She Is Making a Name for Herself : Rafer Johnson’s Daughter Jenny Is a Volleyball Standout at Windward : Preps: Senior has helped Wildcats to top ranking in CIF-Southern Section 1-A Division.

Jenny Johnson’s father is known throughout the world for his athletic exploits.

But the daughter of former Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson is beginning to make a name for herself.

Jenny is one of four seniors on the Windward School volleyball team, the top-ranked team in the CIF-Southern Section 1-A Division. The others are outside hitter Tracy Meller, setter-outside hitter Debra Hill and setter Kate Vittles.

Windward Coach Gail Holmes, also the school’s athletic director, said that her seniors “have played together for four years, and they’re all pretty good friends. They provide a lot of natural leadership, which helps.”

There is little question about who is Holmes’ biggest helper.

Last year Johnson was an All-Southern Section middle blocker and the most valuable player in the Horizon League as Windward advanced to the quarterfinals of the playoffs.

This year she is averaging 13 kills a match and the Wildcats were 21-2 and 5-0 in the Horizon League as the week began. Last week she was named the most valuable player, and Hill to the all-tournament team, as Windward won the Brentwood School tournament.

Besides being the daughter of a world-famous athlete, what makes Johnson so special? Said Holmes: “She obviously has a lot of natural talent, but she is also very dedicated to improving her game, from the smallest part to the most obvious part. She rises to the occasion. She always gets up for the big matches, and she has done so since she was in the ninth grade.

“She uses all her advantages. She has a lot of natural ability, including great jumping ability and a lot of quickness. (At 5-foot-10 inches) she also has the right build for volleyball.

“We have basically structured our service-and-receive game so that she can cover half the court because that’s most advantageous for us. I don’t think anybody wants to be in her way when she calls for the ball.

Coach Jeff Porter’s Brentwood School team, defending Southern Section 1-A champion, got in Johnson’s way in last week’s Brentwood tournament--and wished it hadn’t, since the host Eagles lost to the Wildcats.

Nevertheless, Porter, was lavish in his praise of Johnson. “She’s a great athlete; she’s superb from the ability sense,” he said.

“Along with her ability and her smarts, she also lends a real intimidating factor, which is another key contribution to her team. Because she is confident and knows how to lead, she keeps her teammates confident and steady.”

All that ability has brought her attention from college scouts. Schools that have shown an interest in Johnson include USC, Stanford, California, Texas, Iowa and her father’s alma mater, UCLA.

She said that she hasn’t narrowed down her choices of universities from the many that would like to have her play volleyball for them. “I’m still looking,” she said.

Neither her father nor her mother, Elizabeth, have tried to persuade her to go to any particular college. “Not even Dad assumes that I’m going to UCLA,” she said. “My parents want me to do what’s best for me.”

She said her parents have always had that attitude toward her, which is one reason she played soccer for 10 years in the American Youth Soccer Organization and has never competed much in track and field, her father’s sport.

She did do some sprinting and high jumping for the Windward track team, but she also plays basketball and softball for her school. The strenuous routine became “too much,” she said. “and track is a lot of work.”

Her 1989-90 basketball season at Windward was cut short when she jumped high to block a shot and came down on the shooter’s foot and dislocated a knee cap. She said that she underwent extensive therapy with Gail Weldon, director of physical therapy at the 1984 Olympics who owns a Westside fitness facility. The knee is “probably 100%” now, she added.

She said that she has not been under any strain to excel in athletics because of her father’s fame. “When people see me they will say that I inherited the genes from my dad, but I never felt any pressure.

Johnson, whose 15-year-old brother Joshua is a wide receiver and defensive back on Windward’s eight-man football team, said that if she had devoted most of her energy to track instead of other sports that being compared to her father almost certainly would have been stressful.

She intends to concentrate on volleyball in college and not try to play basketball as well. She prefers volleyball, which she did not play until she came to Windward, to other sports.

“There’s a certain energy you feel when you play volleyball that you don’t feel in any other sport.”

The same kind of energy, perhaps, that Rafer Johnson, now the volunteer president of the California Special Olympics, felt when he won the gold medal in the decathlon at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.

If she is much like her father as an athlete, she also resembles former New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath, at least in one regard. Namath predicted that the underdog Jets would defeat the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl, and New York won, 16-7.

Johnson was asked if she thought Windward would win the Southern Section 1-A championship this year, and she replied: “Yes, we’re going to go all the way. We’re pretty experienced. We have four seniors, and this is our last year to win the 1-A. So we have even more of a desire to win.”