Former Minnesota volleyball standout Cassie Busse (Prior Lake, Minn.) will play for the USA National Team in the Pan American Cup in Mexico from June 27 to July 8.

Busse will join five players who were on the 2004 Olympic team in Tayyiba Haneef, Elisabeth Bachman, Heather Bown, Robyn Ah Mow-Santos and Nancy Metcalf. She will also be joined by Sarah Drury (Louisville), Katie Wilkins (Pepperdine), Jen Joines (Pacific), Jane Collymore (Florida), Candace Lee (Washington) and Sam Tortorello (Penn State).

The state of Minnesota is one of only two states to have two or more players represented on the squad. California is the most represented state with five players, while Bachman and Busse give the state two players on the USA National Team for this event.

Group play for the Pan American Cup will start when the U.S. National Team when it faces Peru on June 29. The USA National Team will face Argentina on June 30, Barbados on July 1, Cuba on July 2 and Venezuela on July 3. The quarterfinals will begin on July 5, followed by the semifinals on July 6 and the championship on July 7.

Busse gained national recognition in 2003 by receiving AVCA First-Team All-American honors and Big Ten Player of the Year honors. During the NCAA Tournament she was also named the Pacific Region’s Most Outstanding Player, and also garnered Final Four All-Tournament honors after recording 23 kills against the eventual national champion USC Women of Troy in the 2003 Final Four.

She is also ranked seventh on the Minnesota kills list with 1,502. Busse is one of only five players in school history to record over 600 kills, recording the sixth- highest total in school history at 614 in 2003.