After Final ’88 Match Tonight, U.S. Women Must Find a Setter

The U.S. women’s volleyball team will try to finish the 1988 season by proving it is a better team than the one that finished seventh at the Olympic Games.

The Americans close their season with a match against Japan tonight at 7:30 at San Diego State’s Peterson Gym.

Japan finished fourth in Seoul. The U.S. women are 3-1 against the Japanese in this series and 10-3 in 1988, but did not play them in the Olympics.

Probably a bigger question than whether the U.S. team is better than the Japanese is who the next American setter will be.

Laurel Brassey-Kessel, 34, who played at San Diego State, has returned to her women’s volleyball coaching job at the University of New Mexico. Backup Kim Ruddins has retired, leaving the Americans without a proven setter.

Chris Marlowe, a former SDSU player who was an NBC commentator during the Olympics, decided to give the potential problem some publicity when he announced on the network’s Olympic wrapup show that any tall women with athletic ability might give the national team’s office a call.

They called.

“We had about 14-17 calls,” Coach Terry Liskevych said. “We had a housewife from Long Island call.”

Hold the calls.

The Americans aren’t that desperate--yet.

Cathy Noth, who was cut from the official roster but made the trip to Seoul, has been doing a solid job on the recent tour with Japan. Liane Sato, a setter at SDSU but on the Olympic team as a defensive specialist, also has been setting on the recent tour.

But setters will most likely appear in abundance at the next U.S. tryouts.

“In the future, we definitely are likely to add several setters to our roster,” Liskevych said. “We may even consider changing a good athlete to setter.”

Among the early candidates are Lori Endicott of Nebraska, who performed well at the U.S. B team training camp this past summer; Wendi Rush of Stanford; and, possibly, Anne Boyer of UCLA and Poway High School.