Loyola Marymount Remembers What It Takes to Make Playoffs

Steve Stratos, coach of the Loyola Marymount women’s volleyball team, had two words for his players when practice began this season: Don’t forget. Stratos urged the Lions to remember the disappointment and anger they felt after being snubbed last season by the NCAA tournament committee, which had not offered them an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. Loyola Marymount finished 23-7 overall, 11-3 and in second place in West Coast Conference last season behind Santa Clara (22-10, 12-2), but was the only team ranked in the top 25 that was not invited to the 48-team tournament.

The Loyola Marymount players were so incensed that they voted to forgo an invitation to the National Invitational Tournament as a form of protest to the NCAA. Stratos was shocked at the players’ request, but ultimately decided that supporting his players was more important than giving them playoff experience in the NIT.

“We felt that we deserved to go to the NCAA tournament and we just didn’t want to settle for anything less,” said Mardell Wrensch, a junior middle blocker.

Don’t forget. Using those words as a rallying call, the Lions went 19-9 overall and won the WCC title with a 12-2 record this season, nailing down an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The Lions will help open the tournament today at Arizona in their first appearance since 1986.

Loyola Marymount put together a remarkable season. Consider:

--It started a lineup that included one junior, Wrensch, four sophomores and a freshman.

--It defeated seventh-ranked Long Beach State (23-5) for the first time since 1990.

--Stratos was named the conference’s coach of the year, setter Tracy Holman was named the freshman of the year and Wrensch was named first-team all-conference for the second consecutive season.

Wrensch was a “project” for Stratos when she came to Loyola Marymount from Cupertino Monte Vista High in 1992. She had led Monte Vista to the state basketball final her senior season but was relatively unheralded in volleyball.

She grew frustrated after playing sparingly her freshman year at Loyola Marymount, so she spent extra time in the gym that summer, setting her focus on making the traveling team for the Louisiana State tournament.

Wrensch not only made the traveling team but was selected the most valuable player of the tournament. The transformation amazed Stratos.

“She was our worst player when she was a freshman because of her inexperience, but then her sophomore year, she became our MVP,” he said. “That’s just hard work.”

This season, Wrensch has a school-record 38 solo blocks. She leads the Lions with .96 blocks a game and has a .353 attacking percentage.

Wrensch’s success story is not lost on her teammates.

“Any organization needs a great leader and she is very demanding,” Stratos said. “She doesn’t ask her teammates to have very high standards and to be committed, she demands it of them.”

That attitude has sparked Loyola Marymount, which gets its entire starting lineup back next season, and a team that once resided in the shadows of its powerful neighbors has become a team to be reckoned with.

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Compared to the long road that Mebrahtom Keflezighi has traveled, running cross-country courses must seem like a snap.

Perhaps that’s why he is able to complete them so quickly. Keflezighi, a UCLA freshman, placed 15th in the NCAA men’s cross-country championship Nov. 21 at Arkansas.

Keflezighi, “Meb” to his friends, is from Eritrea, an independent nation that seceded from Ethiopia last year after years of civil war.

As a child, Keflezighi tended the family’s cows, goat and sheep in the fields outside his village. He used to walk miles to sneak wood from other villages--a dangerous mission because each village guards its supply of the scarce commodity. Keflezighi’s older brothers sometimes hid in the bushes to avoid being recruited for the army when Ethiopian soldiers marched through the village.

Keflezighi never saw a two-story building or even electric lights until his family fled to Italy because of the war in their homeland.

The family, which includes 11 brothers and sisters, moved to San Diego in 1987. Keflezighi ran cross-country at San Diego High, where, as a freshman, he quickly surpassed two of his older brothers and became the team’s top runner. Often, the three brothers finished first, second and third.

Keflezighi won two state championships, in the 3,200 and the 1,600 meters, as well as the National Scholastic Mile with a time of 4:05.58, the fastest prep mile since 1987.

Keflezighi was pleased with last week’s race.

“I’m excited about my performance because it was a high level of competition,” he said in the perfect English he has learned since arriving in the United States.

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The race is on for a winning season among several local women’s basketball teams.

Long Beach State, 11-17 overall and 9-9 and in seventh place in the Big West Conference last season, is looking for its first winning season since 1991-92. Melissa Gower will be counted on more, since Danielle Scott, a first-team all-conference selection last season, has completed her eligibility.

Pepperdine (13-13 overall, 6-8 and fifth place in the WCC last season) has eight players returning, among them center Lisa Siders, the conference’s freshman of the year last season. The Waves’ last winning season was 1987-88.

Loyola Marymount (7-20 overall, 3-11 and last in the WCC last season) lost two key players--Sheri Brown, a forward who completed her eligibility, and Amy Lundquist, a 6-foot-5 center who transferred to DePaul. The Lions’ last winning season was in 1992-93.