For certain volleyball players, explaining -- or even pronouncing -- their position is as difficult as playing it.

Is Forest Park senior libero Kirsten Higareda a LEE-bah-ro, as some say, or a LUH-bare-0h, as others pronounce it? And what the heck is it? Until 2005, the position did not exist in girls' high school volleyball; it was introduced on the college level only a few years earlier and on the international level in 1998.

Confusing the masses further is that the libero (Italian for "free") does not wear the same uniform as her teammates. She is in a contrasting color so she can stand out for officials.

"Did you forget yours?" curious Forest Park fans might ask Higareda, a second-team All-Met last season, when they see her wearing a dark green shirt with her blue Spandex shorts instead of a white jersey like her Bruin teammates.

So Higareda has to school the uninformed on the uniform.

"You try to explain, and they just look at you with a confused look on their face, and you're just like, 'Never mind,' " Higareda said last week after practice at Forest Park, which reached the Virginia AAA semifinals last season.

And how many times did she attempt an explanation before learning to give the brief, broad answer of "I'm a specific defensive player"?

"Probably about 10," the former setter said.

This is not your mother's high school volleyball. The third-most popular girls' high school sport nationally, behind basketball and outdoor track and field, has undergone major renovations in recent years, with the introduction of rally scoring -- meaning you don't have to be the serving team to earn points -- and the phasing in of the libero, which has extended rallies and juiced up the underrated sport.

(If writing about this new position lumps the Varsity Letter in with the "libero media," so be it.)

Liberos are back-row defensive specialists -- think of them as the quarterbacks of the defense -- who can enter and leave the game freely and not count toward a team's substitution allotment, which is why they wear the special jerseys. They are sort of the defensive equivalent of designated hitters in baseball or softball; they dig out balls hit by the opposing team and pass to teammates. Some have dubbed them designated diggers.

What differentiates them from other volleyball defensive specialists is that other players have to rotate out and are on the bench half of the time; liberos can stay on the floor almost the entire game, and coaches can move them around the back row like pawns.

Liberos must be agile and low to the ground and be able to cover a lot of territory. The skill set involves reading the opposing offense, communicating with teammates as the play unfolds, having the instincts to get to balls quickly and a willingness to sprawl out to dig for the ball. Any ball that hits the floor unchallenged is like being in health class and dropping the egg that represents a baby.

In a match last Thursday night at Chancellor, Higareda was in her anticipatory semi-crouch and braced for balls rocketing over the net at 60 mph or more. The kneepads helped, but other times there was the indistinguishable squeak of the skin on court, a libero's soundtrack.

Introducing liberos into high school volleyball enhances the quality of the game, forces opposing hitters to be more creative and is a victory for the little guy (or girl). Take the roster of Virginia Tech, where the 5-foot-4 Higareda will play next year, as an example: All the Hokies are 5 feet 10 or taller except the two liberos and the setter. And those three are taller than Higareda.

"It's brought back in somebody, size-wise, who might have been pushed out of volleyball three or four years ago," said Good Counsel Coach Karen Kart, whose team won the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference title last season.

Liberos are the party spoilers of volleyball. Just when it looks like the opposing 6-foot-2 outside hitter is going to pound an unreturnable ball over the net for a kill, a libero goes to the floor to dig out the ball and give her team an opportunity to win the point. It's like an outfielder stabbing a line drive that looked like a sure hit.

"It gets the crowd going," said Higareda, who also plays lacrosse. "Especially if they're like, 'Oh no, they're never going to get that up, ' and someone gets it up. It's like, 'Oh my God, they just did something cool! ' Anytime I see a really good hitter, I'm thinking, 'Oh, I really want to dig her'."

If the libero position had not been introduced in her high school years, Higareda said she might have been relegated to Division III volleyball, if that.

"I can hit, but I'm not the best, and I don't have the height to block or anything, so I probably wouldn't be going anywhere for volleyball, really," said Higareda, who turns 17 next month. "It's a big deal. It's really given shorter people the opportunity to play volleyball."

Indeed, Higareda and other talented liberos are probably twice as valuable as they would have been prior to the position being introduced.

"Now [colleges are] going to go out and look for that position specifically and give scholarships to that position because it's a player who can help them for six rotations," Forest Park Coach Dan Jones said.

What's the added bonus of being one of the first liberos in high school volleyball? Breaking records. Higareda entered the season with 614 career digs, fourth most in state history, and her 391 last year stands as the second-highest season total. She is tied for the state record in digs in one match with 42.

Her records might be broken, but she will always remain a libero pioneer, a notion she had not considered until recently.

"That's kind of cool," she said. "I can be like, 'Wow, I was there when they implemented that in high school.' "

She paused.

"Hopefully, I won't feel that old at the time."

Varsity Letter is a weekly column about high school sports in the Washington area.