ON THE BEACH / MIKE REILLEY : Zeno-Biller Turns Into a Fan of the Sand

While growing up in Fountain Valley, Lori Zeno-Biller thought there was only one way to play volleyball, and it sure wasn’t on the beach.

“I played club volleyball (indoors) and I never so much as went to the beach,” she said. “I tried playing on the beach once during my senior year at La Quinta (High School) and I hated it. I couldn’t move in the sand.”

It wasn’t until her senior year at UCLA that Zeno-Biller started playing regularly on the beach. She learned to like it--so much, in fact, that she’s currently in her third year on the Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn. tour.

Zeno-Biller and teammate Kathy Hanley of Santa Barbara will be among the 16 women’s teams expected to compete at the Laguna Beach Open this weekend at Main Beach. The men’s and women’s competitions will start at 8 a.m. Friday, with the finals scheduled for noon Sunday.

Zeno-Biller said she prefers the fast-paced, two-player beach game to the six-player indoor game.

“You get to touch the ball on every play on the beach,” she said. “But my hardest adjustment was the sand. Indoors, you can move and jump easily. But out here, it’s just like quicksand.”

Zeno-Biller and partner Kathy Hanley are 19th in the tour’s money standings with $2,250 each. Zeno-Biller finished 17th last year, teaming with Gail Stammer most of the season and placing in the top nine in nine tournaments.

“Things have worked well for Kathy and I,” Zeno-Biller said. “We’re one of the steadier teams on the tour and we have great control. I’m more of a hitter and a blocker and Kathy’s more of a setter.”

Zeno-Biller was a setter and middle-blocker during her indoor career. She was a Southern Section most valuable player and twice led La Quinta to the Southern Section quarterfinals. She then moved on to UCLA, where she was a first-team all-American as a senior.

She coached girls’ volleyball at Fountain Valley in 1988, but took last season off to concentrate on playing on the beach. In April, she and husband Tracy Biller, a former quarterback at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, moved to Paso Robles.

It comes as no surprise that Zeno-Biller married a football player. Her father, Joe Zeno Jr., and uncle Larry Zeno played football for the Bruins. Her brother, Lance, plays right guard at UCLA and her grandfather, Joe Zeno Sr., played for the Washington Redskins.

Janice Opalinski of San Juan Capistrano and Linda Chisholm-Carrillo of Van Nuys won last year’s Laguna Beach Open, but they’re playing with different partners this season. Opalinski has teamed with tour money leader Jackie Silva and won the first five tournaments. Chisholm-Carrillo and teammate Linda Hanley defeated Opalinski and Silva in the finals of the Fresno Open last weekend.

Because of the Laguna Open’s anti-drug and anti-alcohol theme, the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals, the men’s tour, will not be allowed to participate in the event. The Laguna Beach City Council reaffirmed its policy disallowing alcohol sponsors for the event. The AVP, whose sponsor is Miller Lite Beer, instead will compete at Manhattan Beach.

Dedication: The Laguna Beach Open is being dedicated to the late Judy Bellomo, a member of the Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn. tour who died last January after undergoing thyroid cancer surgery.

Kevin Droke, a former Newport Harbor High School volleyball standout, has been playing in several East Coast beach tournaments this summer, but he will soon be playing in the Far East.

Droke will play in an eight-team exhibition tournament starting July 17 in Hong Kong. The week-long tournament will feature four teams from Asia, one from the Soviet Union and three from the United States.

Droke said other players expected to compete for the U.S. teams include Jeff Stork, Craig Buck, Bob Ctvrtlik and Jeff Campbell.

“There’ll be $35,000 to $50,000 in prize money and we’re excited about that,” said Droke, who played professionally indoors the last two seasons in France and Belgium. “It will be a blast to be with so many talented players. I played against most of the U.S team in high school and college.”

Droke earned all-Southern Section honors at outside hitter in 1980 while helping Newport Harbor win the Southern Section title. He also was the most valuable player of the Orange County high school all-star game. At San Diego State, he was a two-year captain and an all-American as a senior.

Beach trivia: Which surfers won the Op Pro championships at the Huntington Beach Pier?

Rumor mill: Former world-champion Barton Lynch has told officials of the Op Pro that he will skip this year’s competition, scheduled for July 30-Aug. 5. Lynch, who won the 1987 Op Pro, was eliminated in the first round the past two years and has voiced his displeasure about competing at California’s crowded beaches.

With his victory at the Killer Loop surfing contest Sunday, Chris Brown of Santa Barbara took the lead in the Professional Surfing Assn. of America’s point standings. Brown has 3,148 points, four more than second-place Charlie Kuhn of Indian Harbor, Fla. San Clemente’s Shane Beschen, who led the standings early on the tour, is third with 3,055. The next stop on the PSAA tour is July 18-22 at the San Clemente Pier.

Mike Stewart of Anaheim continues to dominate the PSAA’s bodyboarding division, winning the Killer Loop contest and increasing his points lead to 524 over Ben Severson of Wahiawa, Hawaii.

Kind of corny: T-shirts being sold in an Omaha, Neb., airport read “Surf Nebraska” with a drawing of a surfer carving a longboard through a cornfield on the front.

Beach trivia answer: Cheyne Horan and Becky Benson in 1982.