Suddenly, His College Volleyball Career Is Over

The nauseating wave of reality had not yet slammed into Alan Knipe’s consciousness.

It had never occurred to him, not even when Cal State Northridge took a 14-12 lead in the semifinal game of the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. tournament, that he might be playing his final point as a collegian.

During his first two years at Cal State Long Beach, the 49ers had progressed to the NCAA title game twice, and last season they won the national championship. They began this season ranked No. 1 and stayed there, bringing a 27-1 record into what turned out to be a lost Easter weekend.

Even after Matt Unger slapped down the game-winning spike for Northridge, Knipe, a former Sunset League MVP from Marina High School, had yet to realize his college career had come to an anticlimactic finale.

Still numb, he congratulated some of his close friends on the other side of the net, as they had done with him the previous two years.

It wasn’t for another minute or so until it all hit home.

“A parent came over to the bench and said, ‘Alan, you had a great career,’ and it was like somebody reached down my throat and pulled my stomach out,” Knipe said. “That’s when I realized it was over.”

Cancel the plane tickets to Indiana for volleyball’s final four. Call off the plans for the championship ball at Ball State. And, never mind, we don’t need your ring size.

“When we got back to the locker room, it was harder to hold back the emotions,” he said. “(Senior) Brett Schroeder and I just lost it together.”

The way Long Beach lost the match hurt almost as much as the result. An earlier loss to Pepperdine had assured the Waves a spot in the final four. But if the 49ers had defeated Northridge, they would have earned a chance to play Stanford for the other West Coast spot in the NCAA field.

The 49ers rolled through the first two games against Northridge, winning, 15-6, 15-4. The Matadors rebounded in Game 3 (15-10) and then managed to stay alive with a 17-15 victory in the fourth game.

“When you play a team that is as good as Northridge, you expect them to get a run at some point,” Knipe said. “That’s the nature of the game. But you make some adjustments. We’ve always been able to make the adjustments.

“I looked around and saw that everybody was giving all they had, and that’s almost always been enough for us. We’d been down lots of times this season, even behind (in games), 2-0, but the determination on this team has been incredible this year. We never gave up.

“That’s why I was so shocked when we lost.”

Knipe, a middle blocker, received first-team All-American honors Thursday. He’s finding it difficult to celebrate, though.

“I still don’t think I’ve felt the full impact,” he said before heading off to the beach to work out some of his frustrations on the sand courts.

Long Beach lost three times during Easter weekend, to UCLA, Pepperdine and Northridge. The 49ers finished the season 27-4 and third in the final poll. But they will be home today when four teams--Pepperdine, Stanford, Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne and Penn State--that have a combined 1-4 record against Long Beach this season open play in the NCAA championships.

“We’re all devastated, to put it mildly,” Long Beach Coach Ray Ratelle said. “We’ve always been the team chasing somebody else in the past, but this year the expectations were so high. It’s a very different experience when you’re considered the favorite. You feel like you let everyone down, the fans, your teammates, yourself.

“And it’s hit the seniors the hardest because they have no chance to redeem themselves.”

But Ratelle says Knipe has every reason to hold his head up.

Before the season, Ratelle’s biggest worry revolved around superstar Brent Hilliard and his decision regarding whether he should stay in school or take his best shot at making the Olympic team. As it turned out, Ratelle did not have to replace Hilliard, who opted for another year of school, but he did have to replace mainstay middle blocker Brett Winslow.

Knipe (6 feet 5) stepped in and provided the 49ers with solid play and inspired leadership. He led the team in hitting percentage (.402) and block average (1.4) and was second to Hilliard in kills per game with a 4.6 average.

“He showed the most improvement among any of our players and his performance was among the best,” Ratelle said. “But I’ve never had anyone do what he did this year from a standpoint of leadership.

“He was a captain and he pushed this team. He’s a fighter.”

Knipe was more then just inspirational, he was informed.

“He was a coach on the floor and I mean really a coach on the floor,” Ratelle said. “We’ve always handled everything from the sidelines, but Alan was able to give the instructions from the floor this year. He put in the time and the energy it takes. He would study game films for two or three hours before some matches.”

Knipe said he got in the habit of looking at videotapes when assistant Mike D’Alessandro, who had been a coach at Orange Coast College when Knipe attended the school as a freshman, suggested he watch and chart his own tendencies.

“I was moving from outside hitter to middle blocker and I learned a lot about myself,” Knipe said. “I started to realize that players and teams play in patterns that they don’t even know about. So if I could pick up on some of that, I could share it with the team.”

His gift for both the mental and physical aspects of volleyball might never have been discovered if it weren’t for a Marina football coach who mentioned that players participating in other sports would be excused from spring conditioning drills.

Knipe, then a 6-1 freshman quarterback, decided volleyball looked like fun . . . of course, javelin catching is more fun than conditioning drills.

“I made the team after two days of tryouts,” Knipe said. “I was just there to have fun, but it was new and very exciting. I just fell in love with volleyball after that, and all I wanted to do was play as much as I possibly could.

“After a while, I started having some success and I realized this was a chance for me to play a Division I sport in college and also a way to help me pay for my education.”

Knipe went to OCC for a year before accepting a scholarship to Long Beach over similar offers from UC Santa Barbara and Pepperdine.

The pain of the losses over the Easter weekend hasn’t soured Knipe on the sport he loves. There is a future. He has played with the national team’s ‘B’ squad and has set his sights on the 1996 Olympic team.

“That’s my ultimate goal,” he said. “I can think of nothing more satisfying than being able to play for the U.S.A. in the Olympics.”

Knipe is intrigued by the prospect of the new four-man professional beach circuit that stresses more teamwork than the two-man tour, but he’s committed to the indoor game for the time being.

“I think you have to give 100% to one or the other, and I want to play indoors for a while longer,” he said. “Maybe I’ll look into playing professionally overseas, but right now I’m going to stay in school for another year to get my degree (in communications).”

There will be no volleyball in the immediate future, however. Today and Saturday, while those four other teams battle for the national championship in Muncie, Ind., Knipe will be on the golf course.

“Something to take my mind completely off it, hopefully,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll be able to get over this in time. But it will be hard.”