New Team of Silva and Ciarelli Playing Like Old Pros : Volleyball: The fourth-seeded team overcomes 6-1 deficit to beat Castro and Cotas to advance into semifinals.

Jackie Silva, the winningest player on the Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn., and partner Cammy Ciarelli needed to be at the top of their game Saturday at the $40,000 Hermosa Beach Open.

Silva and Ciarelli, who are seeded fourth, played fifth-seeded Gail Castro and Lori Cotas in a quarterfinal match on center court.

After trailing, 6-1, Silva and Ciarelli scored seven consecutive points en route to a 15-11 victory. It took several powerful attacks at the net by Silva and Ciarelli’s blocking and consistent serving to hold off the challengers.

Silva and Ciarelli will play top-seeded Angela Rock and Karolyn Kirby today in a semifinal match.

Although it is only their third tournament together, Silva and Ciarelli have already proven to be a formidable team, having placed at Las Vegas and San Diego. Ciarelli, a former UCLA All-American in her second season on the tour, is honored to be playing with Silva, one of the most intense players on the tour.

“I take everything she says in a positive way,” said Ciarelli, a 30-year-old mother of two. “I don’t get emotional about it. I’ve learned a lot from her. No way I’m going to suck my thumb and complain about what she yells.”

Silva, 30, says some of her partners have taken her intensity in the wrong way.

“I’m tough to play with,” she said. “The way I scream. The way I say things. I need someone who understands me. Cammy is the same. She’s very loud. I think she had the same problem with other players.”

Silva, who once was the most dominate player on the tour, missed most of last season because of a shoulder and knee injury. She was inactive for several weeks, gained weight and lost her conditioning.

She spent the offseason working out in her native Brazil and has returned in top form.

“I learned what I needed to do to come back,” she said. “Not all the time you need to be a winner to be a champion. Now I play like before, with the same heart. I think Jackie Silva is growing.”

Today’s match between Silva-Ciarelli and Rock-Kirby should be another crowd-pleaser. Rock is also an emotional player and Kirby is considered to be the tour’s best all-around player.

Last season they teamed up for 12 tournament victories and a 98-14 match record. This year they have won four of the WPVA’s eight tournaments, including last week’s San Diego Open. On Saturday in Hermosa Beach, they had little trouble in winning three matches.

Second-seeded Liz Masakayan and Linda Carrillo also were impressive, holding each of their three opponents to less than 10 points to earn a spot in the semifinals against third-seeded Janice Harrer and Nancy Reno.

Harrer-Reno is the hottest team on the tour. The 5-foot-11 Reno is a powerful jump server and blocker who complements Harrer’s solid defensive play. They won the Seal Beach Open, their first tournament together, on May 24 and placed fourth in Las Vegas and San Diego.

On Saturday, they beat sixth-seeded Elaine Roque and Patty Dodd, 15-6, in a quarterfinal match on center court.

Reno, 26, was an All-American at Stanford and member of the U.S. National team. She is in her third season on the tour.

“Nancy, I think, is the most improved player by far this year,” Dodd said. “She sides-out much better and mentally she’s stronger this year.”

Roque and Dodd will play Nina Matthies and Lori Biller in a consolation match today. In their first tournament together at San Diego last week, Roque and Dodd placed fifth.

Roque, one of the tour’s best blockers, teamed with Harrer for most of 1991 and the start of this season. She says playing against her former partner, with whom she broke up with by mutual accord, was not easy.

“It was very hard,” Roque said. “Any time you make a switch you like to think you’re making the switch for the best. . . . I think we weren’t even ready to play. We were flat.”

She is optimistic, however, about her future with Dodd, a former UCLA All-American who had shoulder surgery before the start of the 1991 season.

“We really click mentally,” said Roque, who is the women’s volleyball coach at Santa Monica College. “We have good chemistry and a nice demeanor together. She’s real steady and she bangs the ball. She really hits hard.”

In other consolation matches, 11th-seeded Marie Andersson of Hawthorne and Alison Johnson will play Castro and Kotas. Eighth-seeded Holly McPeak of Manhattan Beach and Gayle Stammer will meet 15th-seeded Jackie Campbell and Stephanie Cox and ninth-seeded Rita Crockett and Lisa Ma’a will play seventh-seeded Barbara Fontana of Manhattan Beach and partner Deb Richardson.

The winners’ bracket semifinal between Kirby-Rock and Ciarelli-Silva will begin at 9:30 a.m. The second semifinal will follow on center court and consolation matches will take place all day. The final is scheduled for 2:30 p.m.