Volleyball League Offers Quality, Not Gimmicks

There will be no gimmicks when the World League Volleyball arrives here Saturday. There will be no helmet cam, free caps, beach towels, ball-point pens or second-rate players, either.

There will be the best volleyball players in the world as the U.S. national team meets Japan at 7:30 tonight at the Sports Arena in the second match of a 16-match schedule pairing the world’s powers in the sport’s biggest show this side of the Barcelona Olympics.

“There are not many better things that could happen to men’s volleyball in this country or the world at this time,” said Fred Sturm, first-year U.S. coach. “Volleyball needed a big-time annual event.”

And Sturm says this is it.

“This can be like Wimbledon in tennis or the British Open in golf,” he said. “The World League has the 10 best teams in the world playing for $2 million in prize money. When there’s $2 million on the line, it’s going to draw a lot of attention and there’s going to be a lot of motivation.

“There are a lot of professional events where the best in the world aren’t there. The top events always have the best; to me, that’s a requirement for an event having big-time status, and that’s what the World League has.”

One of the sport’s best players is Bryan Ivie, projected by some to be this country’s next superstar. He joined the U.S. team Monday after completing his collegiate career at USC, where he was the NCAA’s two-time college player of the year.

Money? Ivie’s not thinking about it.

“The opportunity to win some money is always an incentive, but all the guys on this team have enough drive that money isn’t a real big factor, it’s just to go out and win and get ourselves prepared (for the Olympics),” Ivie said. “There’s only about a year left so it’s real important for us to get a group together and really start to play well.”

The U.S. team will need to play well to avoid a 1-11 repeat in the World League’s inaugural season, 1990.

The U.S. team is 5-6 this year in international competition. It beat Canada four of five times on a tour of Pennsylvania in early April, and it finished sixth in the Cuba Cup. This weekend’s games--the U.S. defeated Japan 15-9, 15-13, 12-15, 15-11 in front of 2,805 at UC Irvine’s Bren Center on Friday--could set the tone for the entire schedule.

“It’s the first time (Japan has) played this year that we know of,” Sturm said. “Certainly, it is an opportunity for us to set the tone for our year. Japan has a new coaching staff and new players on the roster. It’s hard to know what they’ll do, but Japan has been a traditional volleyball power for many, many years.”

Japan returns five members from the 1988 Olympic team, which finished 10th in Seoul. The lineup also possesses 6-foot-11 middle blocker Hideyuki Otake.

The U.S. and Japanese teams are in a five-team pool and they play a double round-robin format. Also in Pool B are the Soviet Union, Korea and Italy, which won last year’s World League title. Making up Pool A are France, Canada, Brazil, Holland and Cuba. Cuba finished second last year, Brazil third. The top two teams from each pool compete in Milan, Italy, July 26-28 with the first-place team from each pool playing the opposite second-place team and the two winners meeting for the World League title.

Three of the World League teams already have qualified for the 1992 Summer Games: Italy, Cuba and the U.S.

“Outside of the Olympic Games, this is the most important international volleyball competition in the world,” Sturm said. “For us, it means playing good matches against the best competition in the world over the next 10 weeks.

“What it means for the fans is that they have a chance to see the best volleyball in the world.”