Yang Xiaojun (CHN)
China's cool-minded middle hitter

In every team there is a player whom recognition tends to elude. China had Yang Xiaojun. I don't think she cared, for with her in the starting lineup China saw plenty of gold. Yang Xiaojun was the cold and calculating middle-blocker who could hit everything Yang Xilan sent her way: slides, quick ones, quick shoots to the middle, quick perpendicular shoots, even those fake 2-balls that she herself would approach as 1-balls (Japanese-style).

Not only was she a stinging attacker, she was so quick armed that blocking was another one of her fortés. She could read a play coming even before the opponents' setter had touched it. And she was solid as a rock too, as her stern expression always demonstrated. She fit the term "cool" to perfection, laughing when her points were easy and deadly serious when the situation called for it. I cannot recall any specific outstanding performance because she was always consistent. Perhaps it was this continuity and solidity that made China take her for granted. That was Yang Xiaojun's curse: not only was she consistent, but she played during the Lang Ping era, which really took the spotlight away from anybody else!