‘LULU’ LETS LOOSE
No longer easily frustrated, Torres an ‘intimidating’ force for state runner-up Munster
There used to be a distinct look on Lourdes “Lulu” Torres’ face whenever frustration was taking over.
Torres said Munster coach Brett Boden would let her know every time he saw it.
“He’d tell me to stop making my Lulu face,” Torres said with a laugh. “I was letting those mistakes get the best of me, and I wasn’t moving past them.”
That all changed for Torres, the 2020 Post-Tribune Girls Volleyball Player of the Year, during her senior season.
The “Lulu face” was gone — Torres said Boden didn’t mention it to her once this fall — and was replaced by a determined, driven look as the 5-foot-10 outside hitter led the Mustangs with 357 kills during the most successful season in program history.
Torres, an Aurora University recruit, also was third on the team in digs wit h 2 63 a s Munster reached the state championship match for the first time and finished as the Class 4A runner-up after losing to Yorktown.
The physical tools always were there for Torres. But she reached a new level once she learned to navigate the mental side of the sport.
“In the past, she’d get forced into a few errors, and she’d get in her own head, which slowed her down or made her change her decisions,” Boden said.
“She matured so much from last year to this year. She took everything headon. She could see what she was capable of on the positive side instead of the negative side.”
In her earlier varsity years, Torres struggled to move past initial mistakes, allowing one error to snowball into multiple miscues.
“I realized that I could make mistakes and that’s OK,” she said. “I was making myself into such a perfectionist that one mistake was the end of the world. I stopped putting so much pressure on myself, that’d I’d just get the next one.”
This new approach fueled Torres’ increased aggression on the court, which was apparent in Munster’s biggest matches.
Late in the regular season against perennial 4A powerhouse Penn, Torres led the Mustangs with 19 kills in a 3-0 sweep. In the semistate match against McCutcheon, Torres had a team-high 17 kills in a 3-0 sweep.
“There were times when she just went after it,” Boden said in reference to that semistate match. “With her arm, she could blow people up, and I think she was more intimidating this year than in the past.”
Although Munster’s junior-laden roster means a significant number of players will return next season, Boden said the Mustangs will need to replace more than just Torres’ production.
“The fire and intensity she brought — that’s going to be the big piece that’ll have to be replaced, even more than the stats,” Boden said.
Torres’ attention turns to college, where she hopes to carry that same aggressive, confident mindset that propelled her — and Munster — to new heights during the 2020 season.
“They want to win championships there,” Torres said of Aurora. “I’m excited to get there and start a new beginning with them.”