BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : Japanese Altered the Script : Volleyball: Backup setter Zetterlund can’t quite lead the United States to victory over her former country.

In a Bud Greenspan film of Olympic moments, Yoko Zetterlund would come off the bench when the star setter became ill and lead her chosen country, the United States, to victory in women’s volleyball over the country that spurned her, Japan.

But amid 16 days of glory in the Summer Olympics, there also is heartbreak, which Zetterlund must have felt at the Sports Palace on Wednesday when Japan scored a dramatic victory over the United States, 13-15, 15-11, 15-12, 8-15, 15-13.

No one even hinted that Zetterlund’s play was a reason for the loss, but Coach Terry Liskevych made it clear that the United States might have fared better in its Olympic opener if setter Lori Endicott had not been so nauseated that she missed much of the match, including the fifth game in which the United States blew a 9-5 lead.

“We thought we could start her in the fifth set, but the doctor told us we’d better not,” Liskevych said of Endicott, who woke at 3 a.m. Wednesday with an unspecified illness--probably, her doctor said, a virus or food poisoning--and felt little better when the match began 10 hours later.

“It was difficult to get into a tempo using two setters. But Yoko did a good job, considering that she didn’t know until she got to the game that she would have to play a lot.”

So it was not exactly a case of the understudy filling in for the diva and bringing down the house.

What a day it could have been for her.

Zetterlund, 23, was born in San Francisco of a Japanese mother and a Swedish father, who became acquainted as pen pals. She was 6 when they separated. Her father returned to Sweden, and her mother took her to Japan, where she lived for 16 years.

Her mother, Moriko Horie, was a former member of the Japanese volleyball team. She became a coach when she returned home, tutoring her daughter in the game in high school and at Tokyo’s Waseda University.

It might have been because Zetterlund chose to attend college that she was not playing Wednesday on the other side of the net. Japan recruits its national team players almost exclusively from professional club teams, and although Zetterlund was talented enough to play for the national junior team in 1986 and ‘87, she was no longer considered part of the developmental pool when she went to college.

Liskevych heard about her from Suguru Furuichi, who succeeded the U.S. coach when he left a job coaching at Ohio State in the late 1970s. They remained in contact after Furuichi returned to Japan to take over the men’s program at Waseda, where he met Zetterlund.

When he discovered that she had dual citizenship because she was born in the United States, he contacted Liskevych, who was searching for a setter to back up Endicott.

Zetterlund came to the U.S. training headquarters at San Diego for a tryout in February, 1991.

“Paid her own way,” Liskevych said.

Less than two months later, Zetterlund was required to choose between the U.S. and Japan because Japanese law requires dual citizens to relinquish one country when they turn 22.

“The reason that I gave up the Japanese citizenship is that I really didn’t get a chance to try out for the Japan national team,” she said in an interview earlier this year with the San Francisco Examiner.

“The coach selects players from the club teams. I didn’t want to go to a club team. I wanted to go to college. Our team was really bad. I didn’t have any chance to show my skills.”

She had a chance to show them to the Japanese on Wednesday.

Although she played well enough, she must have been disappointed by the outcome. U.S. Volleyball Assn. officials would not allow her to speak with the media after the game, explaining that they did not want her to be overwhelmed by questions about playing against her former country.

In a statement released by the USVBA, she said: “There is no special feeling about playing versus Japan. I know some of the players and have played against some of (them) before I joined the U.S. team. I have played against Japan several times since I came back to the United States.”

But the world was not paying attention then.

Neither was Bud Greenspan. What a story it could have been for him.