VOLLEYBALL'S GOLDEN GIRL

Short for the position, the pretty Leila proves herself as the best player of the world.

Leila misses the 2 inches that remain in Martha Rocha's haunches (hip). Even then she didn't give up to be close to perfection in what she chose to do - play volleyball. With 1,79m, Leila is 10cm shorter than Fernanda Doval and Filó, her partners in the Brasilian team, or 6cm shorter than Virna Dias and Ana Moser, the stars of the attack. It's amazing that she has been considered as volleyball's best player in the world, at the moment, a job where there's rarely a place for a person shorter than 1,80m. Last Sunday, she was chosen by the Volleyball International Federation as the best player in the Grand Prix, the championship that put together, at Xangai - China, the four best female teams of the world. The Brasilian players won after beating Russia in the final, for 3 sets to 2. Before that, they also beat Cuba and China in the semis.

Leila compensates for her short height with an excellent physical capability- when she jumps to do her great spikes, her feet are 80cm from the ground. Her hand hits the ball at 3,08m of height, 68cm above the net. "With an extraordinary impulsion and big arm speed, she is a natural attacker," said Bernardo Rezende, Bernardinho, coach of the winning team at the Gran Prix. Surprisingly, Leila won the trophy of best player in the planet despite the fact that, less than two months ago, she wasn't a starter in the team that won the bronze medal in the Atlanta Olympics. Besides her, half of the team that beat Russia in the Grand Prix finals in China were not starters in Atlanta.

With beautiful green eyes, a girl's flirtatious manner and a model's body, Leila creates pandemonium in public, inside and outside the court. "I call more attention when I'm playing, I'm very electric, emotional", she believes. Modestly, she adds that,"Beauty is Ana Paula's, she is a femme fatale. My beauty is a naive one, like that of a girl, or a kid." With 25 years completed last Monday and celebrated during the 40-hour flight that brought her from China to Brazil, the newest volley hit is married for a year to the ex-swimmer Luís Gustavo Milani. Brasilian breaststroke champion, Gustavo, left the pools after failing in the selection for the Barcelona Olympics four years ago. He became a businessman, he owns a perished products distribution center. With his wife's success, he became her schedule manager too. He manages his jealousies regarding her fans. After posing for a photo session in Belo Horizonte last week, Leila had to attend to a long line of fanatics and autograph seekers. "Delicious!" yelled the more audacious. "They're just teenagers," apologized the player. Quietly, Gustavo pretended that he didn't care.

Coming with the fame, Leila is discovering pleasures that she didn't know before. During the Grand Prix' 40 day trip she read three books, two by Sidney Sheldon. She also decided to learn English. "When I was in trouble communicating, I had to call Ana Moser," she admits. Her future plans include two kids and college, probably journalism. But that's in the next century. "I wanna stop playing after Sidney Olympics, on year 2000," she says. In China, she discovered her brave side. After one more furious session on the court during the game against Cuba, she faced the giant Regla Torres at the locker entrance. "I stoped in front of her, looked up and asked that we finished with all that mess".

Besides the Grand Prix best player title, she was given three apartments in Belo Horizonte, a litle farm in the state interior and a '96 Corsa car. But she guaranteed that she wasn't bitten by the blue fly. "I've already lived both sides of the coin, I was right down there and now I'm up. I know that you're worth what you play." Leila hit rock bottom two years ago, when she was cut from the team that was going to dispute the world championship. "A player with her size cannot just attack," said, at that time, the coach Bernardinho, the same that today considers her a perfect attacker. "She's got to learn how to pass the ball," said Bernardinho. Leila didn't. She thought about giving up the game and open a restaurant. After three months of hesitation, she came back. She started training harder than ever. She did bodybuilding, practiced impulsion and ball passing. "Leila has always been a determined person", said Carlos Alberto Villar, the "Cebola" ("Onion"), her coach in Minas, from 1991 to 1994. "Today she is a complete player that preserves the attack power and acts well in reception and deffense".

A car mechanic and a housewife's daughter, Leila was born in Taguatinga, Brasilia satellite-city, the same place where the 800 meters Olympic champion Joaquim Cruz was born. In her home, nothing was missing but nothing was in excess too. Francisco Barros, her father, won enough to sustain his wife and two kids - Leila and her brother Marcelo, ten years younger. The house, of three rooms and few luxuries, had a big yard. It was there that Leila started to hit her first plastic ball, using her mother's clothesline as net. "She never liked dolls. She would always arrive home with her knees skinned,"her mother shares. Leila agrees, "Since childhood I've been a little bit of a mischievous girl."

At the Taguatinga's Educational Center, the public school where she completed her primary schooling, she quickly got into the handball team. "My style of playing volleyball still remembers handball, a litlle bit," Leila analyses. "I jump with my abdomen pointed up and the my back arched. After the hit, I land on just one leg." Her parents tried to keep her sportist will under control, cutting the bus money used to go training. It didn't work. "I used to walk 40 minutes and crossed Taguatinga end to end, by foot." The family's opposition became less when the Educational Center directoress Maria Auxiliadora, a Brasilian particular school, offered her a scholarship, just to have her in the school team. She was a success in the court, but she failed in the class. Leila repeated the first and the second year of the second degree.

When she was 17, she already was an AABB player, the team that disputed the city championship and she was in the Juvenile-Infanto Brasilian team. One year later, she received an invitation to transfer to the Minas Tennis Club. Her father, a tough guy, couldn't accept that his daughter was going to have to live alone in Belo Horizonte. "If you leave, you will never be able to set foot here again," he told her. Without her father's blessing, Leila arrived in Belo Horizonte to earn two salaries. "I just thought that it was the chance to play professionally." Today, her father is one of the biggest fans of his famous daughter.

Leila exhibits her talent at a moment where women are beginning to climb up to a position in sports that they've never participated in before, taking away the attention that has always been trained on men. In basketball, Hortencia, Paula and company are world champions and second place in the Olympics. In volleyball, the girls were on the podium in all 16 comptetitions they've joined in the last three years. In Atlanta, for the first time Brazil won medals in women's competitions. To make it complete, it was just missing the addition of the mischievous girl from Taguatinga.