided from Billy's Video that I was going to be an accounting major." I hear you're pretty good with numbers. How'd you pick that up? "Actually my dad says he's pretty good with numbers too, so I guess it might be genetic, right?" Got all the girls on the team asking you for help? "I'm the official math tutor of the team. And if anybody takes Accounting 209 for non-majors I tutor them in that too. That's about all I tutor them in though." You're from California, sort of the "hot bed" of volleyball. Can you describe how big volleyball actually is out there? "It's huge. You're starting to see it [get bigger] in Texas a lot more, with the clubs and stuff like that. In California, you have a volleyball club for every city. If there isn't a volleyball club, all the girls are traveling somewhere. In Texas, you have some girls on high school teams that don't play club. [In California], we cut players off our high schools teams that had played club. There's just a ton of teams. It's gotten a lot more publicity because of beach volleyball and the beach volleyball circuit that goes through there. But it's definitely getting [more popular] in Texas." Were you big into the beach volleyball thing? "No (laughs). My high school friends and I would go and mess around sometimes, but it's a very different game." But you get to dive around a lot. "Yeah, and I wasn't ever so good at that (laughs)." |