RECREATION : VOLLEYBALL : Co-Ed Play Increases the Game’s Net Worth

Co-ed volleyball is on a roll here in Orange County, both indoors and out. That’s because recreational volleyball teams offer much more than just another means to bathe in sweat. They are more like extended families--small gangs of men and women of all ages loosely united by friendship, professional affiliation, competitive zeal, social aspiration or personal style.

The common denominator, of course, is a simple desire to thrash about with other people and laugh heartily in the face of both victory and defeat.

Consider some of the contestants in Anaheim’s popular year-round adult co-ed volleyball league.

Hughes Aircraft engineers Larry and Lynda Green of Brea took up co-ed team volleyball 22 years ago simply because they wanted something to do together in the summer when they couldn’t go skiing.

When their Green Machine team took on a gang called No Mercy Wednesday, on the second to last session of Anaheim’s winter league, they were battling for second place in the advanced division.

It was, according to Green, a ferocious grudge match pitting old age and treachery against youth and skill. Meanwhile, a bunch called the Mental Blockers paced the sidelines waiting for their shot at a glorious second-place finish.

Down one notch, in the intermediate league, Terry O’Donnell’s Cal-Comp Killers--a group of friends and co-workers in their mid-20s--prepared for friendly but spirited rumbles with Dig This! and Team Hoops. Successive three-game matches would nail down first place for O’Donnell’s team, which is sponsored by an Anaheim-based computer graphics firm.

And, in the most playful of all divisions, Randy Caffin’s It’s Just for Fun team--a group of friends who play a variety of sports together--showed little interest in their place in the advanced-beginner league standings. They were simply looking forward to batting a volleyball around with a six-pack of tie-died, neon-shorted rockers who call themselves the Deadheads.

Other teams in the Anaheim league--Looney Tunes, the Panics, Net Assets, Volleydogs, Six-Packs, Team Bongo, Just Kidding, Slammers, Singles, All the Way, Networth, and TRW--reflect the wide range of attitude, personality, status, and style among the denizens of Orange County’s popular co-ed recreational volleyball leagues.

Volleyball is especially well suited to co-ed play--and not just because of the one-hit rule, say Larry Green, O’Donnell and Caffin.

“The one-hit rule is that a woman has to hit the ball at least once if there is more than one hit,” says Green. “Otherwise the rules are the same as men’s or women’s volleyball--you get a maximum of three hits per volley.”

Green says men and women can play well together because, at a recreational level, volleyball is as much a game of position and strategy as it is a contest of raw athletic ability.

O’Donnell says women are the key to building a winning co-ed volleyball team. “We win because the women on our team are the best in the league at setting us guys up for kill shots,” says O’Donnell. “If this were a men’s league, we’d be somewhere in the middle of the pack.”

Caffin, who has made co-ed volleyball a key part of his social life since discovering the sport at Cypress College, says the sport is also a good way to satisfy competitive and teamwork instincts in a way that both men and women can relate.

“We all play hard and we all play to win,” says Caffin. “But I should probably mention that the women on our team insisted that we adopt the name It’s Just for Fun specifically because they wanted to keep our intensity level down.”

Most of Orange County’s cities offer four- or six-person adult volleyball (either league or free play) through their parks and recreation or community services departments. Many use professional contractors such as Ric Jennings of Costa Mesa, who has arranged to conduct indoor leagues for Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Fullerton and Fountain Valley starting in April.

Area colleges also offer volleyball in both student and adult curricula.

If you like oddball offshoots of volleyball--such as wallyball (played on a racquetball court with carom shots legal)--or if you have a four-wheel-drive soul, you’re also in luck. Jennings is looking to import Hoover Ball from Iowa and both mudball and all-terrain ball from Texas. Hoover Ball is volleyball played with a 6-pound medicine ball, mudball speaks for itself, and all-terrain ball is like a triathlon with teams competing on three surfaces: sand, mud and grass.

Jennings is producing an Orange County Volleyball Newsletter that will include a listing of all volleyball activities, instructional tips, maps to sites and results. If you are interested in receiving a free copy, call Jennings at (714) 631-7658.

For other information in your area, call: Anaheim (714) 254-5100; Costa Mesa (714) 642-0646; Cypress (714) 229-6780; Fullerton (714) 738-5339; Huntington Beach (714) 960-8889; Irvine (714) 724-6662; Newport Beach (714) 644-3151; Placentia (714) 744-2222; San Juan Capistrano (714) 493-1171; Seal Beach (213) 431-2527, and Yorba Linda (714) 961-7100.