All he wants to do is dance.

Ivan Contreras may be the men's volleyball team's starting middle blocker by name, but he is a die-hard dancer at heart.

Since he began working out and playing volleyball in elementary school, Contreras has become an extremely well-cut, 185-pound volleyball machine. He has grown into a tall, strong, young-looking man, and when he begins to move on the dance floor, people naturally stop and stare.

But recently, the true freshman has struggled to find time to hit the dance floor. The No. 3 Lions (9-1) have been on the road since late January, and Contreras has been run ragged, trying to keep up with his studying and his dancing.

"We went to Manitoba (for an exhibition tournament) and we started dancing, and the girls that we were dancing with told Carlos (Ortiz) and me that they were impressed with our dancing," he said. "None of the guys in Manitoba knew how to dance."

Aside from taking foreign countries' dance circuits by storm, Contreras consistently finds himself at the center of a huge volleyball tornado. He does all he can to stay involved with the sport -- playing, reading and talking about it as much as possible.

Mostly, Contreras enjoys cutting out pictures from various volleyball magazines that he tapes to his wall. Contreras and his roommate, redshirt freshman David Gealy, have amassed a huge volleyball scrapbook, covering an entire wall of their dorm room.

But Contreras doesn't simply read about volleyball. He has played the game now and then, as his stats show. Currently, he is among the team's leaders in kills (91), hitting percentage (.408), blocks (27) and aces (12).

"He's got the whole package --good person, good student, great competitor and a great volleyball player," Coach Tom Peterson said.

Because Contreras is such a dominant middle blocker at 6-foot-4, last season's middle blocker had to be moved to the outside. This would not mean much, except for the fact that the player who moved is a two-time third-team All American, 6-foot-3 senior Ramon Hernandez.

"You can't say that I am displacing him," Contreras said. "Because he is such a good player, (the coaches) put him on the outside to give him more balls to hit."

The coaches had planned on moving Hernandez to the outside all along -- they just needed a strong and quick middle blocker to replace him. Enter Ivan Contreras.

"I was on the staff with the U.S. Junior National Team down in Santo Domingo a couple of years ago," Assistant Coach Mark Pavlik said. "The Mexican coach introduced Ivan to me as someone who wanted to study in the States and play volleyball and knew of the academic reputation of Penn State."

Contreras does not see himself slowing down at all for the rest of his Penn State career. He wants to continue to add to his continually growing array of expertise, both on and off the court.

"I want to develop more of my volleyball skills," Contreras said. "My goal here is to finish my studying, with the help of the scholarship from volleyball, and then I want to go back to Mexico and work there."

But no matter what he does or where he does it, he will make sure that he finds time to keep on dancing.