U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : He Doesn’t Hide Anything on the Court : Volleyball: Coley Kyman shows his emotions while playing and plans to keep a promise to play in the Olympics.

Coley Kyman celebrates each point of a volleyball match with enough animation to fill a Disney movie.

He struts around, clapping hands, slapping backs and pointing fingers.

When a play fails, he agonizes.

Coaches have lectured Kyman about such displays, but he can’t seem to help himself.

“They keep talking to me about changing my attitude and how cocky I am, but hey, that’s me. It’s just the way I am,” Kyman said.

Kyman, who will be a sophomore at Cal State Northridge in the fall, says he has never tried to hide his emotions.

At the Olympic Festival this week, Kyman’s sentiments are displayed on his shoes and on his gold North uniform.

His jersey has a four-inch black bar above the left breast. On the heel of each shoe, written in bold, black letters, is MOM.

Kyman’s mother, Pat, died of a stroke May 26. “I think about her all the time,” Kyman said. “(At Northridge) every time I looked up, I’d see her and my dad.

“Now it’s just my dad.”

Pat Kyman considered all of Coley’s teammates part of her extended family. She cooked for the teams. She cheered for the teams.

And she was to Coley what Coley was to his friends, quick with a smile, always encouraging and fun.

At Northridge basketball games, Kyman and other volleyball players often wore wigs and makeup and led the crowd in cheers and jeers.

At baseball games, Kyman found a seat as close as he could to the opponents’ bench and blasted them with a stream of good-natured barbs.

When Tommie Gray, a Northridge football player and a casual friend of Kyman, died of a heart ailment in late December, Kyman organized a carwash to raise money for Gray’s family.

The carwash raised more than $1,000.

School, and its surrounding activities, kept Kyman busy. But this summer, there was little to distract him from his grief until the festival.

“There is no good time for something like that to happen,” said John Price, Kyman’s coach at Northridge, “but for Coley, that was the worst possible time. A lot of his support group, his friends from school, were gone for the summer, and he didn’t have much to do.”

Kyman, 19, was generally considered the top middle blocker participating at the festival. He has not disappointed.

“Coley has a tremendous spirit,” said Ken Lynch a Northridge teammate also playing for the North. “He can be thinking about something other than volleyball on the court, but still be completely into the game.”

That ability has served Kyman well. He leads the North with 42 kills in two matches.

“I think the national team people are very interested in watching his progress,” said Artie Ball, coach of the North team. “He has a real strong upper body and he attacks the ball quickly.”

Kyman has been asked to attend tryouts in August for the U.S. ‘B’ team, which will compete in Argentina next month.

He has not decided if he will go.

The tryouts begin Aug. 13, and Northridge football workouts are set to begin two days later.

Bernie Kyman, Coley’s father, was a longtime assistant football coach at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. Coley, who is 6 feet 6 and 200 pounds, has entertained aspirations of making it as a quarterback in the NFL.

At Reseda High, Kyman was a quarterback of little renown in a run-oriented offense. He didn’t go out for football last season at Northridge.

Bob Burt, Northridge football coach, has told Kyman he is welcome to try out. Burt has also been quick to point out that the team has its top two quarterbacks from last season returning.

“He’s a good football player,” Bernie Kyman said. “I think with the two sports not overlapping, he would have a good chance to do both and it would not hinder his collegiate volleyball. What I don’t know is how it would affect anything beyond the collegiate level.”

Ball, whose 18-year-old son is a prospect in volleyball and basketball, said he could relate to the situation.

“If you’re going to be successful at the top level in volleyball, you need to spend an enormous amount of time developing your game,” Ball said. “I think playing football would detract from that opportunity. I think he has to decide what he really wants.”

Kyman says he has.

Both.

But if he has to chose one or the other, the tiebreaker goes to volleyball.

Before his mother died, Kyman said, being an Olympian “wasn’t so hard and long of a goal as it was for me to play in the NFL.”

That has changed.

“My mom was always real proud of me playing volleyball,” Kyman said. “She wanted me to play in the Olympics, and I promised her I would. I plan to keep that promise.”