Success has come in short bursts during Juliana Sanders' short volleyball life. Sixth-ranked Hawai'i hopes last weekend's extended excellence is the wave of the future.

UH coach Dave Shoji has done everything short of morphing sophomores Kari Gregory and Sanders into one middle blocker for the last season-plus as he searches for compromise.

He says Sanders has the "perfect volleyball body" — lean, lanky and quick. She is able to swoop in for Kanoe Kamana'o's short sets and swat them down. But on defense, she can look lost.

"Every skill is hard," Sanders says, "but I think blocking is particularly hard because you have to track so many people at one time — the whole net and the setter."

Gregory, whose offense can be unorthodox and inconsistent, is built to block. She takes to it naturally, finishing fourth in the Western Athletic Conference last year despite her part-time status.

Somewhere in the midst of last weekend's Waikiki Beach Marriott Challenge, Sanders started to see the blocking light. A night after a fluke knee injury left Gregory unavailable — she might have a torn meniscus but will probably be able to play this weekend against second-ranked Washington — Sanders was stuffing a career-high seven balls against then-10th-ranked UCLA.

She averaged more than three kills and 1 1/2 blocks a game at the Challenge, hit .444 and earned all-tournament honors for the first time in her career. Against Northridge, Sanders buried 10 of her first 11 swings.

"She just goes up and cracks that ball," Kamana'o said. "She's aiming for the orange (inside the lines). That's all. She doesn't hold back anything anymore, just goes up and swings away."

Shoji is cautious — "I see signs of a breakthrough, but she's got to do it for longer stretches and down the stretch when it counts" — but not surprised.

He saw the potential in the long arms and quick feet back when Sanders played for Castle and Kalaheo. Others did, too, when Sanders and future teammates Alicia Arnott and Kamana'o won the 18-under championship at the 2003 Junior Olympics.

But Sanders, who didn't start playing volleyball until her freshman year at Castle, came to Manoa in 2003 as a very raw redshirt. "I was definitely not the total package," she admits.

When her time came last year, she wasn't ready to make an instant impact, certainly not on every point. She was good enough to make the WAC's all-freshmen team, and hit .500 with 14 kills in the regional semifinal against Wisconsin. But she and Gregory were not enough to help lift the Rainbow Wahine where they wanted to go.

Now, with freshman Nickie Thomas also in the thick of it, Shoji hopes the middle position opposite second-team All-American Victoria Prince can make a positive difference. He wants to see Sanders hit more shots — "She wants to hit one speed and that's hard and straight down" — and block more offspeed balls. He also hopes Sanders, who has suffered from exercise-induced pain in her left leg most of her career, can stay healthy.

She has clearly become more consistent and extended her successful stretches, but he hopes to see "Prince-like" numbers within a year. Shoji believes Sanders is "more physical" than Prince and says the Rainbow Wahine she resembles most is 1996 national player of the year Angelica Ljungquist.

Her teammates would settle for a more fearless Sanders.

"We need boldness from Juliana," Ashley Watanabe said. "With that, all of the other aspects of the game come. That's true for everyone."

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.