U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES 1991 : Filling In the Gaps : Canoga Park Dentist, Who Plays a Game That Begs for a Name Change, Has Almost Given Up Describing High-Scoring Team Handball

The man with an Olympian amount of tattoos on his arms was waving them in an effort to attract the attention of the East goalkeeper, who was a reserve with little team handball experience.

No luck.

He yelled in a thick accent.

No response.

Suddenly, a bolt of inspiration zapped Sandor Rivnyak, the U.S. Olympic Festival coach of goalkeepers.

“Duuuuude,” bellowed Rivnyak, an emigrant from Hungary, where he says that team handball is second in popularity only to soccer.

The goalkeeper’s ears perked up.

Welcome to men’s team handball, which may qualify as one of the Festival’s most laid-back sports. And certainly one of its least-recognized.

“It’s sort of like rugby in a way,” said West team member Jeff Fruin of Reseda, a veteran of Festival competition. “We’re all over each other when we’re playing, but everybody hangs out together after the match is over.”

Team handball, a sport begging for a name change, has no similarity to the two-man version. It is played with seven-man teams, and the only wall is the human one that is set up to prevent an opponent from hurling the ball into the net.

It has been described as water polo on hardwood, a sport that incorporates many of the best elements of ice hockey, basketball and indoor soccer without the kicking.

“I’ve completely given up trying to describe it,” Fruin said with a laugh. “I’ve tried a hundred times.”

“What?” is a question heard almost as often as “Why?”

Fruin, 30, may be the most enigmatic player in the Festival. When he isn’t slamming bodies with his buddies, he is helping fix the teeth that get knocked loose during the action.

Fruin, a 1978 graduate of Harvard High, practices dentistry in Canoga Park. He was a multisport athlete at Harvard, where he played basketball, baseball, football and golf. The handball press guide is littered with players who were all-something in one sport or another.

And like many Americans who participate, Fruin virtually stumbled over the sport--in this case, while he was attending dentistry school at USC. Unlike many Americans, he loved it instantly.

“I picked it up from the guy who ran the dentistry bookstore,” said Fruin of Robert Sewell, who is now the West goalkeeper and one of Fruin’s friends.

Fruin, who is playing in his fifth--and what he swears will be his final--Festival, is one of four Valley-area players on the West roster. Brothers Denny and Steve Fercho and James Hop, all of Camarillo, play extensively. Dawn Fischer of Glendale is a reserve on the West women’s team.

Fruin, with the exception of a two-minute period when he was banished for roughness, played the entire game and scored a team-high five goals as the West defeated the East, 17-16, Wednesday at UCLA’s John Wooden Center.

Had Wooden attended, he probably would have approved of the sport, which features rapid, continual play laced with spectacular leaps and dives by players attempting to score. Its action makes it spectator-friendly.

Among its rudiments:

* Court sense: The playing area is 131 feet 2 inches long and 65 feet 7 inches wide, making it about 37 feet longer and 15 feet wider than a basketball court. In front of each goal (about six feet high, nine feet wide) is a painted arc termed the six-meter line inside which no players--offensive or defensive, except the goalkeeper--are allowed to penetrate.

Defensive players station themselves around the six-meter line, which protects the goalkeeper’s area, and attempt to dissuade the offense from taking high-percentage shots. There are two 30-minute halves and timeouts are not allowed unless there is an injury.

“It’s kind of a match-up zone on defense,” Fruin said. “And a lot of pick-and-rolls on offense.”

* Have a ball: Players dribble or pass the ball at a pace that would make a basketball player proud. In fact, the sport is an NBA star’s dream--players are allowed to take three steps after terminating the dribble. The ball is the approximate size of a large cantaloupe, and it is covered with a sticky substance that allows the game’s better players to throw it at speeds estimated at 80 m.p.h.

One point is awarded for each goal, and there is plenty of scoring, typically ranging from the high teens to the mid-20s.

* Bust a move: Similar to basketball, the game’s most exciting plays--and there are many--come when the ball is intercepted at midcourt. The interceptor is then presented with a one-on-one scoring opportunity against the goalkeeper, who faces the unenviable task of stopping a blur whizzing toward him.

Pace of play is similar to basketball. Sometimes teams employ a set-up offense that emphasizes many passes. Sometimes a fast-break style is used.

* Foul play: Physical play is expected, and Fruin has been on both ends. In Wednesday’s game against the East, he was penalized near the goal area for clothes-lining a ball-toting opponent in the sport’s version of high-sticking--and was buried while tackling another player in a similar situation. After the latter, he came away with a knot on the back of his head.

Excessive roughness, as in hockey, results in a two-minute penalty and the offending team must play short-handed. Though the sport is very physical--players are routinely mugged while taking a shot on goal--retaliatory cheap shots are almost unheard of.

“It’s so physical that you could easily get caught up in things and punch somebody out,” Fruin said. “But if you did that, you’d be bounced from the competition and you’d never play again.”

Men’s team handball was added to the Olympic Games in 1972 and women came aboard in 1980. The United States’ best finish in men’s competition--ninth--came in 1984. The Soviet Union has won the gold medal in two of the four Olympiads in which it has competed and Soviet-aligned countries such as Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia have dominated the competition.

The U.S. women have fared better, finishing tied for fourth in 1984 and seventh in 1988. Things are looking up for both teams: The United States was one of four countries to qualify both men’s and women’s teams for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

“I think we do real well, considering,” Fruin said. “Hopefully, they’ll start directing this toward younger players and get everybody worked up about it and playing. We need to get the young kids playing it if we’re ever going to become world-class. I hope we do, because it really is a great game.”

The United States is catching up to Europe in many ways. In the lobby of the Wooden Center, those interested in the sport were requested to leave their name and mailing address so that information on joining or forming teams could be forwarded. Literature distributed on the sport was half promotional, half instructional.

“If you’re a smart player, you can play this sport at a high level of competition,” said Fruin, who from his center back-court position is the handball point guard of the West.

Major barriers remain, however. Public awareness of the sport has been slow in coming in the United States, and it isn’t a particularly easy sport to organize.

“It’s impossible to go get a pickup game going,” admitted Fruin, who plays mainly with a club team that includes the Fercho brothers and Hop.

Fruin is one of the Festival’s top handball participants, and was selected the most valuable men’s player in the 1988 Festival. The West has won the gold medal three times in Fruin’s four previous Festivals, but stumbled to a fourth-place finish in 1989, the last year in which Fruin competed.

“Gold, gold, gold--and wood,” Fruin said of the consolation medal handed out in 1989. “I wasn’t even out of the gym and that last one was in the trash. I couldn’t let (my career) end like that.”

Fruin, the second-oldest player on the West and the fourth-oldest player in the men’s competition, is ready to turn the team over to the youngsters. The average age on the West team is 22.

“This is definitely it for me,” Fruin said. “I had to guard a guy last night who weighed about 270 pounds, and that’s kind of hard on the back.”

He unquestionably will miss the camaraderie. After the West edged the East on Wednesday night, several players met at a Westwood restaurant to knock back a few beers before the 11:30 p.m. curfew. “Even though we hammer it out, they’re still some of our best friends,” he said.