Olympics: Ctvrtlik sitting this one out

For the first time since the 1984 edition in Los Angeles, Bob Ctvrtlik is missing an Olympic Games this summer.

OK, maybe “missing” is too strong of a word. The Newport Beach resident will still be watching the action from Brazil on television. But after attending the summer and winter Olympics in person for three decades, most of those as either a three-time member of the U.S. men’s volleyball Olympic team or 14-year member of the International Olympic Committee, he won’t be traveling this summer.

Ask his wife, Cosette, and she thinks change might be good in this case.

“It’s going to be nice for him to sit back and watch it given to us on television, enjoy it that way,” Cosette Ctvrtlik said. “I don’t think he’s ever done that. He’s always been live with the IOC, sitting in the front row ... and now he doesn’t have to be in that atmosphere. Yeah, it’s going to be a fun summer.”

It already has been for Bob Ctvrtlik, 53, a collegiate national champion at Pepperdine and three-time Olympian. He was a member of the gold medal U.S. men’s volleyball team in 1988 and also helped Team USA earn bronze in 1992. Of the two, he said the latter was actually more memorable.

“We had lost to Brazil in a three-hour match the night before, then had to come back and play a very talented Cuba team for a bronze medal,” he said. “We hadn’t beaten that team in three years. Even though that might not be the gold medal, for me, winning that bronze medal means as much as anything. The difference between medaling and not medaling is huge. Sometimes you have to re-motivate yourself, just get excited to play again even though your original objective is gone.”

Still, gold feels good, and Bob helped his youngest son Matt earn gold this summer at the USA Junior National Championships. Bob was an assistant coach on Matt’s Balboa Bay Volleyball Club team, which won the 18-and-under open national title in Dallas.

That’s Bob Ctvrtlik’s rule with coaching: assistant coach or nothing. He’s more comfortable in a supporting role. When watching his sons play volleyball at Corona del Mar High, he said some might have actually thought he was anti-social.

“I just had to be careful,” he said. “I couldn’t help but to critically analyze matches, and I didn’t want to be around other parents who would hear me say things that might be negative. You just can’t help it ... Sometimes I don’t think people understand the amount of dedication you have when you play in three Olympics. Not only is your body programmed and you have tremendous muscle memory, but your mind just looks at a game differently.”

Matt, a 6-foot-5 setter and four-year varsity player at CdM, earned Newport-Mesa Dream Team Player of the Year honors as a senior. He leaves for Harvard in less than four weeks. Cosette called the decision to leave the West Coast for college an “adventure” and “something kind of rogue.”

“We went shopping last Sunday for a good, warm jacket for him,” she said. “I think Matt is a little bit like Bob, in certain ways.”

It remains to be seen whether that will stay true all the way to Matt making the national team. For now, Matt can watch the Olympics on television with his parents before heading back east. Bob won’t miss any of the volleyball action, or even women’s water polo. Team captain Maggie Steffens, a Newport Beach resident who went to Stanford with the Ctvrtliks’ oldest son Joe, is a good family friend.

“The Olympics have been a really, really important part of my life,” Bob Ctvrtlik said. “I’m excited for the athletes. From the various reports we’re hearing [from Rio], that gives you a little bit of angst. But when the Olympics roll around, I think it’s a really special time ... The special thing about the Olympics is that every match and every point there’s a different intensity, especially for a sport such as volleyball that doesn’t have professional leagues in the United States.”

He remembers walking in the Opening Ceremonies in the 1992 Barcelona Games with Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, members of the original basketball “Dream Team.”

“There was an electricity,” he said. “People were so excited for that team and we were right on their coattails, walking into the stadium.”

Later, after his playing days were over, Ctvrtlik spearheaded failed U.S. Olympic Committee bids to bring the 2012 Olympics to New York, as well as the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. The losses hurt as much or more as any volleyball match could.

Yet, he’s extremely proud of his legacy with the IOC. When Ctvrtlik first started on the IOC Athletes’ Commission, he helped create the IOC Athlete Career Program, to help athletes get training and education for job placement at the end of their careers. Ctvrtlik said the program has grown from three countries participating to 33, and more than 20,000 athletes have gone through the program.

Bob has stayed busy. He has a company with his older brother Jeff, JB Partners, that buys and sells large apartment complexes in the western United States.

Though he’s not headed to Rio, he has ties to the American volleyball teams that will be competing there. He was a teammate of Karch Kiraly, the women’s coach, and he knows men’s coach John Speraw well. Also, assisting Kiraly with the women is longtime Pepperdine coach Marv Dunphy, who coached Ctvrtlik on the Waves’ 1985 national championship team as well as with the victorious ’88 Olympic squad.

“Our volleyball, both on the beach and indoors, men and women, we’re loaded,” Ctvrtlik said. “We have a good shot at medals for all of them. The talent around the world is really well spread out at this point, so there’s a lot of competition, but we’re in the mix. When I played, there were maybe five teams with a legit shot at getting a medal. On the men’s side this year, I think there are five teams with a legitimate shot at a gold medal. It’s much more evenly distributed.”

Ctvrtlik will be watching, for sure, and not always volleyball.

“Being in the IOC, you get what is called an infinity badge, where you can go to any sport when you’re not working,” he said. “I was fascinated by sports such as badminton, table tennis or archery. They’re just fabulous to watch. The athleticism of the badminton players, the focus and concentration of the archers, the quickness in table tennis? They’re amazing.

“I mean, my boys, when they went to the Olympics, thought that team handball was the best sport in the world. And no one in the United States knows what that really is. I think the Olympics is just so special in that way.”