Beach Volleyball Memories

I joined a fraternity my first semester at San Diego State and the house had a sand volleyball court and I was hooked.

Part of Greek Week was a 6-man, sand volleyball tournament. My junior year we played the TKE's, one of the top volleyball teams in the IFC. They had one guy who didn't really seem like much of a player but he was an ace at something called a sky serve. A sky serve is an underhand type of serve that you launch up into the air as high as you can. If it is at all windy, then this type of serve can land right next to you, untouched despite your best effort. In all the tournaments I played in, I never went up against someone who could sky serve so well. He had a bunch of aces on us for not be able to handle the serve. It was embarrassing and humbling.

The next year we beat the TKE's and I was ecstatic.

In my senior year I wrote a paper about labor relations and focused it on a player strike that occurred in the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP). The sport was young enough back then that the players were more accessible. I called the AVP offices and asked for help. First I called Sinjin Smith, he was the king of the sport in the 80's, Google him. He wasn't home so I left a message. The next day, one of my roommates came in and said "Sinjin Smith left a message for you" which was funny in itself but the actual message was kind of funny too. "Roger, this is Sinjin Smith..." I ended up interviewing Jon Stevenson who was also a hall of fame player. In looking up the spelling of Stevenson's name, I saw that he passed away in 2012 at 54.

Back then, jump serving was not very common, very rare to see. I did jump serve though and was freakishly good at it. In one tourney, I hit an ace right on the sideline. Then I did it again. The ref said I bet you can't do that again and I did. I knew not to press my luck with a fourth try.

Most tournaments were double elimination. Most of the time we would finish 0-2, 1-2 or 2-2 but we had a blast.

We won a pair of flipflops and as much water as we could carry back to our car.

This was a mixed doubles tourney in Orange County and my partner was the setter on the USD women's team. I hit one of the best shots of my life. The ball was coming back to our side but it was going to land very short so as I ran toward the net I positioned my hand like I was going to dink it right back just over the net and so both opponents charged the net but I actually popped it back in the deep corner, nowhere near where they were and some dude watching said "whoa, nice shot."

In a weekend tourney at Ocean Beach we had to play a couple of old dudes and we of course expected to win. They smoked us. Their knowledge of the game and their own physical abilities/limits turned out to be a fantastic life lesson.

We had a guy in our fraternity who was all CIF Volleyball (a high school thing) and I learned a lot from him. When we played in the 6-man fraternity tournaments, I was the team's setter. There is a thing in volleyball called a quick set which is a very low set to the teammate closest to the where the setter is setting from. It is very difficult to block these because they happen so quickly. A quick set in front of the setter (the direction the setter is facing) is apparently called an A-set. Doing the same thing where the setter sets it very low immediately behind the direction he is facing is called a B-set. It's difficult because the setter is not looking at where the ball is going. Rick and I worked on this once or twice, that was it. We were playing against the Kappa Sigmas in a tourney and someone passed me the ball and I heard Rick whisper "B there" and somehow I knew what that meant put it behind my head and he crushed it. That sort of play never happened in these tourneys. That was the only one of those I ever tried.

Although I was much closer to just being a good athlete who was a decent player, my setting and serving were actually pretty special. The rest of my game, not so much.

This was an important life lesson for me. I really wanted to be the tournament director. Long before the interview process started, I planned the entire thing, got all the equipment, made all the arrangements, the work was done. In my mind I thought they'd be crazy not to give this to me. They did, I was paired up with a girl name Kathy from the Gamma Phi Beta sorority but we really had no work to do. During the interview, they told me "if you're the director you won't be able to play." I knew I was going to play but somehow I had the good sense to just say OK to that.

I went up to Lake Tahoe with a girl I was seeing to her parents place in Incline Village in 1990. I really didn't like her that much so to get away from her at the beach one day I said I was going to go play some volleyball, I should be back pretty quick. I partnered up with someone else hanging out there and we held the court for about three hours.

The picture is from a day trip down to a place called Papas & Beers in Rosarito Beach in Mexico. They played 3 on 3 there. I went with my buddy Russ, Russ' brother Paul, Paul's buddy (forgot his name) and my girlfriend at the time, it's her picture, that's me at the net setting. We held the court for quite while, it was great day. There are countless other memories but this list will help me frame this time in my life.