Net Worth : Rivals and Friends, CSUN Setters Accept Roles for Good of Team

The starter is quiet and down-to-earth, a big brother type.

The reserve shaves his head to a cue ball, directs pregame chants and exhorts his teammates to fashion turbans from towels and wear them as a show of solidarity.

Gary Reznick and Chris McGee, setters on the Cal State Northridge volleyball team, possess contrasting styles and similar resumes. Both are fifth-year seniors who spent most of their college careers yearning to become a regular.

Theirs was an inevitable showdown, one that threatened to tear at the very fiber of a Matador team built on a little talent and a lot of camaraderie.

In the middle, their coach, John Price, found himself rooting for both and hoping the odd man out would be able to swallow pride and ego for the good of the team.

Reznick emerged as the victor, and leader of the offense.

McGee, again the backup, leads the cheers.

The biggest winner of all: a young but talented Northridge team that appears poised to make a run at its second consecutive appearance in the Final Four.

The Matadors (14-8) on Friday night won their fourth consecutive match, defeating UC San Diego, 15-5, 15-8, 15-3. Northridge has won six of its last seven and is surging behind the play of middle blocker Oliver Heitmann, a 6-foot-7 German import who has established himself as one of college volleyball’s top players.

Heitmann has 95 kills during the Matadors’ winning streak, largely because his timing with Reznick on the quick-hit has improved with every match.

But equally important have been the contributions of McGee, who is the team’s captain even though he is rarely in the lineup.

“I’ve never seen anyone else do it from the bench, but he says all the right things and does all the right things,” Price said of McGee. “What he has added to this team is unbelievable, much more than anyone realizes. And he’s played very little.”

A reserve’s popularity might cause a jealous snit on some teams, but Reznick seems genuinely pleased that his backup is given a star’s share of the credit.

“Chris is the captain of this team for a reason,” Reznick said. “He’s always put the team and winning and his friends and teammates above everything else. He’s a special person, and a major reason why this team is on a roll.”

Reznick and McGee have been friends for a decade, since they were teammates as seventh-graders on the Woodland Hills Cowboys basketball team. They were recruited by Price at the same time, for the same position, but for different reasons.

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McGee was a Crespi High basketball and volleyball standout who Price believed might one day develop into a role player. Reznick, from Taft High, was brought in to push Matt Unger, the incumbent at setter, for a starting berth.

As it happened, Unger was academically ineligible in 1990 and Reznick became the starter in his first season. He helped guide Northridge to a 13-12 record--its first winning season in eight years--while McGee took a redshirt year. But the following season, Unger reclaimed his position and Reznick and McGee began a three-year tenure as rotating understudies.

In practice, the pair took turns challenging Unger and the other first-teamers during scrimmages. “We bonded together because we always were rooting for each other,” McGee said. “It was kind of a second-team thing.”

Last season when the Matadors advanced to the NCAA championship match, Northridge was the only team in the nation to have three setters on its traveling squad. Price said he brought along Reznick, who was using his redshirt year, “in case of emergency.”

Having two veteran players competing for the same position in their final year was a situation Price met with both anticipation and dread.

“I knew their competition would make them both better and therefore make the team better,” Price said. “(But) in either case there was going to be a guy who wanted nothing more in the world then to start in his final year, and only one of them was going to do it. It was kind of good and kind of bad.”

The two came out of fall drills in a dead heat and the competition still was too close to call after two weeks of practice in January.

As is his tradition before the start of a season, Price individually asked each Northridge player what his starting lineup would be were he the coach.

“The other spots were pretty solid choices,” Price recalled. “But when we got around to the setter there was usually a long pause. I got a lot of I-don’t-knows.”

McGee, who at 6-feet-4 is two inches taller than Reznick, started the first game of Northridge’s season-opener against Pepperdine in the Santa Barbara tournament. The Matadors lost. Reznick started in the second game, against Hawaii. The Matadors won.

Price’s choice soon became obvious. In the practices that followed the tournament, Reznick started playing with the first team in two of every three rotations, then fulltime.

Consistency had prevailed.

“Chris actually does a nicer job in terms of choice and running a game plan,” Price said. “But the No. 1 criteria for me has always been location, and Gary is just a little more consistent. Hitters seemed to hit his sets a little better. His mistakes were not as severe.”

The coach’s choice, coupled with the earthquake and sudden death of Crespi basketball Coach Paul Muff, threw the usually unflappable McGee into a weeklong funk.

“His enthusiasm, his personality, his fire, the things that make Chris Chris just weren’t there,” Price said. “You could tell something was bothering him and obviously that something was the fact that he wasn’t playing on the first-team side of the net.”

Price contemplated a confrontation but thought better of it. “I figured if I gave him a few days he would rebound, and he did,” the coach said.

With the help of Unger and another former teammate, All-American middle blocker Coley Kyman, McGee conquered his depression.

After seeing how disappointed McGee was after not playing much in an early season match against USC, Unger offered words of encouragement and the prediction that he would soon “get his chance.”

Kyman, who was rehabilitating an injured right leg at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., offered similar sentiments in a letter.

McGee had helped Kyman through the death of his mother in 1990. Kyman wrote to express what McGee’s friendship and help had meant to him.

“Coley is a winner, bottom line, and what he said to me pumped me up,” McGee said. “He told me I was a leader and that whether I was on the court or not, I was the guy people were going to look to.

“That made me think. I was so bummed because I wasn’t playing I figured I had no role on this team. It made me realize what my role is, to bond this team together and teach these young guys what it takes to win.”

In the ensuing weeks, McGee resumed the role of ringleader he shared with Kyman and Unger in previous seasons, bringing together teammates at every opportunity--even if the assignment was to heckle the Northridge baseball team’s latest opponent.

“It’s great to have a leader off the floor that can help you on it,” said Peter Piexoto, a sophomore who is a two-year starter at outside hitter.

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McGee said the onus of being a career reserve still “stings a little,” but he has accepted his assignment as a back-row defensive specialist and team spiritual leader.

He has appeared in every match and on two occasions has swung momentum in Northridge’s favor after replacing Reznick at setter.

On the rare occasion McGee plays in his place, Reznick returns the support.

“When he goes in I want him to do great,” Reznick said.

“If he comes in for me and plays well enough to stay in, then that means we’re doing well as a team and we’re probably going to win.”

Price said both players are so unselfish that, had the roles been reversed, the results would have been the same.

“Gary would have struggled with it for a while, then accepted his role and done whatever was best for the team,” he said.

Reznick wonders whether he would have been so gracious. “You ask yourself, what if it was the other way around?

“In any competition you love to win, but with Chris it really was a bittersweet feeling. I have so much respect for him as a player and a person. I love him like a brother. We’ve been through thick and thin together.”