First Big Test Awaits Aztec Volleyball Team

In time, San Diego State’s women’s volleyball team can make a statement to whomever it chooses.

But it must first prove a thing or two to itself.

Myles Gabel, in his first year as head coach, isn’t concerned with rankings. He isn’t worried about anything beyond today’s debut in the San Diego City Championships at Rancho Bernardo High, when the Aztecs open against Point Loma Nazarene at 1. In another game, UC San Diego plays University of San Diego, with the winners advancing to the 7 p.m. championship.

“We have a lot of things to prove to ourselves without having to prove a thing to the rest of the country,” Gabel said.

Like it or not, Gabel will be under intense scrutiny himself. Longtime Coach Rudy Suwara was fired in the spring after 16 years at the helm, and Gabel, who was an assistant under Suwara for two years, was appointed his successor.

Can Gabel get the women to rally together--some players took sides in the coaching dispute--in time for tonight. What about its meeting Thursday against 10th-ranked USC?

“The team’s been wonderful; it hasn’t been distracting at all,” Gabel said of the coaching controversy. “Everyone wants to play, and that’s the bottom line.”

Gabel said players’ questions about what happened and why were answered as best he could early on.

“At our first meeting, everything was addressed,” he said. “We did that early, so now we can focus on the task at hand. Everything else is between the university and Rudy.”

Rather than start a new system from scratch, which Gabel said takes time he doesn’t have, his priority has been to improve what the women already know how to do.

“It’s more been to take a player we have and get the most out of her rather than create a whole new look,” he said.

That includes playing in different positions. “I’ve always believed (you have) to coach through a match and move people around as you need it,” he said. “That’s something that hasn’t been looked at in volleyball closely.”

Gracie Schutt, the Aztecs 5-foot-11 senior outside hitter, spent the majority of the 1991 season pounding away from the left side. Schutt led the Western Athletic Conference with 544 kills and 70 aces.

“We’d like to move her around the net, not just play her from the left side, like last year,” Gabel said. “Part of that is it creates opportunities in terms of other people. And her talent is that we can move her around.”

Besides Schutt, Jennifer Miller, a 6-1 senior middle blocker, returns to lead SDSU.

“They are the leaders on and off the courts,” he said.

SDSU is picked to finish fourth in the WAC, behind Brigham Young, New Mexico and conference newcomer Fresno State. The Aztecs won 12 of their last 14 games last year but ended the season with a WAC playoff loss to BYU.

UC San Diego women’s volleyball team will be missing some important personnel this season.

The Tritons lost four Division III All-Americans in middle blocker Elizabeth Tan and outside hitter Dana Simone (graduation), middle blocker Heather Holtzclaw (in Zimbabwe on an exchange program) and setter Julie Fabian (transferred to Cal).

“The freshmen and sophomores are liable to look awful for a few games,” said Doug Dannevik, in his 14th year at UCSD. “We’ll get killed (today) by USD. We need more than a week practice to play Division I schools. We’ll be good in November, but not for this week. This is the kind of team that can look terrible and lose 15-0, and turn around against a really good team and beat them.”

Under Dannevik, UCSD (26-6 last year) has won six national championships and was runner-up three times, including 1991, after being ranked No. 1 all season.

This season, the Tritons have no starters returning and few players with any college experience.

Junior middle blocker Jennifer Cross, a Patrick Henry High graduate, and senior outside hitter Elizabeth Banez are players Dannevik hope develop into leaders, and setters Amy Crotty, Megan Lucas and hitter Kelly McGlothlin are freshmen he is trying to mold.

Point Loma Nazarene’s Jim Crakes is trying to prepare his men’s cross country team for its warm-up meet this weekend at Balboa Park, the Balboa Four-Miler.

Not that he’s had a lot of time.

Crakes, who has been coaching college track for 32 years, recently returned from Barcelona, where he witnessed his sixth Olympic games.

“I was at Helsinki in 1952, Melbourne, Munich, Montreal, Los Angeles and now Barcelona,” Crakes said. “Coaches from all over the world are there.”

Closer to home, Crakes looks to returners Robert Keter of Kenya, Scott Lardner, a Point Loma High graduate, and Ken Jansson of Sweden to lead PLNC to a fourth consecutive NAIA District 3 title. Keter, Lardner and Jansson led the Crusaders to a 1-2-3 finish in the district meet last year.

Keter also won the 800 and 1,500 meter runs in the district meet in the spring and was named the school’s athlete of the year.

He nearly didn’t make it to San Diego. A Swedish student met Keter, who was in college in Bulgaria, in Eastern Europe three summers ago and told him about PLNC. He finally enrolled in 1990.

“He was the sixth man when he started,” Crakes said. “Last year he was our first man. His times have improved dramatically.”