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Show ) . . LORI MOTT will be a senior this year on the SUSC volleyball team. Lori AAott is a member of SUSC team A woman athlete from Vernal figures significantly in the plans of the 1981 Southern Utah State College defending conference champion volleyball team. Lori Mott, a 5-6 senior at SUSC and a graduate of Uintah High School, was a regular on last year's Thunderbird team which won the SUSC's third consecutive Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference volleyball championship. SUSC also went on after its 8-0 RMAC record and playoff victory to win the championship of NAIA District Seven (Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico) and to earn a berth in the 16-team 16-team national championships at Pittsburg, Pitt-sburg, Kansas. The final T-Bird record was 21-8 for the year. "Lori helped us a lot in our most successful ever volleyball season," Joy Peterson, veteran SUSC coach comments. com-ments. "She is an extremely steady player, who can play well up front or on the back line. Lori is a smart player who makes very few mistakes." The Thunderbirds are expected to be plenty strong again this year. Ten of the 13-member squad are scheduled back. Statistically, Mott ranks high on the squad in several catagories. She led the team in digs (saves of probably opponent op-ponent kills), and she successfully returned over 92 percent of opponent serves she received. "Lori is one of our top servers," Peterson praises. She was successful on 92 percent of her serves last season. "It looks to me like we have an awfully good group of returning players, and if we perform anywhere near our abilities, we should be very strong this year. We had a whole bunch of new players last year, and we were forced to spend much of our time learning to play together. This season, we won't have nearly so much of that; we can work more on more sophisticated offensive and defensive technique. That should make us a better team." Peterson explains. The Thunderbird season starts September with a two-day tournament in Denver, hosted by Regis College. Twenty-six matches later, SUSC will close the regular season against Eastern Arizona. "Hopefully, we will advance to postseason championship play. One of our goals will be to gain a berth in the national tournament again this season," Peterson says. In addition to her participation in the national volleyball tournament, Mott was also a batting leader 6n the Thunderbird softball team which finished in a fifth place tie this spring in the NAIA national tournament. "We had a super season in women's sports last year, and we are looking forward to more of the same thing this year," Kathryn Berg, assistant athletic director at SUSC, says. Lori is the daughter of Vaughn and Margie Mott of Vernal. I v ' f ' u i '"ti,, ';.'.""; t. " . ' ', -k L V N LONG STRANDS of grass grow out of softball which was found in the Nellie Kloeppel garden in Ashley last spring. . |