Team Cup Volleyball : Life Isn’t Just a Beach for the Best

Steve Timmons’ airplane was late getting into Los Angeles Wednesday, but he didn’t mind.

The delay gave him a chance to review his top prospects in the second annual Team Cup Volleyball League draft at the Forum.

Timmons and Karch Kiraly were flying in from San Diego, where they had an early-morning practice with the U.S. National volleyball team.

Team Cup Volleyball is partly a showcase of the top U.S. volleyball players and partly a pickup league. It is unique in that players hold a draft and all the games are played at the same site--the Forum.

Add $100,000 in prize money, though, and it becomes fairly serious stuff for Timmons, Kiraly, Sinjin Smith and Dusty Dvorak.

The four, considered among the top volleyball players in the world, acted as team captains, drafting five other players each to form the four teams making up the Team Cup Volleyball League. Unlike a year ago, when the league was co-ed, the captains drafted only men from a pool of 40 top players from the national team, the beach circuit and local colleges.

Only 20 of those 40 were selected, since each team is made up of just six players.

League play will begin Sept. 8 with doubleheaders Tuesday and Thursday nights during that month.

Timmons found the job as captain more difficult than he had thought it might be.

“With one pick you can change things drastically,” Timmons said. “I had a little system where I rated the players and then just started crossing them off as they were picked. I was trying to have as balanced a team as I could.

“We got the list of players Monday and I spent some time looking it over and then again today on the plane.”

Timmons, a member of the gold medal-winning 1984 men’s Olympic team and an All-American at USC, fared well enough. He picked Dave Saunders, who led the league in kills last season while playing for the championship team--the Hollywood Stars.

He also chose Ozzie Volstad, a four-time All-American at UCLA who helped the Bruins to the NCAA title last season, Aldis Berzins, an 1984 Olympian, Jeff Stork and Steve Obradovich.

Smith’s first pick was somebody he knows very well. Smith, the top money-winner on the beach volleyball circuit, picked his partner for most of those victories--Randy Stoklos. Together they won 16 of the 23 tournaments on the beach tour last summer. Smith won more than $60,000 last year playing on the sand.

In the draft’s only restriction, Smith could draft only pro beach players. He also took Tim Hovland, Ricci Luyties, Steve Salmons and Mike Dodd.

The absence of women this year is the most significant change in the league. But there are other rules you won’t see in collegiate or Olympic matches. For one thing, the games will go to 30 points, instead of the normal 15. Points can be won by the winning team on each rally until a team reaches 24 points then it reverts to the traditional rules of winning points only when serving.

Also, serves can be made from any spot between the sidelines behind the service line, instead of just the right-hand corner. There are no substitutes. Six players go the entire match. There is a 15-minute break between each of the best-of-five sets in the match.