In the spike zone

Tayyiba Haneef-Park is as surprised as anyone to have launched a volleyball career because of her high-school algebra teacher.

It was one fateful day in between the basketball and track seasons that her math teacher "Mr Crouch", who also coached volleyball, told her the varsity team's middle blocker was injured and asked if she'd like to try a new sport.

"I didn't know much about volleyball when I started, so my job was to just stand at the net and block the serves," she said in an e-mail interview with China Daily.

It turned out she was a natural. She had assumed she'd go to college to play any number of other sports she had tried over the years, which included soccer, gymnastics and even baton twirling. But volleyball was where she found her groove - and she hasn't looked back.

Haneef-Park's adopted sport has taken her around the world, from her college days in southern California to club teams in Russia and now Turkey. This summer in Beijing she will reprise her role as one of the US Olympic volleyball team's top scorers.

The 29-year-old has played for the US since 2001, and at 2 m she is the tallest woman ever to play for USA Volleyball. She helped the US team win silver at the 2002 World Championships and bronze in the 2003 World Cup. She also holds the national-team record for points scored in a match (41), which she earned in a Yeltsin Cup contest against Cuba in 2004.

That year also saw her maiden voyage to the Olympic Games, a trip that began with high expectations but ended in bitter disappointment. The US team went to Athens ranked world No 1 but stumbled to a 2-4 record, finally losing to Brazil in the quarterfinals for a fifth-place finish.

"We were on the road together for two months before the Olympics and I think the up-and-down emotions distracted us from volleyball," she said about her team's struggles in Athens. "It's hard to be around people 24/7 for that long when there is so much pressure, and I don't think we reacted well to it."

This time, she said, the team is more poised and will try to build on the lessons learned in Athens.

"I think we realized as a team that we cannot let outside factors and emotions come onto the court with us and affect the way we play as a team.

"We are a better team than we showed, so I think this time around we really want to prove to ourselves and to the world how good we can really be."

Her team will come to the Beijing Olympics with a not-so-secret weapon - "Iron Hammer" Lang Ping, the Chinese-born megastar who has coached the US women since 2005. Having led China to volleyball glory as a player in the 1980s, Lang is still adored in her homeland and her role on the US bench is sure to help the cause.

"She is a hero in China and everywhere we go we have the support of the people. I think that will help us in difficult situations," said Haneef-Park, who has traveled with Lang on a few of the team's trips to China. "The experience is unbelievable - it's almost like traveling with Michael Jordan."

Haneef-Park and the US team have steadily improved since Lang took over, though it took a period of adjustment. After sliding down the world rankings from first in 2004 to eighth in 2007, the team bounced back to fourth after it secured an Olympic berth with a top-three finish at the FIVB World Cup last November.

The team's World Cup success was due in large part to the stellar play of Haneef-Park, who ranked 10th among all scorers and was instrumental in a stunning comeback against the same Brazil team that knocked the US out of the Olympics three years earlier. Nevertheless, she is modest.

"Honestly, I don't think of it on an individual basis. Everyone played a role in that win, and it was a big moral victory for us. At that point we realized how good we could be."

Haneef-Park will finish up her season with her first-place Turkish club Eczacibasi Zentiva and will likely rejoin the US team in June for the FIVB World Grand Prix, the final tune-up before the Beijing Games.