Hawai'i Pacific University middle blocker Barbara Martin has been an elite player on elite teams the past three years.

Her level of play has remained solid this season, but the Sea Warrior volleyball team is in the process of rebuilding.

Thoughts of a third consecutive postseason appearance were spiked a while ago, and the team has simply looked to stay competitive against upper-echelon competition.

Martin, a 6-foot-3 senior from Curitiba, Brazil, is sort of passing the torch to her younger teammates by working hard, setting the right example and teaching what it takes to succeed.

"This is my last year. I don't know how we'll finish, but I would like to help them," said Martin, who went 62-15 in her first three seasons.

This season, HPU is 5-13 overall and 3-7 in the Pacific West Conference under first-year head coach Daryl Kapis.

"It's been hard for Barbara," Kapis said. "She's been so used to great success her whole three years here. We've had to have long talks about this and the situation is what it is, and the goal right now is to take all that great experience you have and really help these young players out as we get this program back on the track it needs to be."

HPU has five freshmen and five sophomores on its 14-player roster, so Martin and libero Melissa Sekigawa (Leilehua '03) — the only seniors on the team — have been asked to step into leadership roles.

It hasn't been easy for the soft-spoken Martin, an AVCA Division II All-American last season.

"I was kind of waiting for that because I'm the oldest player, but it's hard to be a leader. It's really hard," she said. "I'm more quiet but I know how to yell when I have to."

Freshman outside hitter Kaui Todd (Kamehameha '05) said: "She's a really good leader and encourages our team to do better. She helps us out on the court."

Joining Martin this season is her sister Caroline Martin, a freshman libero who is redshirting.

"It was like everything I was waiting for," Barbara Martin said. "It is kind of sad because we cannot play in real games together. But it's really nice to have her play with me here."

Martin leads the Sea Warriors this season with 4.55 kills per game, a .245 hitting percentage, 25 aces, 3.29 digs per game and 0.81 blocks per game.

"Barbara is a big part of our team," Sekigawa said. "I've been with her since our freshman year and we depend on her a lot."

Kapis has been most impressed with Martin's blocking.

"She has the ability to read the hitters on the other team, where they're going and stations herself up where they're most likely to set," Kapis said. "Her ability to move laterally across the net ... at 6 foot 3, she does it like a gazelle."

The Sea Warriors are coming off consecutive sweeps of host Notre Dame de Namur last week — the first time all season they won two in a row. Their next two matches are against undefeated Brigham Young-Hawai'i tomorrow and next Wednesday. The Seasiders swept the Sea Warriors in their previous meeting Sept. 5.

"We want to build off our two wins in a row in the Bay Area where technically that's the best we've looked," said Kapis, who replaced Tita Ahuna in early July. "Whether we take one game off of them or two games or whatever, I know we'll show huge improvement from the last time we played them."

HPU started the season 2-10, and Kapis is encouraged by his team's recent improvement.

"I was going through tough times with my own self," he said. "I was getting a bit frustrated. Now I'm coming to practice every day, especially after this past weekend, and I'm feeling better and better and better. I can see the progress and I'm liking what I'm seeing."

Martin said she still has two years of school remaining as she works her way toward a nursing degree.

She added she'd like to be a Sea Warriors graduate assistant next season.

Reach Kyle Sakamoto at ksakamoto@honoluluadvertiser.com.