Zeno’s Knee-Jerk Reaction Is to Hit the Courts

UCLA women’s volleyball Coach Andy Banachowski had to laugh when he was asked to recall what role Lori Zeno played in his team’s 1984 NCAA championship.

“She got pretty good at lugging all the videotape equipment around and recording games for us,� he said.

Said Zeno, with more than a touch of sarcasm: “Now I have that to put down on my resume.�

Lori Zeno had envisioned herself making many contributions to the women’s volleyball program in her second year at UCLA. Becoming the team’s unofficial video technician was not one of them.

But when it became apparent that her weakened knees were in no condition to withstand the pounding of a demanding volleyball schedule, Zeno met with Banachowski and decided to redshirt.

By that time, Zeno had already undergone major surgery to repair damaged tendons and remove scar tissue in both knees. The right knee, which was operated on in December of 1983, recovered well from the surgery. The left one, upon which a nearly identical procedure was performed in April of 1984, did not. So, late last August, Zeno had a tearful meeting with Banachowski in which the decision to sit out the season was reached. For the first time since volleyball became a big part of her life in junior high school, Zeno was just a spectator.

“That was hard,� she said. “I had been playing full time since I was 14. All of the sudden, I wasn’t doing anything. I was just trying to rest and see if it would get better.�

It didn’t. Despite a series of cortisone shots, the soreness in the left knee persisted, so, last February, Zeno had yet another operation. More scar tissue was removed, and more rehabilitation followed.

Zeno is the first to admit she isn’t the world’s most patient patient. This is an athlete who once cut the heel out of a fiberglass ankle cast and convinced her high school coach and a match referee to allow her to play with the cast wrapped in foam padding, one day before the cast was scheduled to be removed. It wasn’t easy for Zeno to stay on a strict rehabilitation program.

“It’s so boring,� she said. “The first few weeks, it’s awesome because you’ve just gotten out of a brace and you’re muscles are still weak. But after a while, the lifts become easy and you get bored.� Now, six months after her third knee operation in two years, Zeno is confident that she’ll be ready to play this fall and turn the videotape equipment over to somebody else.

The surgeries have left her with almost identical, two-inch scars that outline the top of each kneecap. “I just tell everybody I ran into a table,� she said. “My right knee feels great,� she said. “It’s strong . . . it’s 100 percent. The left one’s still a little sore, but after two surgeries, it’s going to be a little sore. I’m just bringing it around slowly, but it’ll be ready by the time we start the season.�

That’s good news for Banachowski, who watched the former La Quinta High School standout play in 43 of UCLA’s matches during her freshman season and help the Bruins finish 44-6 and second to the University of Hawaii in the NCAA tournament. Zeno was playing in pain then. Banachowski is eager to see how she’ll play now that some of that pain has been relieved.

“I’m looking forward to having her back,� he said. “She’s such a competitive person. She adds a lot to the team’s personality.�

That competitiveness, Zeno said, runs in the family. Her father, Joe, is a former UCLA football player and now the coach at La Quinta. Her mother, Barbara, played AAU volleyball and was selected to play for the U.S. National team before she retired to raise a family. Her younger brothers--Lance and Eric--are both accomplished prep athletes. Lance will be a heavily recruited offensive lineman this fall at Fountain Valley High. Eric is transferring from Fountain Valley to La Quinta, where he will play quarterback for his father.

“I talked to Ducky Drake (longtime UCLA trainer),� Lori said. “He said, ‘Lori, your Dad wasn’t very big, but boy was he intense.’

“It sort of rubs off on us. I think we all expect to be the best. Dad puts a lot of pressure on my brothers--a lot more than he did on me. Sometimes that’s hard, but I know they’re going to be the best.

“I remember coming home from practice or a tournament and having Dad tell me, ‘Well, you did this wrong or you did that wrong,’ and I would start crying. But looking back, he was right. And if you want to be the best, you have to take that every now and then.�

The Zeno family is moving out of its home in Fountain Valley to a condominium within the La Quinta enrollment boundaries so that Eric can play for his father. The Zenos figure Eric’s talents will be better showcased than they would have been at Fountain Valley, thus enhancing his chances for an athletic scholarship.

Lori said this isn’t the first time her parents have made such a sacrifice. Before she entered high school, the family moved from Paso Robles, a small farm community near the central California coast, to Orange County.

“If we were still up there, we’d be farming and milking cows,� she said. “It was such a small town that no one was going to hear about us. Nobody would have known who we were, no matter how good we were. My parents realized that and said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

“They moved to Orange County for us. They would do anything for the kids.�

The move certainly paid off for the family’s only daughter. She established herself as a volleyball talent in the United States Volleyball Assn. club system, and led La Quinta to the Southern Section 3-A final in 1981 and semifinals in 1982. She was the 3-A Co-Player of the Year both years.

She made an immediate impact as a freshman at UCLA as one of the Bruins’ two setters. She made the transition from high school to big-time college athletics look easy.

Zeno said her only concern in the beginning of her collegiate career was making a good first impression.

“You want to impress people quickly,� she said. “You want to impress the coach. You want to impress your teammates so they don’t have doubts in you. You have to go all out, all the time.

“All of a sudden, you have to grow up real quick. You’re not going to be babied. It’s not like when you were a star in high school because there, everybody was a star. So, you have to do it all over again. But I like the challenge.�

Lori Zeno hopes she can do it all over again this fall, and that her knees are ready to carry her.