Point Park’s Vice President of Athletics Scott Swain announced the hiring of Nicole Bajuszik as the university’s new volleyball head coach on Monday afternoon.  

Prior to the announcement, the team went nearly three months without a coach. 

Bajuszik previously served as head coach at La Roche University, an NCAA Division III school, for 14 seasons.  

In the Point Park Athletics press release, Swain said, “[Bajuszik] resonated with the search committee and other coaches very well. I am very excited for the future of PPU volleyball under her leadership.” 

Bajuzik said in the same press release, “I am beyond thrilled to join the Pioneer family and appreciate Scott Swain’s trust in me to lead this program. I’m looking forward to meeting and working with the talented student-athletes in the program.” 

The hiring filled a big hole in the program, according to the athletes.  

Since former coach Bridget Bielich announced her exit after eleven seasons at Point Park before Thanksgiving break, the team of 12 has been holding their own — without a coach. 

Since the team returned from winter break, the athletes were left to run practices on their own. 

Sara Faith, a junior on the team, said, “We’ve been doing team open gyms, usually two days a week, typically. It’s not mandatory because not everyone can make it.” 

The athletes also have been attending their team lifts with strength and conditioning coach, Tim Schachtner, three times a week, which are mandatory.  

“[The student run practices] have helped with our chemistry because we’re having fun,” Marianna Oyola, senior team captain said prior to the hiring. “There’s no pressure of having a coach watching us, so I’d say it’s helped in that way,”  

“The bad side of it is that we don’t have any structure. We kind of just do the same repetitive drills,” Faith said. “There’s some things we need to work on, but we can’t figure out how to run that.” 

The team emphasized the importance of discipline and accountability while conducting practices without a coach. 

“We do hold each other accountable…but the structure of a practice and getting better at what we need to get better at is usually held to a higher degree when there’s a coach around,” Oyola said.  

Not having the structure of a consistent practice schedule, nor an experienced coach, left a gap in the progress the team could have been making, athletes said. Not only that, but a coach typically schedules scrimmages and recruits new players.  

“In the last two years, we would have already started practicing the first week of February,” Oyola said. “Plus games: we need to play games and scrimmages. Without a coach we can’t schedule those.” 

Some players wondered if the decision to remove Bielich was the right one. 

“It felt like they rushed into the process too fast. Like, [athletics] knew they wanted to get rid of [our last coach], but then they didn’t really have a plan after that,” Faith said. “They told us we were going to know before we got back from break and then around that time they were like, ‘we actually need, like, two and a half more weeks.” 

Prior to Bajuszik’s hiring, Faith and Oyola said, “I trust them. I hope they made a good decision.”