Volleyball Gears for Farewell Party : Kiraly, Timmons to Say Goodby to U.S. Team After Tournament

The retirement party begins tonight at UC Irvine’s Bren Center, will continue Saturday night at the Forum and probably last until Sunday around dawn. Karch Kiraly and Steve Timmons are saying goodby to the United States national volleyball team, and vice versa, and it’s not every day that two of the best players in the world clock out at the same time.

Friends and relatives from Santa Barbara to Orange County will be there. So will players from the Soviet Union, who are competing in the four-team Brown Jordan USA Cup. After a match the Soviets have always been more like friends than No. 1 opponents, usually as quick with a toast as their American counterparts.

A good time will be had by all, but it will be an even better one for the U.S. team if it beats South Korea tonight at 7 and then wins the round-robin tournament Saturday night.

The Forum is doing its part by contributing a pair of round-trip tickets for two to Hawaii to mark the occasion, but then maybe that should come as no surprise. Timmons’ fiancee is Jeannie Buss, president of the tennis and volleyball association there.

As Kiraly has pointed out, this departure will be more a graduation to another part of life than an end to a good thing.

Well, perhaps. From the U.S. team, Timmons and Kiraly will vault into . . .

More volleyball.

But volleyball with new challenges, volleyball in which they have not won every major competition for the last five years, volleyball in which they will spend more time with family than with their passports. Back to the beach tour they will go, back to their roots, to the sand and bikinis and setting their own practice hours while still being able to make big bucks.

Beats the heck out of a gold watch.

When Kiraly and Timmons joined the national team in 1981, the United States was a doormat. In ‘82, the Americans finished 13th in the World Championships in Argentina, and it looked very much as if their pass into the Los Angeles Olympics as the host country might be squandered.

Then, a couple of changes were made. Doug Beal and his assistant coaches restructured things to get Kiraly more involved, taking advantage of his lateral quickness on defense and ballhandling on offense, making him one of only two passers, compared to as many as five on other teams.

The puzzle was completed when Timmons, who was devastated almost to the point of quitting after being cut from traveling squads a year earlier, earned a starting spot for the Olympics with great play during a tour of Cuba.

“He improved as much or more in eight years than anyone we’ve ever had here,” Beal, now senior director of the U.S. Volleyball Assn, said of Timmons. “Fortunately for us, it happened fast.”

The United States won the gold in Los Angeles and repeated in 1988, and won volleyball’s triple crown with victories at the World Cup and the World Championships.

Timmons was named most valuable player of the 1984 Games and Kiraly won the award in Seoul. They and teammates Craig Buck and Dave Saunders became four of only seven players ever to win two Olympic gold medals for volleyball.

Said Marv Dunphy, coach of the 1988 team: “They’re part of a group of athletes that put USA men’s volleyball on the map. Not only in ‘84, but they pretty much stayed on top in ‘85, ‘86, ’87 and ’88. Here we are in 1989, and they’re still on top. They’ve set the standards for all the future teams.”

They’re leaving on top, too. At a time when the biggest effort is to get through another practice and another flight, and when several other key members from ’88 have already left or are also considering leaving the team, Timmons and Kiraly, most agree, are playing the best volleyball of their lives.

“I find myself struggling to get through practices,” Kiraly said when announcing his decision in early June. “I’m struggling to complete the rest of the schedule, almost 30 days, and I’m not that excited about playing indoors with the U.S. team. I’m much more excited and motivated for beach volleyball.”

Said Timmons: “I did the right thing, definitely. I feel so sure about doing this now.”

Will Timmons, from Newport Harbor High School, Orange Coast College and USC, be remembered as the guy who seemingly came from nowhere to win the MVP in ’84 and then came back from a serious knee injury later that year to star again in ‘88? As the most powerful hitter in the world? For his bright red hair that, with the occasional help of mousse, grows straight up?

Kiraly, from Santa Barbara High and UCLA, was such a hard worker that Dunphy says, “If his job in practice one day was simply to shag balls, he would be great at it.” Or perhaps he will be remembered as the person Dr. Ruben Acosta, president of the sport’s international governing body, called “the prototype of what a volleyball player should be.” Or perhaps he simply will be remembered as the best player in the world.

The success of the U.S. program is reflected by club teams in Moscow. Yuri Chesnekov, a former star in the Soviet Union, smiles knowingly as the young players he coaches perform a Kiraly-like ritual before receiving serve. The routine consists of nothing more than grasping the sides of the shorts, taking a breath to relax and bracing for a ball coming at 60 m.p.h. Elsewhere in Europe, professional leagues have been bidding for American stars for years, one Italian team having recently offered Timmons $180,000 for one year. He politely declined, not wanting to spend more time away from home. Representatives from Brazil have also been in contact.

“In the Soviet Union, Cuba, Japan, and a lot of other places, these guys get mobbed,” said Dunphy, now the coach at Pepperdine. “They don’t wear anything with USA on it in those places, not because they’re afraid of terrorists or anything like that. But because everyone would come running to them. That’s a fact of life.”

In the United States, though, they still walk the streets largely without being noticed. But they have no complaints, just as they are pleased by being able to end their careers in at home instead of on tour.

Kiraly and Timmons thought about capping this weekend with a cartwheel after a great play, perhaps even some one-hand push-ups in front of the crowd. But that might show up the other team, so the idea was abandoned.

Spray painting their names on the inside wall of the San Diego practice facility before leaving for the last time was also briefly considered, then quickly rejected.

In the end, they will probably decide to do nothing and let history be the ultimate reminder. That should do it.