Chicago State was so bad for so long in women’s volleyball that what Tony Trifonov has accomplished as its coach should be considered nothing short of miraculous.
His Cougars have crawled out of a decades-long quagmire of losing, earning a spot in the upcoming NCAA Tournament as the automatic qualifier from the Northeast Conference in their first year in the league.
That Chicago State will be among the 64 teams with a shot (although not a realistic one) at the Division-I title vividly illustrates its remarkable turnaround under a charismatic coach with a record of huge success at every stop.
How deep was a legacy of failure rooted in a dead-end program? Since joining D-I in 1988, the Cougars’ best record before Trifonov came aboard in 2020 was 12-19. They had slogged through 10 seasons without winning a single match, four with one victory and five with two.
Now consider that Chicago State has winning records in three of its last four seasons, including its present 19-9 mark, 13-1 in the NEC.
As the regular-season NEC champion, the Cougars earned the top seed and home-court advantage for the conference tournament. They dispatched Long Island U. in a four-set semfinal and outscored Fairleigh Dickinson (22-9), the only team to beat the Cougars in league play, 75-52 in a three-set sweep to take home the title, gaining the right to likely be first-round cannon fodder to a highly seeded host school in the NCAAs.
But just getting into the Big Dance is a huge deal for the beleaguered public university on 95th Street, which has seen declining enrollment and a dismal history of losing across the board with its athletic teams. The Cougars will learn their opponent when the NCAA selection committee reveals the bracket on Sunday.
“We’re going to compete, regardless,” said Trifonov, 58, no stranger to the NCAAs, having made 10 appearances representing the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference during 21 seasons coaching Florida A&M. “If we can overcome the mental challenge and don’t freeze, like a lot of teams do in the postseason, then we have a shot to be competitive.
“Just being one of the teams in the NCAA Tournament is a huge benefit to us. A lot more kids are going to give us a more serious look.”
A Bulgarian who played in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Trefonov was named the NEC’s Coach of the Year and was similarly honored by the Western Athletic Conference in 2021 when Chicago State went 17-11, the first winning record in school history.
Following a two-year stint at Seward County Community College in Kansas (a No. 1 ranking and NJCAA semifinals in 2018, NJCAA runner-up in 2019), Trifonov took the Chicago State job, in no small part because he wanted his daughter to play junior volleyball against the area’s high-caliber competition.
This season, the Cougars have taken a unique path to success, featuring an “iron seven” that rarely leaves the court, other than when the libero comes in for the middle blockers in the back row. The lineup features five international athletes and two players plucked out of the portal, while the other two members of the barebones roster ride the pine.
The marquee players are NEC player of the year and conference tournament MVP Patrycja Lagida, a 6-3 outside hitter, and NEC setter of the year Wiktoria Zagumny. Sophomores with significant upsides, they came to Chicago State as “a package deal,” when Zagumny persuaded her best friend to join her at an American school. Both trained in Poland’s national system and were members of its junior national team. Zagumny’s dad, Pavel, was a four-time Polish Olympian, named best setter of the 2008 Seoul Olympics.