Athletes of the week – Female

Name: Diana Andreyko Sport: Volleyball Year: Senior Major:… Name: Diana Andreyko Sport: Volleyball Year: Senior Major: Sociology

Last week she was MVP of one of Pitt’s most difficult tournaments. This week she’s the Big East Volleyball Player of the Week.

But Diana Andreyko says she doesn’t care about personal accolades. It’s her senior year and she wants to win.

“It was extremely important for me as a senior to push my teammates to accomplish something and to win [last weekend’s] tournament,” she said. “We haven’t won this tournament in awhile. I don’t think we’ve won it once since I’ve been at Pitt which is always odd because it’s our home tournament.”

Andreyko had 55 kills, an average of five kills per game, 125 total attacks, 27 digs, six blocks and one ace in the three-game tourney that Pitt swept. With 1540 career kills, she now holds the third-place position on the all-time kill list.

While at Pitt she was also named to the 2005 and 2006 Big East All-Conference First Team and was the 2004 Big East/American Volleyball Coaches Association Northeast Region Rookie of the Year.

In the future, Andreyko would like to play professional volleyball but said she won’t focus on that for a while.

“Right now I’m really concentrating on my last season as a Pitt Panther, and I don’t want to leave this school and have any regrets about what I should or could have done,” she said.

Sports have always been something Andreyko has understood. In the Ukraine, where she lived until 2000, her parents were both physical education teachers and her brother was a swimmer for 13 years.

“I always grew up around very athletic people,” she said. “I guess you could say sports are my calling.”

The family moved to the United States when they won a green card lottery and were given a chance to become permanent citizens. Andreyko attended nearby Baldwin High School and earned first-team all-section, all-WPIAL and all-state honors both her junior and senior year.

“I tried gymnastics and figure skating when I was back home and they told me I was going to be too tall for it,” the 5-foot-11 Andreyko said.

“It’s always basketball or volleyball once you’re over the average height, so I played volleyball and I fell in love with it. It was like this different feeling I would get when I was on the court.”