NOT JUST A PASSING PHASE
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU SPORTS EDITOR
Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008

Maranatha libero Nicolette Tsukamoto’s most valuable skill is enthusiasm.

Photos by MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS/Rafu Shimpo
At 5-foot-5, Maranatha’s Nicolette Tsukamoto knew she lacked the height to be an outside hitter, so she took it upon herself to learn the libero position.

Tsukamoto has 120 digs and a 90 percent serving average in nine matches.

PASADENA.–Having never seen Nicolette Tsukamoto’s face, I had to ask Maranatha head coach Ralph Rivas to point her out.

“She’s the one’s who’s always smiling,” he said.

Indeed, she was easy to spot, bouncing across the court as her Minutemen squad practiced Wednesday for their Thursday night match against San Gabriel.

Tsukamoto is in her second year as the starting libero for Maranatha, a junior assuming a position of responsibility usually occupied by a senior.

Whereas the setter is the key to a team’s offense, the roving libero must be keen on defense as well as passing to facilitate the setter’s job.

“Libero is the primary passer, your best passer,” Rivas said, “And you want your best passer there because she can go in and out freely.”

At 5-foot-5, Tsukamoto, 16, played her frosh season as an outside hitter. Coaches told her at her height–or lack thereof–she’d have to find another position.

“I was too short to be an outside hitter,” she explained. “I was told that I’d never be an outside hitter, so I worked on passing during the club season after my freshman year.”

It’s precisely that attitude that has endeared Tsukamoto to her coaches over the years. She finds an area where her team needs her to excel and she works at perfecting her play in that area.

Given her devotion to the game, it’s hardly a sacrifice for her. When the high school season is finished, she plays summers for the top-ranked San Gabriel Volleyball Club Elite. She attends camps and has participated in the Junior Olympics.

“Volleyball’s her game; she plays year-round,” Rivas said. “She demonstrates that she wants to be out there on the floor. She’s an eager player, she goes after everything. During the off season, she hones her skills and that makes her an easy choice to help lead the team.”

Tsukamoto’s hard work shows on paper as well as in her attitude. Through nine matches before Thursday, she was boasting a 90 percent serving accuracy, with 4 aces and a mere 8 service errors for the season. She has 120 digs–an average of 3.8 per contest–and has received 101 serves with only 6 errors.

Maranatha (6-3) has to be favored going into Thursday night’s match against 1-2 San Gabriel. The Minutemen’s last four contests have been blowout wins, losing one or no sets in each outing. Tsukamoto said the key for this team has been the closeness of its players.

“We have amazing teamwork, even more so than last year,” she said. “We’ve bonded almost as sisters, really. We back each other up and when we realize there’s a problem, we don’t just talk about them, we fix them. I think that a sense of hard work and perseverance, even through tough times and our struggles in certain areas, we stick through it, and that has made us a pretty good team overall.”

The size of the Maranatha community is another aspect Tsukamoto cited as being a comfort factor. The small Christian preparatory school is located on the campus of the former Ambassador College in Pasadena, easy to miss if you’re not looking for it.

“You get to hang out with your teammates a lot, on and off the court,” she said. “I usually have lunch everyday with my teammates or get together with them on weekends, so we’re all very close, and that helps with the teamwork.”

Though she spends many of her hours on volleyball and student government–she’s the junior class vice president–Tsukamoto’s grades don’t appear to be suffering. Her grade point average is nearing a perfect 4.0, which has made her an attractive candidate for several colleges. She said she hopes to study business and art, with her first choice being UC Santa Barbara. She’s also considering Westmont, Pepperdine, and Loyola Marymount.

“I want to stay local,” she said, a statement that is probably comforting to her parents, Mark and Jane.

To be sure, the schoolwork load, combined with outside activities–and normal teenage life–can be quite the juggling act for a student athlete. Tsukamoto shrugs it off, taking the position that enjoying what you do is the first step to being good at it.

“You can’t love something and not have fun at the same time. You have to be serious and work hard, but enjoying it is part of loving the sport.”