Valentina Ogienko (URS/RUS)
The most feared Soviet player of her time

Valentina showing us her all-around game in the match against the USA in Barcelona. Red headband this time! [Photo: Bruce Hazelton, Volleyball Monthly]

She gave Peruvians the shivers, but not because she was a blood-thirsty vampire in disguise, but rather due to her

And shine they did. But not without struggling. Parkhomchuk and Ogienko were fine tuning a duo that rivaled that of García-Pérez del Solar. The skilled Parkhomchuk ran very quick plays with her talented middle hitter, especially the quick slide, which Valentina hit to perfection (even far better than anything the Chinese were doing then). So with the quick slide becoming her trademark, the standard quick "one" or the shoot "thirty-one" ball in front of the setter, and a sort of looped quick ball to the middle (called by some as a "thirty-two"), she was a quite a versatile middle hitter. Add her precise blocking skills due to her height and suspension, and Ogienko was one of the most feared middle blockers in the history of volleyball.

When the Soviets lost that match to Peru at the '87 Japan Cup, Valentina politely shook each of the Peruvian players's hands and congratulated them on their victory. When she shook Gaby Pérez del Solar's hand, though, she looked at her with a very shy warning that they would meet again in a final.


In 1993, Valentina was already the veteran leader of the first Russian National Volleyball Team in history. Here she competes in the 1st World Grand Champions Cup in Japan.

And they did, only months before the '88 Seoul Olympics, at the final of the Liberation Cup in Czechoslovakia. The Peruvian Team's coach, Man Bok Park, used to take his team to Eastern Europe so his players would learn how to play against the tall, powerful techniques of the European school. He wanted the shorter Peruvians to be smart, and learn how to tool blocks, or how to move the usually rigid system of the European teams around in order to win the long rallies. These two teams, Peru and the USSR grew to know each other very well by the time they met at the Liberation Cup final. Though Peru lacked one of the players that would be a starter at the Olympics, the USSR had all of its sextet ready to face the South Americans. The match went five sets, and the last point was actually a Peruvian error as a passer let Parkhomchuk's serve float right over her head to land in-bounds. So much for a good fight if it had to end that way! But the Peruvians were still determined, and their handshake forewarned yet another encounter in a future final.

Between the Liberation Cup and the Olympics Peru and the USSR met at the Chivilin Cup in the Soviet Union. I don't know if they both made the final, I assume so. All I know is that Peru didn't win, which probably increased the Peruvians's desires to gain their revenge in Seoul all the stronger. So by the time they arrived at the Hanyang Coliseum in Seoul, both Soviets and Peruvians were ready to clash, be it in a semifinal, or for the gold.

By then Ogienko and Parkhomchuk were practically united in mind. The Soviet Union's most feared front lineup was the following: Parkhomchuk at setter, Ogienko at middle, and Irina Smirnova at outside. With these two fabulous hitters, Parkhomchuk played around with their opponents like you wouldn't believe it. Not only could she recur to Ogienko's quick slide thereby opening the diagonal outside attack from Smirnova, but she could trick the blockers herself by faking a quick hit and then turning in the air and setting Ogienko a quick one while the blockers were descending. This play became standard Parkhomchuk, and later on vintage Russian (probably the most creative you'll ever see a Russian setter get on the court nowadays). This lineup was troublesome for other teams because not only did they have a middle attack from Ogienko, but they had two attacks from position two: Ogienko's slide and Parkhomchuk's "probable" hit. And besides all this, Smirnova was waiting on the outside, either for the high ball which she could pound at will, or for a quicker and lower middle ball to fill up the space left by Ogienko's slide.

Suffice to say, that this combination worked almost to perfection. Though I didn't see the USSR's romp of defending Olympic Champion China in the semifinal, I assume that the Soviets surprised the Chinese with this lineup, (aside from the other arrows that coach Nikolai Karpol had in his quiver). Such was the statement they made by blanking China 3-0 and 15-1 in one set I believe, that after Peru narrowly edged Japan out in the other semifinal the news of the score sent shivers to the Peruvian players, not to mention to the whole country! When all of Peru was up at 4 a.m. to see their team face the Soviets in the final, Ogienko's white hairband stuck out like a malediction. "Oh no, look who's playing!" people would say in Peru as they recognised the lethal middle hitter.

However, for the first two sets of the match, Ogienko seemed mortal. Peru won both with less resistance than was expected. But deep down, all Peruvians knew that the storm hadn't even started, and that Ogienko and her teammates weren't going to go down without a fight. And then fate struck. Karpol called a time-out at 6-12 in the third, just 3 points shy of losing the gold medal to an underdog South American team with less tradition and power than that which his Soviet sports machine had created. Whatever buttons he pressed, he pressed the right ones. When his players returned to the court, they were transformed. They quickly seized the small opening and won the third set. Ogienko seemed to be given a second life, for she began blocking, hitting around Gaby's middle block, waiting a beat before executing flawless attacks onto a helpless Peruvian defence. And all throughout this recovery, one rarely saw Ogienko show but a smile on her face. She was determined to win, and the only look on her face was that of extreme concentration.

Once they had the gold medal in their hands, Ogienko didn't let go of her unstoppable reputation. Two years later, she carried the same team to a World Championship title in China with a 3-1 victory over the host team, repeating the same final and the same score from the Goodwill Games in Seattle that very year. I didn't see the final match in Beijing at the '90 World's but I did see Ogienko at the Goodwill Games and one thing that stood out for me was how well presented all of the Soviet players were. My sister even joked when we saw them on TV, that they had gone to the beauty parlour just prior to the game and told the hair stylist, "Please make me dazzling... I have a volleyball match to attend to." Ogienko, still wearing her white headband, had her hair nicely frizzled, her makeup on, and she really honestly looked beautiful in her sky blue, white and pink Soviet jersey (colours most uncharacteristic of them, don't you think so?). And for once, I saw the Soviet players actually smiling! Things were really swinging their way since they won Seoul, because in Beijing they put an equally impressive performance, though not as exciting, against Lang Ping and her Chinese teammates. Clad also in uncharacteristic white and baby light blue, the Chinese hoped that their home crowd would rally them to a third consecutive world title, erasing the insulting result of their Seoul semifinal. But as hard as they fought, China dropped the match to Ogienko and her solid teammates. To recognise that the team had worked well as a whole, setter Irina Parkhomchuk was voted the tournament's Most Valuable Player.

After the '90 Championships, Ogienko stayed with her team through Parkhomchuk's defection to Croatia, playing for Karpol in his Russian club team Uralotchka Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) and also on his Croatian team Mladost Zagreb. At the '91 World Cup in Japan, Ogienko was playing impressively once again but something was drastically different. I don't know what had happened since her World Championship victory, but the whole team looked spent, tired, and without their usual touches of makeup, they looked really bad. To make matters worse, some of the Soviet players (notably Yelena Batukhtina and Yelena Chebukina) were sporting dried hay-like hairdos that made them look like scarecrows. At least Ogienko kept her trademark white headband! Kudos to Marina Nikulina who had to replace Parkhomchuk and managed to imitate her every move. She must have studied Irina's setting style down the bone, because Ogienko continued to hit her quick slides with amazing strength, and Nikulina also ran Parkhomchuk's self-fake hitting and setting the quick "one" to the middle. But in an overall sense, something was not right with Karpol's players. They ended up in third place after Cuba and China at the '91 World Cup and without Parkhomchuk they headed into Barcelona as a team in disarray. It didn't help that in 1991, their country ceased to be.

When Ogienko and her teammates began playing as the "Unified Team" in Barcelona's beautiful Palau Sant Jordi, they didn't expect to lose a pool play match to the USA, who in turn had lost their opener against Japan! But by blanking Japan 3-0, Karpol assured his team the first place of his pool, but such narrow near-misses were uncharacteristic of the defending Olympic Champions. The team to beat turned out to be Cuba, the same team that took the '91 World Cup title. Ogienko versus Carvajal, and Smirnova versus Mireya Luis were the duels in an otherwise unexciting 3-1 Olympic final that gave the Cubans their long-awaited gold medal. (Sadly enough, it was Ogienko who shanked Carvajal's serve for match point...) Even though the Unified Team made it to its second consecutive final, they didn't even have their own flag up on the awards stand, much less their own anthem. They really looked like a wild card team, instead of the '88 gold medalists. Still, Ogienko gave such a powerful perfomance that she was voted as one of the tournament's six most impressive players, and her teammate Irina Smirnova the best attacker.

The year after that, Ogienko finally wore a jersey with a real country name on it that read "ROSSIJA" in Cyrillic. But things were beginning to change. A new generation of taller, stronger players was emerging, all from the Junior World Champion generation of '91, which included names such as Artamonova, Grachova, Batukhtina, Morozova, and Tischenko. When these players slowly began creeping into Karpol's lineup, Ogienko felt dwarfed by these taller and stronger players. Thus, she saw a limited role as a player, though she was inserted from time to time at crucial moments in matches in order to bring experience and solidity to a still young team. But it seemed like none of the new middle hitters had all of Ogienko's skills: Tischenko picked up the quick slide and made it her preferred play, but that was it; Morozova, on the other hand, blocked almost as well as Ogienko, but was nowhere close to being an attacker like her; and Emelyanova could've been a complete middle hitter, but she wasn't consistent. With this lack of variety in the middle, Karpol spent his time making dull setters in order to produce stellar outside and back row hitters.

At the '99 World Cup, Ogienko was Karpol's assistant. Here she consoles setter Yelena Vassilievsaja after Russia lost the first place match 3-0 against Cuba. It remains to be seen if Valentina will succeed Karpol entirely someday... [Photo: Daniela Tarantini, FIVB]

At the '94 World Championships in Brazil one could see Karpol's new formula in play. Conservative, slow, predictable, and unexciting, setter Tatyana Grachova spent the tournament setting sky-high balls to Menshova and Batukhtina on the outside or to the back row, most of which became kills due to the power and jump of these two players. But when Karpol needed to add a surprise element to divert the middle blockers from waiting for the outside attack with ten seconds of anticipation, he inserted Ogienko, the veteran. As much as she and Nikulina tried to help, they couldn't get past Brazil in the five set semifinal and were relegated to beating South Korea for third place. But seeing Valentina in action in '94 brought vage remembrances of the amazing player she was back at the turn of the decade. Though she did continue with the team in the diminished role of "rescuer", she has been taking an active participation as Karpol's assistant more often. At the '96 Olympics she played mainly back row, as well as in the '98 World's. But since then, she's been Karpol's right arm, even replacing him when he couldn't accompany the team on a tour through the USA. What her style of coaching is and how different or similar it is to Karpol's is something I would really like to see. She can either continue his tradition of unleashing rage at her players to "snap them out of it", or become a much more comprehensive coach who allows her players to be creative and risky. I suppose that her style would be more like the latter, because her personality might seem intimidating on the court, but off the court she is quite a gentle, kind, and polite person. I had the honour of talking to her briefly at the '94 Goodwill Games in Saint Petersburg, and she struck me as a very friendly person. "Icy Soviet machine" was the last thing I could call her as she gave me her autograph and smiled when I told her I was a fan of her's from Peru. She said "you're welcome" in a very soft voice, and showed me that Valentina Ogienko is far from the programmed robot that stole the gold from us in 1988, but rather a very hard-working, determined, and gutsy athlete who achieved her goals by leaving her softer side off the court. And though many Peruvians might not believe it, I heard something else that seems even more incredible: Karpol is the same!