Loyola Marymount University volleyball coach Steve Stratos--and former Monta Vista High coach Joe Matter before him--were right on about Mardell Wrensch.

"Honestly, I was a horrible volleyball player, I just loved to play the game," says Wrensch, a 1992 Monta Vista graduate who starred at Loyola in the mid-1990s. "Stratos loves to tell people that I was the worst volleyball player that ever came to LMU. I always smile when he says that."

Just as she did when Stratos and Loyola retired her uniform No. 2 following her senior season, Wrensch will be smiling wide this weekend. She will be inducted into the LMU Hall of Fame.

Wrensch and the rest of the 2005 class will be inducted during the LMU Hall of Fame Dinner on Jan. 28, and the group will be recognized the next day at halftime of the Loyola-Pepperdine men's basketball game.

Wrensch and another inductee, setter Tracy Holman, played leading roles in the rise of LMU women's volleyball program among the nation's elite in the mid-1990s.

Wrensch was a junior and Holman a freshman when they led Loyola to a West Coast Conference championship. In 1995, they did it again. The next season, with Wrensch graduated, Holman paced the Lions' third straight WCC title.

"Holman was my quarterback," Wrensch remembers. "You can't be a great middle blocker without a great setter. We had great timing and connected well."

Wrensch had been a part of a championship team in high school, as well, but not on the volleyball court. In her senior season, 1991­92, the Matadors won the Central Coast Section and Northern California Division I titles, before falling in the state championship game.

She played alongside four "all-star starters" who went on to play collegiately, center Melissa Wuschnig (Washington), Kim and Kristen Clark (USC) and Christine Yoshinaka (Cal State Hayward).

"That season was definitely one of the greatest highlights of my high school years," Wrensch says. "I got to play on the courts at the Oakland Coliseum and Arco Arena in front of thousands of people, which was amazing."

Wrensch's role was the "fifth woman," she recalls. "I was 6 feet tall, skinny and constantly working on being more aggressive." She never considered herself a "great physical basketball player," and thinks she was in the starting line-up because she was smart, focused, mentally tough and had "inner arrogance."

She also remembers doing the "simple fundamental things right ... screen down, screen away, inbound the ball without panicking, and never miss free throws."

Mardell and her father, Delmar, used to shoot free throws together in their driveway at home. "The only pre-game advice he ever gave me was 'make your free throws,' " she recalls. "Every time I stepped to the line in a game, he knew I was thinking about him. I didn't even have to look at him in the stands, he just knew."

The rest of the basketball instruction came from coach Virgil Pate, who was a "great influence" on Mardell, she said.

"To control the teen-age know-it-all factor, I distinctly remember him doing a great job of keeping us grounded," Wrensch explains. "In the pre-game speeches before big games, he would remind us that a billion people in the world didn't know Monta Vista was playing that night. It always calmed me down, which helped me focus and realize that although every game was important, it wasn't big enough to psyche myself out."

Matter, her volleyball coach, also was extremely influential. Not only did he teach Mardell the fundamentals of volleyball, he encouraged her to play club volleyball outside of high school.

Mardell remembers a conversation she had with Matter before her junior year.

"He told me that he saw a lot of potential in me as a player and athlete, and if I really focused, he was confident that I could get a full college scholarship. From that point on, I believed it was possible and set a goal of earning a NCAA Division I college volleyball scholarship."

It was during a club tournament at UC-Davis, that Stratos first spotted Wrensch. Stratos and assistant coach Larry Smoot recruited her to LMU.

"They basically brought me on because they saw potential, and they took a big chance on me."

Wrensch rarely played during her freshman season, but "worked really, really hard in practice," she recalls, and was rewarded at the team banquet with the Most Improved Player award. "That showed me that my coaches realized how hungry I was to become not just good, but great," Wrensch says. "It was the only award that I ever put up on my wall in college. To this day, it's still my favorite plaque."

She went on to earn all-WCC honors three times and was named Academic All-Conference all four years.

After graduating from LMU in 1996 with a BA degree in communication studies, Wrensch played one year professionally in Germany.

"Competing internationally was a fantastic life experience for me," said Wrensch. "Foreign countries and their cultures fascinate me. I was challenged daily and grew tremendously as an athlete and a person."

But she felt isolated from the U.S., out of touch from friends and family.

"Outside of the Santa Clara Valley the Internet really hadn't taken off yet," Wrensch recalls, "so I wasn't getting emails from my friends and send quick notes to people to tell them how I was doing. However, I learned a lot about myself and really became a more confident and better all-around volleyball player."

Wrensch still plays volleyball in competitive indoor recreation leagues with other former college players. She also plays on Manhattan and Hermosa beaches on the weekends.

Needless to say, she's one athlete whose potential has been fulfilled.