Alfee Reft, the new head coach of the UCLA women’s volleyball team, recently spoke about his goals for the 2023 season in an interview with ABS-CBN.
The Filipino American coach was hired by the university in December 2022. At the time of his hiring, he was the assistant coach for the women’s volleyball team at the University of San Diego. He told The Daily Bruin that UCLA expressed interest during the University of San Diego’s run in the NCAA tournament, where they made it to the Final Four.
“I think the program speaks for itself in regards to the history, the lineage of success that this women’s program has had for so long,” Reft said of his decision to accept the UCLA job, in an interview with The Daily Bruin. “That was a big thing. UCLA as an academic institution is just incredible.”
He added that it was nice to come back home to Los Angeles.
“LA is a phenomenal city to live in, as you know,” he told The Daily Bruin. “And I actually grew up an hour north of here, so not very far from LA, and I used to come to UCLA games when I was a kid. So for me personally, it’s very full circle to come back and be here on campus where I watched so many volleyball players and people that inspired me.”
The 2023 NCAA Women’s Volleyball season likely won’t begin until August, but Reft has already begun to prepare.
“Already it feels like we’re establishing some really good foundation for what going to do with this team,” he said in an interview with ABS-CBN.
“We have [an] excellent staff here in UCLA people that I prize and I’m so excited to get to be on this journey with. The work is a lot, but it’s no different from anywhere else at. We’re up to the challenge.”
Reft hopes to help the team build better relationships with each other.
“Interpersonal connectivity with players and relationships and just the culture that we create around our student-athletes and those connections and meaningful and purposeful relationships that we get to build,” he told The Daily Bruin.
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