Liz Pagano really knows how to set and serve. But the people who receive her service find it downright inhospitable. She doesn’t work in hospitality. Pagano plays pro volleyball — when she’s not working as vice president and director of human resources for ITLA Capital Corp. in La Jolla.

Pagano and her teammate, Michelle Morse of Hermosa Beach, just completed their third year playing women’s beach doubles on the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour. The season concluded Labor Day weekend in Chicago.

Also on their itinerary was a sand-pit stop in the Dominican Republic last month for the Pan American Games, where the duo represented the United States, placing fifth.

San Diego is a mecca for the two-person beach game. Cornell University in New York is not, yet that is where Pagano played the standard six-person sides while earning her degree in industrial and labor relations.

Even in San Diego, secondary schools only offer the six-person game — not the two — so Pagano mentors young people looking to get into the game. She speaks to Girl Scout groups, too, not only on how to be a professional on the volleyball court but in the work place as well.

“I talk about what it means to be a pro athlete and what it takes to become a pro,” says Pagano.

A member of the Society for Human Resource Managers, Pagano has been in the field for almost a dozen years, the last eight in San Diego.

ITLA sponsors her on the doubles tour, along with Rudy Project sunglasses. Just 31, Pagano still knows her time on the volleyball circuit is limited. “We’ll be back in 2004 and then see where it takes me,” she says. Until then, she’ll make time for plenty of kills and digs to go with the sets and serves.

— Terence J. Burke