Ivie Making a Rapid Climb in Volleyball : USC: Football and basketball interfered with the beach, where the Trojan standout found his game.

Bryan Ivie stopped playing the piano as a teen-ager when his knees no longer fit beneath the keyboard.

His hopes for a competitive surfing career were wiped out when the length of his body approached that of his surfboard.

Now, the 6-foot-7 USC senior seems to have outgrown the competition in intercollegiate volleyball.

Ivie, 21, is playing better than he did last season when he led the Trojans to their second national championship in three years and was named national player of the year.

Although only in his sixth year playing the sport, Ivie has been hailed as the United States’ next great volleyball player. No conversation about him is complete without at least one reference to volleyball deity Karch Kiraly.

“What Bryan Ivie has done and what he will do individually and teamwise internationally might get him up to Karch’s plateau,” said broadcaster Chris Marlowe, captain of the gold-medal winning U.S. team in the 1984 Olympic Games. “He could start on the ’92 Olympic team and be a captain in ’96. He’s going to be one of the great players of all time.”

An economics major, Ivie knows the financial structure of volleyball. He monitors the six-figure salaries of Americans playing professionally in Europe and the prize money and endorsement opportunities offered on the beach tour. He plans to join the national team full time in the summer. For now, however, he leads top-ranked USC in its pursuit of another national title. The Trojans will be playing in the UCLA Volleyball Classic, which begins tonight, with UCLA, Stanford and Cal State Long Beach also taking part.

Brown-haired and blue-eyed, Ivie cuts an imposing figure on the court. His size makes him dominant at the net as a middle blocker. His agility makes him formidable as a hitter opposite the setter.

Teammates call him “Poison.” Opponents call him devastating.

“You watch him when they introduce him before a match or when he walks out for warmups,” USC Coach Jim McLaughlin said. “Everybody kind of has their eyes on Bryan Ivie. Some guys have it and other guys don’t. Whatever you call it, Bryan has a ton of it.”

Ivie’s presence is only slightly more striking than the timing that has allowed him to accumulate more top-level international experience at his age than any other player in U.S. volleyball history.

Traditionally, players complete their college careers before joining the national team. Ivie, college volleyball’s freshman of the year in 1988 and the NCAA’s all-time NCAA kills leader, has played for the U.S. team part time since the end of his sophomore season. He roomed with Steve Timmons and then Kiraly during the pair’s farewell tour of the country in 1989 and also played in the Savvin Cup in the Soviet Union and the World Cup in Japan.

“There has never been a college player who’s had his resume in terms of international experience,” UCLA Coach Al Scates said. “He came around at the right time because all the older players were leaving for greener pastures.”

Last summer, with most of the national team veterans playing in Europe or on the beach, Ivie established himself as an international force with an outstanding performance against the Soviet Union at the Goodwill Games in Seattle.

Ivie entered the match after the United States dropped the first game, 15-8. He finished with 24 kills and six blocks in the Americans’ five-game victory.

“Up to that point, I had kind of held back with the national team because I never got to work with them for an extended period of time,” Ivie said. “I was always saying to myself, ‘God, there are so many things I do in college that I don’t do out there just because I’m a little tentative.’

“I think that match was finally the one where I broke out of that mode and started to do the things that I tell myself I can do.”

For a time, about the only thing Ivie wanted to do was surf.

“I was a beach bum,” he said.

As a 5-11 freshman at Mira Costa High in Manhattan Beach, Ivie took part in two-a-day workouts with the freshman football team. Most of his friends grew bored and returned to the ocean with their boards. But Ivie stuck out the season as a defensive end, aiming for the opposing quarterback while longing to hit the surf.

Basketball was Ivie’s sport of choice as a sophomore, but he quit after one season. His logic: Why shoot hundreds of free throws after practice when you could be shooting up and down the coast in search of the perfect wave?

Ivie, who had grown to 6-4, decided to try volleyball the next year. He played on the beach during the summer after his sophomore year and made the Mira Costa junior varsity the next spring.

Club play and a session at Scates’ volleyball camp prepared Ivie for his only season with the perennially powerful Mira Costa varsity. Bob Yoder, USC’s coach at the time, discovered Ivie when he went to scout several of his teammates in a match at La Quinta High.

“Within about two or three minutes, the obvious player that I really liked was Bryan,” Yoder said. “He moved very naturally. You could see he was going to be a player.”

In 1988, Ivie combined with All-Americans Tom Duke and Jen-Kai Liu to lead USC to the national championship.

“That was the year I finally felt comfortable with my body,” Ivie said.

The Trojans stumbled in 1989, missing the playoffs for the first time in five years, but Ivie, one of their most promising players, was invited to try out for the national team. He thought he was good enough to make the B squad. Former Coach Bill Neville thought otherwise--he jumped him to the A team.

“I’m not a real proponent of bringing young guys up immediately to the A team,” Neville said. “But Bryan was one of those occasional athletes that makes the decision easy. He was young, but he seemed mature enough to handle the pressure and be a viable player for us.”

Neville’s decision put Ivie at a crossroads.

“That was when I had to say, ‘It’s time to take this seriously. It’s going to be full time,’ ” Ivie said.

“I learned quickly because on that team, if you made a mistake, the other five guys on the court let you know it. It was almost to a point where you got to a ball because you were afraid of what would happen if you didn’t.”

Ivie shed his stolid court demeanor with the national team and returned to USC as a vocal leader. Last season, he sprained his ankle in April and missed the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. Championships, where USC was eliminated by Cal State Long Beach in the semifinals. The Trojans, however, received a controversial at-large bid to the NCAA Final Four, and Ivie responded with 35 kills and a .448 attack percentage in the championship match against Long Beach.

With every player back from last season’s team, plus the addition of his younger brother, Pat, a 6-5 freshman, Ivie is confident that USC can repeat as NCAA champion.

Although no one says so officially, it is expected that Kiraly, Timmons, setter Jeff Stork and most of the other players from the 1988 Olympic team will be allowed to rejoin the national team in time for the 1992 Games at Barcelona. Most observers say Ivie is the one member of the current U.S. team with a chance to crack the veteran starting lineup.

“If there’s a spot I can fill, that will be great,” Ivie said. “If not, those are the guys that got volleyball going in this country. I’d rather not get a lot of playing time on a ’92 team that wins the gold than be a starter for a team that finishes a lot lower.

“I’m young, and there will be a lot of opportunities.”

Nobody doubts that Ivie will make the most of them.

“He’s the prototype volleyball player,” USC’s McLaughlin said. “We’ve only just seen the beginning of Bryan Ivie.”