THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 7 : Women’s Volleyball : Rock Gets U.S. Rolling to Victory Over Brazil

The United States women’s volleyball team had the ultimate in an insurance policy here Friday.

Her name was Angela Rock and her job--performed to the utmost in only her second Olympic match ever--was to come off the bench and get her team rolling. Which she did in such fine fashion that the United States beat Brazil in a highly competitive match to stay alive in its bid to get to the medal round.

The scores were 14-16, 15-5, 15-13, 12-15, 15-7. Without Rock, the Michael Cooper of U.S. women’s volleyball, those numbers certainly would have been reversed and U.S. hopes for a medal would have been closer to pipe dreams.

Call it the United States’ own piece of the Rock.

Rock, who will turn 25 next month, is a graduate of San Diego State and a resident of Laguna Niguel. Before going to San Diego State, she was an all-around athlete at El Toro High School. At San Diego State, she was a star in volleyball and also threw the javelin for the track and field team. Friday, in the Hanyang University gym, she merely put a stake through the heart of Brazil’s Olympic chances.

“She was certainly our MVP today,” said Terry Liskevych, the U.S. coach. “When she came in in the first game and we got off that run, that was the match right there. Without that, we would have been in big trouble.”

Rock entered with Brazil leading, 12-6. Before long, the United States had tied it, 14-14. The last three points of the once-interrupted run--the U.S. had gone from 14-6 to 14-11 highlighted by Kim Oden’s three blocks and then had lost the serve--were gained on Rock’s serve.

Brazil recovered to win the game, but the United States was obviously inspired by its comeback and won the second game easily, then the third in a close match. Rock, only 5 feet 8 inches, teamed with 5-11 Deitre Collins on blocks on the last two points for the 15-13 victory.

And then, in the deciding fifth game, Rock fittingly closed out the match by lifting a soft shot over the Brazilian front line for 13-7, making a block for 14-7 and executing a perfect kill from her outside hitter’s position for the final 15-7 count.

“I guess I had a day today,” Rock said. “Right now, I’m still a bit overwhelmed, still riding high. It’s just rewarding to be involved in a game like this. Laurel (Kessel) played great, and Liz (Masakayan) and everybody out there.”

Rock is one of the veterans on this U.S. team, but it is really a team without any Olympic experience. Kim Ruddins played for Arie Selinger on the 1984 U.S. team that lost to China for the gold medal in Los Angeles. But she is the only one left from the Selinger era, and she seldom plays now. Kessel, 34 and the brains and heart of this team, was on Selinger’s teams for a while, including the ’80 team that got caught in the boycott. But she quit before the L.A. Olympics, harboring little fondness for Selinger, and returned to the Olympic team only after Selinger had gone on to coach the men in the Netherlands.

So Rock’s international experience in events other than the Olympics--she has been on the team for almost four years--is crucial. As is her ability to come off the bench cold and get things going.

“I try to go in and start something,” she said. “I noticed in the first game, that we were really flat. Nobody seemed excited about big plays. There wasn’t much hand-slapping going on after points.”

But once Rock got her team rolling, there was plenty of hand slapping, both on the court and in the American cheering section.

And the hope among U.S. backers is for more of the same Saturday, when the United States faces Peru in the final pool play match. The United States lost its opener to China, Brazil was 0-2 after the first two matches, and China and Peru were to play later in the day. Liskevych said after Friday’s match that he was hoping China would beat Peru so that the Peru-U.S. match would present a clear-cut mission: The winning team goes to the medal round.

“This match today gave us a tremendous lift,” he said.

And pushing the hardest on that team barbell had been Rock, who, later indicated that what she had achieved had begun to sink in.

“In my blocking and hitting, I was very pleased out there today,” she said. “I really didn’t have that good a passing game. But now that I think back, it being in the Olympics and all, yes, this will be my No. 1 memory.”