SARVER - Prior to 1970, high school girls may have donned gym clothes and played volleyball in class, but for the most part, the idea of serious participation in an athletic endeavor was a nonstarter. The same lack of opportunity applied to college sports.

Fast forward 35 years to the 2005 Senior Olympic Games to be hosted by Pittsburgh this June, and you've got women like Claudia Lindsay who don't mind hitting the floor to keep a volleyball from doing the same.

She plays for the Butler Cubs, the only women's volleyball team in the area in the 55 to 59 age bracket to qualify to compete in the games. The volleyball segment of the Senior Olympics will take place on the University of Pittsburgh campus at the Cost Center.

"When we were in high school gym, we weren't allowed (to play hard). It wasn't feminine and we didn't get the training on how to play correctly," said Lindsay.

Although she always enjoyed sports, Lindsay said

it wasn't until she was teaching elementary school that the idea of women training and playing competitively entered the mainstream.

Playing volleyball for the past four years, Lindsay admits in the beginning, "I had to learn how to shake hands and I hardly scored any points."

She began in a co-ed recreational league based at Buffalo Elementary School on Monday and Wednesday evenings. "I was always the last person chosen" when it came to picking sides, she said.

Now she knows not only how to set the ball on her side of the net, but how to anticipate the opposing team's tactics. "I do go down on my knees to the ball," she said.

Playing volleyball with the team requires a "level of commitment, but it's fun. I feel so alive when I play. I just feel good."

These are the words of a woman who at other times might not feel so lively or good. Lindsay has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a condition causing hardening of the aerolar sacs in the lungs. The hardening interferes with the oxygen exchange process between the lungs and the circulatory system.

"I like to run around and volleyball is not so much a contact sport. The way we play isn't so difficult," said Lindsay, adding that the exercises to prepare the players are a bit harder on her.

Not so much, though, that it keeps her from also playing on the Butler Cubs Senior Olympic women's basketball team in her age bracket. She'll be a substitute during the games at the Cost Center.

The volleyball team practices between 8:15 and 10 a.m. each Saturday at Cubs Hall. Lindsay then takes the court for basketball practice until noon.

Starting in May, the volleyball team is adding Tuesday evenings to its schedule to play against harder - read younger - teams at the Allegheny Valley YMCA to toughen up for its main event in early June.

The Cubs team plays full court volleyball with six players and substitutes on the sidelines for switching out. And not all of the players on the 55 to 59 team are between those ages. Older players may play in a younger age bracket, and some do.

Kathy Blair, coordinator for the Cubs Senior Olympic volleyball team, recruited Lindsay from the recreational team. "I was desperately looking for people 50 and over. I got myself in trouble asking if they were," said Blair with a laugh.

"(Lindsay) was a real find. If she's going to do something, she gives 100 percent and she's a whole different volleyball player than she was before."

Lindsay has progressed to serve as captain of the team and will be the floor captain during the Senior Olympic Games.

The team is coached by two women too young to play on the team.

Coach Yvette Beck, 36, has done her share of coaching high school sports and got involved because her mom, Kathy Blair, is on the team.

"It's very different from coaching high school," said Beck. "There are things you can do to motivate ninth and tenth grade boys."

Using the same coaching techniques for older women, though, could produce different results. "They'll just laugh at you," she said. "You have to mentally convince them certain skills will make them better players."

At 48, assistant coach Patty Swartzlander says she enjoys working with the women. "You just get such a variety of people and it's a challenge. The women are very respectful (of a coach) and there are no issues with parents."

"They want to be here and they deal with their physical conditions, aches and pains, arthritis and diabetes. They put their hearts out there."

The Senior Olympic Games are sanctioned by the U.S. Olympic Committee. To participate, athletes in each state begin at the district level, with the top finishers advancing to the state level.

The top finishers from those games advance to the national Senior Olympics that are held in different parts of the nation every two years.