Challenges for a new coach

Kristina Bird gives perspective of Fall season delay.

After longtime Southwest Head Volleyball Coach Lisa Hinshaw stepped down, Eagles athletics hired a hometown candidate who is looking to make a big splash.

Kristina Bird has only a year of coaching experience under her belt, as she came off a season as an assistant under Yvanna Lopez at Calexico High School.

Her roots in the game of volleyball go deeper than that, as she played for the Central Lady Spartans and graduated from the program in 2015, before playing an additional year in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics in the Midwest for a season.

Almost immediately after she got hired by Southwest, the Coronavirus Pandemic took the Desert Southwest and the rest of the world by storm; virtually shutting down just about every sport everywhere.

And now, Bird faces a number of challenges in establishing herself as the new head coach.

Social distancing mandates alone have only allowed her to have limited contact to virtual settings with the few returning student athletes, including 3 seniors.

Although she sends 3 different types of individual training exercises to them every week; at this point, Bird doesn't have an exact number of how many potential student athletes are going to try out to be involved in the program.

And just days ago, the California Intercollegiate Federation announced all Fall sports will be postponed tentatively to start in either mid December or early January.

For Bird, she sees the further delay as a disadvantage for her as a head coach that has just taken over the program; but it's a challenge that she believes she's ready to take on.

"I don't have a huge reaction to it. It's definitely something that, I can't do anything about it. So, I'm just going to have to take it and work through it and find ways to adapt to it. I lost that time to get to know the girls, so I'm going to have to adjust some coaching strategies to, so that I can just jump in and start working with the girls."

If the Coronavirus doesn't delay Imperial Valley prep volleyball any further, the season for Bird and the Eagles begins on the week of December 14th.