Pardon Liebard’s French : Exchange Student Sets League on Ear

Philippe Liebard looks like a normal guy. At first glance, some would assume that the El Camino Real High student is an average Joe, a typical All-American boy.

Until Liebard speaks.

“He has different expressions, different exclamations,” said Chris Holbert, a student at El Camino Real. “It’s a different use of English. He says, ‘Ca-mon, you gize. ‘ “

But strange inflections are not all that is different about Liebard. Then again, no one who goes to school with him considers Liebard a red-blooded American. If anything, they call him an average Jacque, or maybe hot-blooded.

Liebard is an exchange student from France attending El Camino Real this year. And when not learning about past participles and dangling modifiers, Liebard spends time spiking and dinking on the Conquistadore volleyball team.

“Southern California is pretty famous for its volleyball players,” Liebard said. “A lot of people play volleyball. California is a really healthy area and I really like that. It’s one of the best places to go if you really want to improve.”

Liebard has seen more than his volleyball skills improve. By seeing Americans at both their best and worst, Liebard has made his worst better--the hard way.

He has gone from being a volatile and vocal athlete to a player as placid as the ocean near which he now lives. California has, like, mellowed the long-haired Frenchman.

“America is kind of correcting me,” Liebard said. “It’s turning me out the way I want. I’m getting wiser.”

Liebard isn’t the only one to notice the change. “His temper has gotten much better. He’s much calmer,” El Camino Real Coach Lori Chandler said. “Sometimes he gets going and then he stops. He’s learning.”

When Liebard applied to Youth For Understanding, an international exchange student agency, he asked to be placed in California. He had played volleyball for three years in Paris but wanted to try it Southern California-style.

“I told them that I would really like to go to California because I liked volleyball and California girls,” he said.

Liebard has not been disappointed about either, although it has taken him a while to adjust to American personalities and customs.

He has also come to realize that Southern California volleyball and temper tantrums don’t mix.

It was not an easy lesson.

Liebard was vocal during the team’s first few weeks of practice, but the words weren’t the ones his coach wanted to hear. And they weren’t the kind that end up in print.

Liebard stopped swearing and starting playing, however. A 5-6 senior, Liebard cracked the starting lineup and became one of the Conquistadore outside hitters. “He knows how to hit and how to pass,” Chandler said. “He’s very skilled fundamentally.”

His vertical leap is not the only explosive thing about Liebard. In a recent West Valley League match against Kennedy, Liebard vehemently protested a referee’s call, and it may have cost El Camino Real a victory.

With the teams tied at two games each and the Cougars only two points away from winning the final game, a linesman called a Kennedy spike good that Liebard thought was out.

“He called it in and it really upset me,” Liebard said. “I started kind of screaming, not yelling, but saying it was out.”

Liebard was given a yellow card by the referee. It was quickly followed by a red card. Both the spike and the red card were worth a point for Kennedy, and the Cougars walked away with the win.

“I don’t know why he got the red card. I don’t know if it was justified,” Chandler said.

Justified or not, the red card left Liebard red-faced. He left the Granada Hills campus without waiting for the bus and told Chandler at the next day’s practice that he was quitting the team--not because he was upset with her or the official but because he was mad at himself.

“I was pretty angry and decided to quit,” he said. “I wasted everything by being rude. I wasted the chance of my team.”

Chandler was shocked. She had intended to discipline Liebard, but it would be nothing as serious as kicking him off the team.

“My mouth just about fell to the floor,” she said. “The main thing for him to understand was that what he did was wrong. I didn’t want him to quit, I wanted him to get in the same position again but to handle it.”

Chandler told Liebard that he could rejoin the team and Liebard took her up on the offer a few days later.

“Quitting the team was punishment for myself, but it was punishment I couldn’t endure,” he said.

And Liebard was soon in the same position again. In Thursday’s league game against Taft, a referee said Liebard was out of bounds when play started and awarded the Toreadors a point. Liebard bristled, then backed away.

“I just said, ‘Hey, you can’t do anything yourself. You just have to win,’ ” Liebard said. “I was really mad at him, but I was holding it in. If it’s something worth blowing up for, then I would do it. But I think for calls like that, I wouldn’t do it anymore.

“It’s just learning. It’s being wiser.”