CSUN Hoping to Party With Its Noisemaker : Outgoing Heitmann Gives Volleyball Team Title Shot

In the finger-twirlin’, tongue-waggin’, smack-talkin’ diatribe department of college men’s volleyball, Cal State Northridge has a player who gives new meaning to the term lip service.

Pointed remarks are best left unsaid when Oliver Heitmann, the Matadors’ star middle blocker, is on patrol.

Consider the consequences for a Pepperdine player who earlier this season dared to deride a shot that Heitmann blasted errantly into the net.

Heitmann’s next shot was smashed through that particular opponent’s block and off the hardwood floor with such force that the ball ricocheted up into the rafters of Pepperdine’s Firestone Fieldhouse.

Talk about a rooof.

“The hardest-hit ball of all time,” said Chris McGee, the Matadors’ team captain. “I don’t think he likes guys talking to him.”

Quiet, McGee. You’re divulging team secrets.

“I’m kind of hoping guys talk trash to him all this weekend,” Northridge Coach John Price said.

The Matadors will need an inspired Heitmann if they hope to win a second consecutive Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament title. Northridge (17-9) will meet Pepperdine (12-8) in first-round action Saturday at 4 p.m. at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion. The winner of the tournament probably will be invited to the NCAA Final Four in Fort Wayne, Ind., May 6-7.

“He’s the reason we have a good chance,” McGee said. “We don’t have a great team, but we have a good team and we have that one guy--Oliver--who can take over a game.”

A game, a match, a season, a party. Heitmann, 24, might be the most popular non-bottled German import to hit Northridge.

“He loves to hang out,” McGee said. “He wants to get to know everybody.”

Heitmann’s commitment to fun already is legendary. McGee, who doubles as team leader and social director, recalls making a stop with Heitmann at a bank teller machine as they prepared to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

“I got my customary $20 and then Oliver takes out $300,” McGee said. “I said, ‘Oliver, what are you going to do with all that money?’ He said, ‘Girls are expensive in California.’ That’s all he said.”

For such a seemingly soft-spoken fellow--”a quiet, nice guy” is how Price describes him--Heitmann carries quite a reputation.

“Having lived with the guy I can tell you he definitely is not quiet,” said Gary Reznick, Heitmann’s roommate and the Matadors’ starting setter. “He’s a very funny, wild and crazy guy.”

In other words, he fits right in with most other members of the Northridge team. To wit:

In February, at Northridge’s last home basketball game, the volleyball team dressed in zany outfits and appeared en masse as the “Matamaniacs.” Heitmann, who had been enrolled in school only a few weeks, was among them.

His get-up? Well, let’s just say it was nothing he packed for his trip from Hamburg.

“I wore a crazy shirt, sun glasses, hat, shorts, knee pads, something like that,” Heitmann said. “I wasn’t really prepared with clothes.”

Nor was he prepared to go on public display so dysfunctionally attired. Not even a legitimate excuse was reason enough to miss the dress-up. Heitmann missed an astronomy lab in order to attend the game, a worthwhile sacrifice he now believes.

“I go, no problem,” he said. “I am a team player.”

There is little doubt about that. Proof positive, Price said, is that Heitmann attends many of Northridge’s home baseball games and cheers and jeers from the bleachers with his teammates.

“That has to be a team bonding thing,” Price said. “I’ve never met anyone from Europe who enjoys watching baseball. That would be like finding an American who likes cricket.”

Heitmann, a member of the German national team, was recruited by Price sight unseen. “I’ve never seen him play, not even on tape,” Price said late in January on the day the school officially admitted the 6-foot-7 junior. “I’ve seen his picture in Volleyball Monthly (magazine). Does that count?”

Northridge took a $7,000 gamble--the price of a full scholarship, including foreign tuition--based on the word of several reliable sources. U.S. national team coaches Rod Wilde and Jim Coleman were among them, as were former Matador players Axel Hager and Neil Coffman, who play in Germany.

Hager, another Hamburg native, preceded Heitmann at Northridge, playing in 1992 and ’93.

Since his arrival, Heitmann said, he has been too busy to be homesick. He is taking a 12-unit academic load, plus a crash course in U.S. college volleyball.

Heitmann’s first practice was Feb. 1, his first match, Feb. 4.

“We really didn’t spend a lot of time talking to him and getting to know him,” Price said. “Basically, we just threw him in there.”

At first with mixed reviews.

In the early going, Heitmann was neither in peak physical condition nor accustomed to competing with such a youthful and mistake-prone supporting cast.

“There was an adjustment period, but he was very tolerant of inexperienced mistakes, more so than I was,” Price said.

The patience is paying big dividends. Northridge has won three in a row, seven of eight and nine 11 matches.

Heitmann mans a place in the Matadors’ lineup that previously was occupied by Coley Kyman, a three-time All-American.

The spot continues to produce.

Heitmann’s .460 attacking percentage is sixth in the nation, his 6.43 kill average is seventh, and his 1.53 block average is 11th.

“We had a big gap in our lineup,” Reznick said. “Bringing in one guy like Oliver set everybody in their roles and helped us all become better players.

“You play next to a guy like him and you have two choices. You either stay where you’re at, or you decide that you want to be that good too. We’ve all been trying to rise to his level.”

On his end, Heitmann also has been making an effort to fit in with his relatively new set of teammates.

Last month, on the bus ride to a match at Cal State Long Beach, Heitmann was asked to sing the German national anthem. At first, he declined.

“Then we said, ‘If you do it, we’ll win for sure,’ ” McGee recalled.

So he did. And the Matadors won.

They’ve lost only once--to top-ranked UCLA--since.

Now that’s a team in concert.