Top North Spiker Took Walk to Town : And the Trojan Volleyball Team Was Glad He Came--the Big Senior Leads the Team in Kills and Aces

It’s a good thing for the injury-plagued USC volleyball team that Lawrence Hom had his mind set on attending the downtown campus.

The North Torrance High volleyball star was recruited by at least two colleges in the tough Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. but opted to walk on at USC.

The senior, in his first full season as a starter, has turned out to be a valuable gift for the Trojans, who face top-seeded Stanford tonight at 6 in the first match of the WIVA tournament at Loyola Marymount University.

The 6-foot-2, 195-pound outside hitter didn’t receive scholarship money during his first two years at USC, but he has become one of the Trojans’ best all-around players.

He leads the team in kills (647), digs (239) and aces (38). He’s had double-figure kills in 29 of 38 matches this year, including 13 games with 20 or more kills. He’s eighth in the WIVA with a 5.64 kill average and his hitting percentage (.359) is second on the team.

In early March, Hom was named the Most Valuable Player of the Reebok Classic, a tournament that included powerful Pepperdine, UCLA, Penn State and USC. He had 62 kills (.413 hitting percentage) in two matches.

“He certainly turned out to be a great player,” said UCLA volleyball Coach Al Scates, whose team finished on top of the 11-member WIVA. “He’s very quick. He takes off laterally, not toward the net, and he does it very well. I think his strength is that he’s a very good blocker.”

Hom is also a power hitter whose agility permits him to smack the ball from just about anywhere on the court. He had a career-high 39 kills in a four-game loss to the Bruins last week. He says he expected to have good games this year, but the consistent all-around performance was unexpected.

“I really didn’t think I’d do this well ,” Hom said. “I’m kind of surprised.”

That’s because he saw little action when he joined the Trojans. During his freshman year he appeared in only six matches because of a sprained ankle and the fact that two All-Americans played his position. As a sophomore in 1987 Hom started for a while but lost the position because of inconsistency. He ended with 206 kills and a .222 hitting percentage.

It wasn’t until the end of last season, when USC won the NCAA title in an exciting comeback against UC Santa Barbara, that Hom started to prevail as the Trojan’s first man off the bench. He appeared in 32 matches, hit .271 and got 149 digs.

His performance in the NCAA final is unforgettable. Santa Barbara was up two games to none and 4-1 in the third when Hom came off the bench and led USC to its third national title with intense play.

“That was a very emotional game for me,” Hom said. “Every time we were in trouble I came in. I learned to turn around the momentum of a game, and that’s what I did in that one.”

This season he’s done that in almost every game, except he seldom sits on the bench.

“He rarely has a bad match,” said USC assistant coach Alec Peters, who was an assistant coach with the Greek men’s national team before USC. “He has a great variety of shots. He can hit cross-court, down the line, off the hands, high ball . . . . I think he’s probably one of the top two or three outside hitters in the nation.”

Without Hom the Trojans would be in trouble. He’s been a crucial part of a team that should have been a strong contender for back-to-back national titles but instead tied for fourth place in the WIVA with a 13-7 record (28-10 overall).

USC got off to a bad start. The Trojans lost only senior setter Mike Lauterman from last year’s 34-4 club, but their top player, All-American outside hitter Jen-Kai Liu, has been out all season with a knee injury.

“It’s been a roller-coaster season,” Hom said. “We had so many problems early in the year. We even lost three straight at home (to UCLA, Stanford and Santa Barbara). Those are things we just don’t do. This team’s not used to losing. That was hard to handle.”

Middle blocker Tom Duke and outside hitter Scott McKeough missed parts of the season due to injuries. That opened the door for Hom, who says he got his starting position “by default.”

“Lawrence finished very strongly last year,” said USC Coach Bob Yoder, who has led his teams to the NCAA finals in the last four years. “I think that even without the injuries he had a great chance to start. He’s our firepower on the outside. As a hitter he can do everything. He has developed into a complete hitter, and that’s what we need right now.”

Hom, who grew up playing volleyball in South Bay recreation leagues and later at the Torrance Volleyball Club, is one of four South Bay players on USC’s roster. Middle blocker Bryan Ivie (Mira Costa High), setter Dan Greenbaum (Rolling Hills) and outside hitter Pete Leimbach (Miraleste) are the others. Ivie is a 6-7 sophomore who was named Freshman of the Year in 1988.

At North Torrance Hom played basketball and was the 1985 CIF Player of the Year and the Ocean League Player of the Year in volleyball. He led the Saxons to the ’85 CIF volleyball 4-A semifinals as a senior. In the first round of the playoffs he had 39 kills against Laguna in a match High that went into five games.

“It was a hard transitional period,” Hom said. “It was tough to go from playing all the time (in high school) to not playing. It took a lot of getting used to.”

Between his two agonizing collegiate seasons, however, Hom saw plenty of action. He was a starter on two Olympic Festival gold-medal teams (in Houston in 1986 and in Chapel Hill in 1987). He notched 88 kills in four games at Chapel Hill, which he attributed to experience and new confidence.

“He’s just a great volleyball player,” said Dan Greenbaum, who was on Torrance’s 1987 Junior Olympic championship team that Hom helped coach. “But I think that his emotional aspect of the game really helps a lot too. He screams and gives us constructive criticism. He’s very vocal and that lubricates the flow of the game.”

Maybe Hom’s loud, fist-clenching antics can help the Trojans win tonight and advance to Saturday’s final.