Isabel Salgado (BRA)
Brazil's unstoppable hitter of the 80s

During one of the Superliga matches of 1999, I saw Isabel Salgado come into a match for her club team and suddenly turn the set around. At that point, the Brazilian TV commentator said something that summarises what people think of Isabel Salgado: "In the '80s, she was our Ana Moser."

Or should we say that the other way around? Before Ana Moser was pounding her way to stardom in the early '90s, Brazil had relied on the incredible talents of Isabel Salgado. She was absolutely amazing. Her jumping ability was phenomenal, and even though she wasn't physically overpowering, her attacks were precise, well-placed, well-directed, and as such, very effective. So before we give Isabel the honour of being remembered as the Ana Moser of her time, it is necessary to state that Isabel was the best Brazilian player of her time.

At the 1986 World Championships in Czechoslovakia, she led her team to a fifth place standing by defeating the USSR. I remember her best in the match against Peru, where she along with teammates Ana Paula Ramos, Ana Lúcia Barros, Ana Maria Richa, Ida Alvares, Vania Mello, Eliani da Costa, and Sandra Lima (now Suruagy, pictured above) gave Peru a run for their money in four sets. Isabel played Cecilia Tait equal to equal, providing her team with points on the outside, whilst Cecilia being left-armed hit from the right side. It was funny to see that she played with kneepads, but she never pulled them up over her knees... However, she still dove for balls and had a commanding sense of ball control. After the '86 I saw her perform equally as impressively at the '89 South American Championships in Curitiba where I think coach Inaldo Manta called her back to the team to provide reinforcements against Peru in the final. But after the 0-3 loss to their usual continental rivals, Isabel took several years away from indoor volleyball, while taking her chances in the sand courts with teammate Roseli Timm. The duo Isabel/Roseli was very good in its day, though not reaching the success of Karolyn Kirby and Liz Masakayan of the USA, the team to beat at the time. However, it kept Isabel in great shape and served to show that her great sense of court play and ball control were equally suited for the beach as they were indoors. Nevertheless, she returned to indoor volleyball in the mid-'90s when the Brazilian National Team had already been taken over by the Junior world bi-champion generation of Fernanda, Ana Moser, Márcia, Ana Flávia, and countless new talents still on their way to the adult team. Though there was no place for Isabel on the National Team, she still played with clubs in the Superliga and delighted the audience with her amazing kills. By then, she had learned how to hit from the back row, something she hadn't done back in the '80s. In the 2000 season of the Superliga, she decided not to play anymore, but instead, to coach the team from Flamengo/Petrobras that featured National Team star Virna.

All in all, Isabel Salgado deserves to be remembered as the go-to hitter of her generation, instead of being hailed as a second-tier sports figure from Brazil's past. Even if she didn't achieve the same collective results as Ana Moser's team did in the '90s, Isabel's individual merits were at a par with the most solid attackers of her succeeding generation. (This is the type of recognition that I wanted certain players to get, and one of the main reasons why I created this website in the first place.)