NCAA Volleyball Champions Attract Long Line of Candidates

Karen Langston walked into the Cal State Northridge gymnasium Friday, excited about starting a new season with the women’s volleyball team. With practice scheduled for Monday, this was the first chance for Langston and the other eight returning Lady Matadors to meet the new players.

Langston entered the training room and looked around hesitantly. The senior setter knew she was in the correct room, but she wasn’t sure if the dozen or so people squeezed into it knew where they belonged.

“I had known there would be a lot of new players there, but not that many,” Langston said. “The volleyball team never filled that room before.”

By the beginning of the meeting, the crowd had swelled to 18.

“It was a bit weird,” said Franci Bowman, a two-year starter. “It was like a classroom.”

The first test comes in September--the season starts with four tournaments in 23 days--giving Coach Walt Ker three weeks to turn a roomful of volleyball hopefuls into the 12-woman squad that will defend CSUN’s NCAA Division II title.

Nine new players, including four walk-ons, are vying for three roster spots and three or four redshirt positions. They include Elizabeth Darcey, a freshman on scholarship from Chatsworth High, and Anna Suarez, a walk-on freshman from Chaminade High.

The newcomers have a tough act to follow. CSUN was 35-7 last season and graduated a pair of two-time All-Americans--outside hitter Sue Darcey, Elizabeth’s sister, and setter Angela Brinton, the Division II Player of the Year. Anna Garcia, a two-time All-California Collegiate Athletic Assn. outside hitter, also graduated.

“I’m very anxious to get started,” Ker said. “The next three weeks are very, very important for us. With 18 players, I don’t know where they stand right now.”

Ker’s enviable problem of whittling down the roster stems not only from the team’s success but also from his own reputation.

The Lady Matadors have won three national championships in the 1980s and advanced to the Final Four each of the past eight years. Ker is a five-time CCAA Coach of the Year and was the NCAA Coach of the Year in 1984.

And although CSUN graduated five players, including three starters, Ker insists this is not a rebuilding year.

“We’ve got a lot of top people coming back and some would have been excellent starters on other Division II schools,” Ker said. “I’d be doing a real injustice to this team if I said we were rebuilding.”