Fortune Still Smiles Despite Travel Rigors : Volleyball: Hours of practice and play with the national team keep him in the forefront of U.S. quest for a third Olympic gold medal.

So you want to be a member of the U.S. national volleyball team? Figure you’ll travel to exotic cities and see the world? Maybe even go for the gold a third consecutive time in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona?

Well, Scott Fortune of Laguna Beach says the life of a world-class volleyball player is a lot of work.

For the past four years, Fortune has spent four hours a day working out with the national team in San Diego. A typical workout includes running or lifting for an hour and then three hours of Coach Fred Strum’s drills.

And those sightseeing trips included a five-match series against the Canadian national team in Pennsylvania and a 10-day tour of Cuba that got off to a rousing start when it took two days just to get there.

When Fortune finally got a weekend break, the team went to a candy factory in Waco, Tex., to meet a sponsor.

“It was our first weekend off in three weeks, so no one was real excited about going to Waco,” Fortune said. “We flew through a lightning storm and a tornado watch to get there.”

Fortune’s reward for the weekend trip was Halloween candy for life, but he laughs and said the promotion tour “is all part of the job.”

These days, volleyball has become a full-time job for Fortune. He will begin play in the World League of Volleyball on May 18 with home matches against the Soviet Union, South Korea, Japan and Italy scheduled at UC Irvine’s Bren Center.

The league is scheduled for 10 weeks and features $2 million in prize money. The U.S. team will play home-and-away matches against the four countries. Fortune’s frequent-flier mileage card figures to fill in a hurry.

“We open in the Soviet Union one week, then go to Italy the second week, come home for a week and then go to Japan and South Korea,” Fortune said. “We didn’t play well last year in the league because we didn’t have much size or experience. But we can’t use that as an excuse this year.”

Fortune, 25, will return to Cuba in July for the Pan American Games and will compete in zone competition in Canada in August. He thinks the nucleus of the 1992 U.S. Olympic team will be formed following the trip to Canada.

“The pro beach tour will end in September and I think Karch (Kiraly) and Steve (Timmons) will be coming back,” Fortune said. “Right now, our team isn’t very strong. We have three players under six foot. We’ve had players and coaches coming and going. There hasn’t been a lot of consistency to the team since the 1988 Olympics.”

Fortune is the only holdover on the national team from the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, where the United States won its second consecutive gold medal. Fortune was the first reserve on the team and had the distinction of getting the winning shot in the gold-medal match against the Soviet Union.

“I was lucky enough to get the winning hit in the Olympics, but I still have a lot of goals to accomplish,” Fortune said. “There was never any doubt that I was coming back after ’88. I felt like I contributed at Seoul, but now I want to be a major force.”

Fortune returned to Stanford to get his degree in economics following the ’88 Olympics and rejoined the national team in San Diego. He has a part-time job working as a financial service representative for a local bank and will eventually join the pro beach circuit following the ’92 Olympics.

“It’s funny, but I’ve gone from the youngest guy on the team in 1988 to the most experienced player,” he said. “I still enjoy playing volleyball, but it’s different since I’ve been playing with the national team for four years.

“We’ve added five or six new players every year since 1988 and a lot of them look up to me. I’m the most experienced player on the team. When I first joined the team, I was in awe of Karch and Steve. We had 12 really good players on the team, and the competition in practice every day was incredible.

“We’re starting to get it back. Craig Buck recently returned from Italy and he’s going to come back to the team. By the middle of the summer, several more veterans will return.”

Fortune grew up playing volleyball at Three Arch Bay in Laguna Beach. He was a basketball and volleyball standout at Laguna Beach High School and earned a volleyball scholarship to Stanford.

He got his first taste of the Olympics as a statistics runner at Long Beach Arena for the 1984 Games. He left Stanford after his junior year to join the national team and worked his way up the ladder from the 18th player on the squad to the first reserve.

Despite his success, Fortune said he can’t wait to join the pro beach circuit. He plans to play professionally in Italy following the ’92 Olympics and then join the Association of Volleyball Players tour in 1993.

“I really look forward to playing on the beach,” he said. “I’ve been exposed to the beach game most of my life. That’s where I learned how to play.”