Shining On The Sand After A Beneficial Breather
April 07, 2026 | Beach Volleyball
SEATTLE – In her own mind, Katarina Pantovic could never get enough volleyball.
Didn't matter if it was inside a gymnasium in British Columbia or Berkeley, or on a beach in Tampa or Honolulu, or even Alki just across Elliott Bay from Seattle.
Wherever there was volleyball to be played, Pantovic wanted to be playing it.
"I definitely pride myself on my work and really giving it my all, no matter what time of the year," said Pantovic, a native of Vancouver, B.C., and now in her second and final season with the University of Washington beach team. "I made the beach (Canadian) national team in summer 2025, so I kind of went straight from the season here in April and May to the beach national team from May to September, then was back for the fall UW season in the beginning of October.
"Basically, I didn't have any breaks."
But while Pantovic's mind kept saying, 'Go!', her body started saying, 'Whoa!'
Last fall, the message began coming through to her … loud and clear.
"I was going back and forth with no breaks – I was really persevering," she said. "It got to a point where I thought, 'Maybe I could use a break.'"
Now, after taking that much-needed step back to deal with a medical condition known as 'overtraining syndrome,' Pantovic is back on the beach and back in 'Go!' mode for the Huskies.
With the season heading into its final month, she and sophomore Emma Hohenauer have become the regular No. 1 pair, teaming up in the last 18 matches as Washington takes a short trip to Idaho this weekend for four matches at the Boise State Beach Bash..
"This season has been going the way that we want it to go so far," the 23-year-old Pantovic said of the 13-10 Huskies. "We've had some upsets that we wanted (4-1 against then-No. 12 Louisiana State on Feb. 28 and 3-2 against then-No. 16 North Florida on March 13), and the wins we were looking for, and we're continuously getting better as a team as the season goes on.
"That's our goal, not to peak at the beginning, but at the end, and we're on that trajectory now."
NOT ACCORDING TO PLAN
As she finished up her high school career at Lord Byng Secondary in Vancouver in 2020, Pantovic had what seemed like a solid plan in place for college. She had been recruited by Cal Berkeley for both indoor and beach volleyball.
The coronavirus pandemic had other plans. In March of that year, the world as a whole, including the sports world, started shutting down. Even as things gradually started to re-open (albeit on a masked and limited basis), college sports were still largely a no-go in the fall.
"The indoor season got delayed to the spring of 2021, which is when the beach season took place. And I was committed to both," Pantovic said. "I played the indoor season with a very young Cal team. They were doing very well when I was recruited (the Golden Bears had gone 20-10 in 2019, the last full season before Covid). Then a lot of the key players transferred out.
"We went 1-and-21. That wasn't ideal," she added, "and it was a harsh introduction to NCAA sports. But I got lots of good experience to start out as a freshman." (Indeed, Pantovic was on the court for the first serve in all 20 matches that she played and saw action in 69 of the 76 sets.)
In the summer of 2021. Pantovic played on Canada's senior national 'B' team "and got a lot of playing time", then returned to Berkeley for her second year. But she suffered a concussion right before the season and wound up playing just one match. The Bears went 7-24 overall, 0-20 in the Pacific-12.
She could have stuck with the indoor team, but in the fall of 2022 decided to give beach a try.
"I didn't have a prominent role – I was shagging balls and was more of a practice player, and sometimes didn't even travel," she said. "It was a very humbling experience for me."
Feeling homesick, Pantovic moved back home with the idea of playing indoors for the University of British Columbia The Thunderbirds decided to redshirt her, that decision coming after she had gotten cut from the Canadian senior national 'B' team.
"I was kind of off the grid," Pantovic said. "I experienced a lot of rejection indoor. So I decided maybe I should give beach another try."
SOUTH TO SEATTLE
After a successful 2023 summer on the sand, Pantovic earned a regular spot in UBC's indoor rotation, including several starts, racking up 137 kills. A thumb injury during practice in January 2024 reduced her role, and she ultimately had surgery to repair an ulnar collateral ligament.
"During this time, I was really thinking, 'Why is this happening?'" I have such a good start, then physically or mentally, accidental injury or not, I'm not playing as well as I should be. It was the environment I was putting myself in."
One of her coaches with Cal beach volleyball was Derek Olson, who took charge of the Washington program in 2022. Pantovic reached out to him.
"After going on a visit, I connected with Steve McFadden (then the assistant coach, now UW's interim head coach) and I had a lot of meaningful conversations with the players, which is something I felt I was missing from my previous experiences," Pantovic said.
She made the decision to transfer, knowing she would be able to play the 2024-25 season and hoping her various redshirts might lead to the NCAA granting her additional eligibility to play one more year (2025-26) of beach.
"I was taking a chance that I would somehow get a sixth year if I advocated for a sixth year from the Cal spring beach season," she said. "I was taking a leap in the dark. I had so much trust in the staff and coaches that they would get me a sixth year."
That extra year was granted last April. About the same time, she was accepted into the UW master of science program for information management.
"Definitely, third time is the charm. Everything worked out perfectly," Pantovic said. "I'm so glad I took this chance. I'm so grateful Steve and Derek gave me the opportunity."
FROM 'GO!' TO 'WHOA!'
That "leap in the dark" ultimately landed Pantovic in the bright spot she had been seeking. She played in 35 matches for Washington during 2024-25, primarily in the No. 2 pair with Lauren Wilcock. They posted a 14-8 record in that position and 1-3 at No. 1. Their 15 victories together tied for the ninth-most by a Husky pair in a single season.
Then came the immediate transition to the Canadian beach national team. That was followed by 14 matches in 21 days last fall with the Huskies.
It was at the end of that stretch when 'Go!' ran into 'Whoa!' as Pantovic was diagnosed with overtraining syndrome. In simple terms, it's the consequence of persistent training without adequate rest.
"It was brand-new to me – I didn't even know it existed," Pantovic said. "I didn't really believe it."
McFadden said it was something new for him, as well.
"When you watch her work, it doesn't surprise you that she would be a unique case with that," he said. "She has really high ambitions, was playing all throughout the summer, then got to the fall, and she's going to keep working hard. But there was something about her that just didn't look quite right.
"Working hard is a core tenet of our program," McFadden continued. "But there's also a balance of where you can take it too far."
Sure, there had been times when Pantovic had to step back – the pandemic shutdown, the thumb injury – even that one beach season with Cal when she spent too much time shagging balls.
But this was just … different.
"I definitely felt tired in some sort of ways," Pantovic said "I was hoping the rest would help the overtraining syndrome go away. So I guess it actually was a real thing. … This time, I felt that stepping away from strenuous activity a little bit was definitely really helpful."
She took that break from the beginning of November (the fall schedule ended on Oct. 26) until everyone was back at school after Christmas.
But stepping away from activity didn't mean stepping completely out of the gym.
"I was just sitting and doing very modified light workouts," Pantovic said. "It was really difficult at the start, especially watching everyone else train. I started to come to terms with it later on and was pretty comfortable finding other hobbies to do and making the most of what I could do."
Hobbies such as doing some DJ mixes.
"I'm not a DJ yet," she said with a smile, "but hopefully one day. And I was really into going to the gym. This is the opposite of resting, but I would just do very self-controlled exercises. That was a hobby, if you want to call it that."
Call it what you want … but it all worked.
"Both physically and just in conversation with her, you could tell she was back to being the hungry player we had grown accustomed to," McFadden said. "The hunger never went away. But you could see behind her eyes that something was missing. When she came back, she was full-go again."
Pantovic sounds quite confident that this first experience with overtraining syndrome also will be her last experience with it.
"After seeing how my energy was coming back, I'm really now an advocate for rest because I've seen that it helps," she said. I just started focusing on maybe not playing so much volleyball and focusing maybe more in the gym and prioritizing my strength, which really paid off."
"I'm very hyper-aware of my body and how I feel now," she added. "And I feel like that was a beneficial experience to have at the right time to help me learn that."
Said McFadden, "I'll take a kid you have to pull back and tell them when they have to take a reset over a kid you have to push to work hard," he said.
FEEDING OFF EACH OTHER'S FIRE
Here it is April already. The regular season is down to its final two weekends. Then it's the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships on April 22-24 in Huntington Beach, California. Depending on how things go there, the Huskies are hoping to be part of the conversation for one of the 16th berths at the NCAA Championships, set for May 1-3 in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
Pantovic is looking forward to her final month of college competition, particularly in being paired with Hohenauer.
"Emma is an amazing partner. She always puts the team first and she is extremely athletic," Pantovic said. "We feed off of each other's fire, and that helps us be successful as a team."
The first time Pantovic and Hohenauer came together was on Feb. 27 at the LSU Tiger Beach Challenge in Baton Rouge. In the opening match against Alabama Birmingham, Pantovic teamed with Niki Egan at No. 1, while Hohenauer was paired with Teila Allen at No. 2. Pantovic and Egan fell short, but Hohenauer and Allen pulled out a three-set victory.
Later that day when the Huskies faced Louisiana-Monroe, McFadden had Pantovic and Hohenauer together in the No. 1 spot. They scored a straight-set victory in UW's 5-0 sweep. The next day, they bounced back from a loss to Southern Mississippi (the Huskies still won the overall match, 3-2) to beat LSU's top team in a three-setter as Washington knocked off the No. 12-ranked Tigers, 4-1.
"We had never thought about (pairing up) just because we're somewhat similar players. We're both kind of blockers for the most part, or split blockers," Pantovic said. "We were like, 'Let's just give it a try.' We didn't argue with the coaches.
"Believe it or not, by our third match together (the one against LSU), we felt like we had played for over a year," Pantovic added. "We just stuck with it after that LSU weekend and we've been getting better every weekend and we've been playing some very tough pairs. We just feed off each other's fire and that helps us be successful as a team."
McFadden knows that even the best combinations aren't fully in tune right away, but he likes the direction in which Pantovic and Hohenauer are trending.
"Both Kat and Emma are really earnest in their effort. They're both going all-out for it, trying to find symmetry and trying to be greater than the sum of their parts," he said. "There are times during timeout when they're so good for each other. Emma can be a calming influence for Kat and tell her the one thing that she needs. She also has that respect for Kat and has seen the work that she has put in and her tireless effort."
Eventually, Pantovic will shift toward putting her academic background to work in information management. She is specializing in AI. One place she might like to try using it at some point is to create some AI systems geared toward coaching volleyball.
But for now, her attention is still on competing.
"The thing we're really focusing on is very clear communication with our partners," Pantovic said. "We're working on that a lot, and also on continuously developing our offense, adding a new layer each week for the things we're running.
"We want to keep the other team on their toes so they never know what we're going to do next."
And what Katarina Pantovic is going to do next is play some more volleyball. In her mind, she can never get enough of it ….
… even if that sometimes means listening to her body and taking a break from it.
Didn't matter if it was inside a gymnasium in British Columbia or Berkeley, or on a beach in Tampa or Honolulu, or even Alki just across Elliott Bay from Seattle.
Wherever there was volleyball to be played, Pantovic wanted to be playing it.
"I definitely pride myself on my work and really giving it my all, no matter what time of the year," said Pantovic, a native of Vancouver, B.C., and now in her second and final season with the University of Washington beach team. "I made the beach (Canadian) national team in summer 2025, so I kind of went straight from the season here in April and May to the beach national team from May to September, then was back for the fall UW season in the beginning of October.
"Basically, I didn't have any breaks."
But while Pantovic's mind kept saying, 'Go!', her body started saying, 'Whoa!'
Last fall, the message began coming through to her … loud and clear.
"I was going back and forth with no breaks – I was really persevering," she said. "It got to a point where I thought, 'Maybe I could use a break.'"
Now, after taking that much-needed step back to deal with a medical condition known as 'overtraining syndrome,' Pantovic is back on the beach and back in 'Go!' mode for the Huskies.
With the season heading into its final month, she and sophomore Emma Hohenauer have become the regular No. 1 pair, teaming up in the last 18 matches as Washington takes a short trip to Idaho this weekend for four matches at the Boise State Beach Bash..
"This season has been going the way that we want it to go so far," the 23-year-old Pantovic said of the 13-10 Huskies. "We've had some upsets that we wanted (4-1 against then-No. 12 Louisiana State on Feb. 28 and 3-2 against then-No. 16 North Florida on March 13), and the wins we were looking for, and we're continuously getting better as a team as the season goes on.
"That's our goal, not to peak at the beginning, but at the end, and we're on that trajectory now."
NOT ACCORDING TO PLAN
As she finished up her high school career at Lord Byng Secondary in Vancouver in 2020, Pantovic had what seemed like a solid plan in place for college. She had been recruited by Cal Berkeley for both indoor and beach volleyball.
The coronavirus pandemic had other plans. In March of that year, the world as a whole, including the sports world, started shutting down. Even as things gradually started to re-open (albeit on a masked and limited basis), college sports were still largely a no-go in the fall.
"The indoor season got delayed to the spring of 2021, which is when the beach season took place. And I was committed to both," Pantovic said. "I played the indoor season with a very young Cal team. They were doing very well when I was recruited (the Golden Bears had gone 20-10 in 2019, the last full season before Covid). Then a lot of the key players transferred out.
"We went 1-and-21. That wasn't ideal," she added, "and it was a harsh introduction to NCAA sports. But I got lots of good experience to start out as a freshman." (Indeed, Pantovic was on the court for the first serve in all 20 matches that she played and saw action in 69 of the 76 sets.)
In the summer of 2021. Pantovic played on Canada's senior national 'B' team "and got a lot of playing time", then returned to Berkeley for her second year. But she suffered a concussion right before the season and wound up playing just one match. The Bears went 7-24 overall, 0-20 in the Pacific-12.
She could have stuck with the indoor team, but in the fall of 2022 decided to give beach a try.
"I didn't have a prominent role – I was shagging balls and was more of a practice player, and sometimes didn't even travel," she said. "It was a very humbling experience for me."
Feeling homesick, Pantovic moved back home with the idea of playing indoors for the University of British Columbia The Thunderbirds decided to redshirt her, that decision coming after she had gotten cut from the Canadian senior national 'B' team.
"I was kind of off the grid," Pantovic said. "I experienced a lot of rejection indoor. So I decided maybe I should give beach another try."
SOUTH TO SEATTLE
After a successful 2023 summer on the sand, Pantovic earned a regular spot in UBC's indoor rotation, including several starts, racking up 137 kills. A thumb injury during practice in January 2024 reduced her role, and she ultimately had surgery to repair an ulnar collateral ligament.
"During this time, I was really thinking, 'Why is this happening?'" I have such a good start, then physically or mentally, accidental injury or not, I'm not playing as well as I should be. It was the environment I was putting myself in."
One of her coaches with Cal beach volleyball was Derek Olson, who took charge of the Washington program in 2022. Pantovic reached out to him.
"After going on a visit, I connected with Steve McFadden (then the assistant coach, now UW's interim head coach) and I had a lot of meaningful conversations with the players, which is something I felt I was missing from my previous experiences," Pantovic said.
She made the decision to transfer, knowing she would be able to play the 2024-25 season and hoping her various redshirts might lead to the NCAA granting her additional eligibility to play one more year (2025-26) of beach.
"I was taking a chance that I would somehow get a sixth year if I advocated for a sixth year from the Cal spring beach season," she said. "I was taking a leap in the dark. I had so much trust in the staff and coaches that they would get me a sixth year."
That extra year was granted last April. About the same time, she was accepted into the UW master of science program for information management.
"Definitely, third time is the charm. Everything worked out perfectly," Pantovic said. "I'm so glad I took this chance. I'm so grateful Steve and Derek gave me the opportunity."
FROM 'GO!' TO 'WHOA!'
That "leap in the dark" ultimately landed Pantovic in the bright spot she had been seeking. She played in 35 matches for Washington during 2024-25, primarily in the No. 2 pair with Lauren Wilcock. They posted a 14-8 record in that position and 1-3 at No. 1. Their 15 victories together tied for the ninth-most by a Husky pair in a single season.
Then came the immediate transition to the Canadian beach national team. That was followed by 14 matches in 21 days last fall with the Huskies.
It was at the end of that stretch when 'Go!' ran into 'Whoa!' as Pantovic was diagnosed with overtraining syndrome. In simple terms, it's the consequence of persistent training without adequate rest.
"It was brand-new to me – I didn't even know it existed," Pantovic said. "I didn't really believe it."
McFadden said it was something new for him, as well.
"When you watch her work, it doesn't surprise you that she would be a unique case with that," he said. "She has really high ambitions, was playing all throughout the summer, then got to the fall, and she's going to keep working hard. But there was something about her that just didn't look quite right.
"Working hard is a core tenet of our program," McFadden continued. "But there's also a balance of where you can take it too far."
Sure, there had been times when Pantovic had to step back – the pandemic shutdown, the thumb injury – even that one beach season with Cal when she spent too much time shagging balls.
But this was just … different.
"I definitely felt tired in some sort of ways," Pantovic said "I was hoping the rest would help the overtraining syndrome go away. So I guess it actually was a real thing. … This time, I felt that stepping away from strenuous activity a little bit was definitely really helpful."
She took that break from the beginning of November (the fall schedule ended on Oct. 26) until everyone was back at school after Christmas.
But stepping away from activity didn't mean stepping completely out of the gym.
"I was just sitting and doing very modified light workouts," Pantovic said. "It was really difficult at the start, especially watching everyone else train. I started to come to terms with it later on and was pretty comfortable finding other hobbies to do and making the most of what I could do."
Hobbies such as doing some DJ mixes.
"I'm not a DJ yet," she said with a smile, "but hopefully one day. And I was really into going to the gym. This is the opposite of resting, but I would just do very self-controlled exercises. That was a hobby, if you want to call it that."
Call it what you want … but it all worked.
"Both physically and just in conversation with her, you could tell she was back to being the hungry player we had grown accustomed to," McFadden said. "The hunger never went away. But you could see behind her eyes that something was missing. When she came back, she was full-go again."
Pantovic sounds quite confident that this first experience with overtraining syndrome also will be her last experience with it.
"After seeing how my energy was coming back, I'm really now an advocate for rest because I've seen that it helps," she said. I just started focusing on maybe not playing so much volleyball and focusing maybe more in the gym and prioritizing my strength, which really paid off."
"I'm very hyper-aware of my body and how I feel now," she added. "And I feel like that was a beneficial experience to have at the right time to help me learn that."
Said McFadden, "I'll take a kid you have to pull back and tell them when they have to take a reset over a kid you have to push to work hard," he said.
FEEDING OFF EACH OTHER'S FIRE
Here it is April already. The regular season is down to its final two weekends. Then it's the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships on April 22-24 in Huntington Beach, California. Depending on how things go there, the Huskies are hoping to be part of the conversation for one of the 16th berths at the NCAA Championships, set for May 1-3 in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
Pantovic is looking forward to her final month of college competition, particularly in being paired with Hohenauer.
"Emma is an amazing partner. She always puts the team first and she is extremely athletic," Pantovic said. "We feed off of each other's fire, and that helps us be successful as a team."
The first time Pantovic and Hohenauer came together was on Feb. 27 at the LSU Tiger Beach Challenge in Baton Rouge. In the opening match against Alabama Birmingham, Pantovic teamed with Niki Egan at No. 1, while Hohenauer was paired with Teila Allen at No. 2. Pantovic and Egan fell short, but Hohenauer and Allen pulled out a three-set victory.
Later that day when the Huskies faced Louisiana-Monroe, McFadden had Pantovic and Hohenauer together in the No. 1 spot. They scored a straight-set victory in UW's 5-0 sweep. The next day, they bounced back from a loss to Southern Mississippi (the Huskies still won the overall match, 3-2) to beat LSU's top team in a three-setter as Washington knocked off the No. 12-ranked Tigers, 4-1.
"We had never thought about (pairing up) just because we're somewhat similar players. We're both kind of blockers for the most part, or split blockers," Pantovic said. "We were like, 'Let's just give it a try.' We didn't argue with the coaches.
"Believe it or not, by our third match together (the one against LSU), we felt like we had played for over a year," Pantovic added. "We just stuck with it after that LSU weekend and we've been getting better every weekend and we've been playing some very tough pairs. We just feed off each other's fire and that helps us be successful as a team."
McFadden knows that even the best combinations aren't fully in tune right away, but he likes the direction in which Pantovic and Hohenauer are trending.
"Both Kat and Emma are really earnest in their effort. They're both going all-out for it, trying to find symmetry and trying to be greater than the sum of their parts," he said. "There are times during timeout when they're so good for each other. Emma can be a calming influence for Kat and tell her the one thing that she needs. She also has that respect for Kat and has seen the work that she has put in and her tireless effort."
Eventually, Pantovic will shift toward putting her academic background to work in information management. She is specializing in AI. One place she might like to try using it at some point is to create some AI systems geared toward coaching volleyball.
But for now, her attention is still on competing.
"The thing we're really focusing on is very clear communication with our partners," Pantovic said. "We're working on that a lot, and also on continuously developing our offense, adding a new layer each week for the things we're running.
"We want to keep the other team on their toes so they never know what we're going to do next."
And what Katarina Pantovic is going to do next is play some more volleyball. In her mind, she can never get enough of it ….
… even if that sometimes means listening to her body and taking a break from it.
Players Mentioned
/ Beach Volleyball
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