Julie Bremner

If you want to motivate Marissa Hatchett, just invite her to take a seat on the UCLA women's volleyball team's bench. You'll have one mad middle blocker on your hands, that's for sure. But that's the ploy Bruin Coach Andy Banachowski used with Hatchett during the Pacific 10 Conference season. Was it effective? Consider this: With UCLA struggling through the first half of the season, Banachowski began shaking up his lineup.

Two top U.S. women's tennis players, Lindsay Davenport and Mary Joe Fernandez, said Friday they will support a boycott of the 1996 Australian Open if the tournament does not raise the women's prize money to equal the men's. "I definitely support the boycott," said Davenport, who is on the WTA board of directors.

The Angels should have lowered themselves from the heavens and agreed to play the Seattle Mariners in Tacoma this week. . . . After all, the Angels played all their home games in 1961 in a minor league park, Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. . . . The San Francisco Giants began at Seals Stadium, former home of the Pacific Coast League's Seals. . . . Seattle's first American League team, the Pilots, played at Sick's Stadium, former home of the Rainiers. . . .

Jenny Evans has had all kinds of brushes with greatness while playing volleyball at Newport Harbor High School and UCLA. Take her high school career. The Sailors were 59-6 in her three years on the Newport Harbor varsity but never won a state championship. The success, and frustration, has continued at UCLA. The Bruins were 64-4 the past two seasons and entered the Final Four ranked No. 1 both times, only to lose in the semifinals.

Brian Gimmillaro, coach of the Long Beach State women's volleyball team, recently tried to convince a group of reporters that the past is all but forgotten. Never mind that Long Beach won the national championship last season, when it finished 32-2 and won a share of its third consecutive Big West Conference title. And forget about Danielle Scott, who dominated the sport last year before completing her eligibility. According to Gimmillaro, that's ancient history.

Like a sleeping Lion, the Loyola Marymount women's volleyball program seemed harmless during the past five years. This season, however, it has awakened. Loyola is enjoying its best season since 1986, when it won the West Coast Conference championship. That year, the Lions defeated UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament and finished 24-8 overall, 10-2 in the West Coast Conference. They have not played in an NCAA tournament since.

When Natalie Williams steps onto the volleyball court today for the season-opening tournament at the University of Hawaii, she will no longer be a mild-mannered sophomore hoping to make her mark. Williams, instead, will be a mild-mannered junior having not only made her mark, but stamped it on wooden floors across the country with a left-handed wallop that helped earn her Volleyball Monthly magazine's player-of-the-year honors, as she led the Bruins to the national championship.

Debbie Brown and a few friends got together in South Bend, Ind., last month and reminisced about old times. This is what they remembered: --Practicing for hours as teen-agers in a rundown, little gym at Santa Fe Springs. --Leading USC to an undefeated season, the only one in collegiate women's volleyball history. --Creating controversy when seven of the eight members of their Trojan team left college to join the U.S. national team.

Several years ago, Terry Liskevych, the U.S. women's volleyball coach, gave a warning disguised as a speech to members of the American Volleyball Coaches Assn. His topic? "A crisis at quarterback." Liskevych was referring to the United States' relative dearth at the setter position, especially in youth programs and high schools. The problem has now reached the point that the U.S. team is far behind its international counterparts in what is possibly the most important position.

Impressions of the Pan American Games in Cuba, as seen through the eyes of volleyball player Elaine Youngs: "The athletic village is very nice. We had refrigerators, TVs, everything in our rooms." How did your injured knee hold up during play? "I had no problems with it, except that we could never find any ice to put on it after matches." And the food? Plentiful, but not very appetizing. "It takes some getting used to," she said. "There are flies crawling around everywhere.