From Down-and-Out to Up-and-Comer : Volleyball: When Mike Whitmarsh’s basketball career fizzled, he started to play beach volleyball seriously. Now he’s one of the sport’s rising stars.

Most of the top 20 players in the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals were All-Americans in college and many played on the U.S. National team.

Mike Whitmarsh, the AVP’s 10th-ranked player, did neither. The Manhattan Beach resident played basketball at the University of San Diego and didn’t seriously compete in volleyball until completing his business degree and playing professional basketball overseas for three seasons.

The 6-foot-7, 210-pound Whitmarsh was an All-West Coast Athletic Conference forward at San Diego, where he averaged 19 points and eight rebounds as a senior in 1984-85. He was drafted in the fifth round by the Portland Trail Blazers but was cut before the start of the season.

So Whitmarsh, 30, played three years of pro basketball in Berlin.

“It was a great experience,” he said. “The first year was kind of tough, though. I didn’t know anybody.”

Whitmarsh says he left after his third season because he was tired of living overseas. He gave the NBA another try in 1989 when he was invited to the Minnesota Timberwolves’ summer camp. He played for the expansion team’s summer league team but was cut before the start of the regular season.

“I remember we had a preseason game against the Lakers and I didn’t start, but I was first off the bench,” Whitmarsh said. “It really looked like I was going to make the team. I really thought I was.”

The disappointment of getting cut a second time was enough to make Whitmarsh give up basketball. He says coaches in Minnesota believed he had a chance to make the NBA if he spent time refining his skills in the Continental Basketball Assn.

“They really wanted me to go to the CBA, but I never considered it,” Whitmarsh said. “When I got released I thought, ‘The heck with it! I had enough basketball!’ ”

Whitmarsh turned to beach volleyball, which he had played for fun after his first basketball season in Berlin. He worked his way up from novice tournaments to AAA level before moving to Australia for four months in 1990 to compete in that country’s pro beach circuit.

He won two tournaments and placed second in four others. The level of competition, he says, is a lot easier than the AVP but prize money is considerably less. Winners at most tournaments made $1,500, compared to an average of $15,000 in the AVP.

“It was survival money, basically,” Whitmarsh said. “That’s the way we looked at it.”

Whitmarsh returned to Southern California a week before the first 1990 AVP tournament in Fort Myers, Fla. During the season, he had three partners but was named rookie of the year.

He earned $19,817 and had his best finish, third place, at Seal Beach with pro beach veteran Jon Stevenson. Whitmarsh finished the year ranked 29th.

“He’s a skilled athlete, combined with the fact that he’s 6-7, you have the makings of a good volleyball player,” said Stevenson, who is also president of the AVP. “He’s really good at a lot of hand-eye coordination sports, and he’s one of the more dedicated guys. He works out very hard.”

Whitmarsh says Stevenson has made a difference in his volleyball career. A former All-American at UC Santa Barbara, Stevenson ranks sixth in AVP career victories.

“Playing with Jon really helped me get up to the next level,” Whitmarsh said. “He gave me great tips and showed me blocking techniques. He’s one of the most knowledgeable players on the tour.”

In 1991 Whitmarsh earned $62,439 and finished in the top seven in 14 tournaments. He placed second with John Hanley, a former All-American at the University of Hawaii, in Cape Cod, Mass., and in Milwaukee.

Whitmarsh won his first AVP tournament last month in New Orleans with partner Brent Frohoff. A former Loyola Marymount standout, Frohoff is a highly regarded player in his ninth season on the tour. He teamed up with Whitmarsh because his longtime partner, Scott Ayakatubby, was sick.

Frohoff and Whitmarsh were impressive in the $75,000 New Orleans Open, where they beat the top-ranked team of Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes, 15-12, in the final.

Before that they beat the team of Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos, 15-7, who in recent years have dominated pro beach volleyball and earned the nickname, “Kings of the Beach.”

Whitmarsh says it’s by far the highlight of his career. Placing 17th the previous week at Austin, Tex., made his first tournament victory extra special.

“It really gave us confidence after we beat Smith and Stoklos,” Whitmarsh said. “Then when we finally played against Kiraly and Steffes, they were really smoking us early. It was hot and I wasn’t feeling well. My stomach and my ankle hurt ‘cause I had rolled it. I felt like I was ready to cramp.

“But we got 10 (points) in a row and no one has gotten 10 in a row against Kiraly and Steffes. It was great.”

Frohoff and Whitmarsh split $15,000. Whitmarsh ranks eighth in prize money this year with $30,303 and Frohoff is ninth with $27,678.

“The longer we play with each other the better we’re going to get,” said Frohoff, a Manhattan Beach native. “Mike has really improved over the last year. His ball control and hitting have gotten a lot better.”

Frohoff says he chose to team up with Whitmarsh because he is a big blocker and a tough competitor.

“He’s very stable mentally,” Frohoff said. “You have to be very tough mentally in this sport. You can’t survive otherwise.”

Except for the 17th-place finish in Austin, Whitmarsh has placed among the top nine in each of the AVP’s 11 tournaments this year. He finished second in Fresno, fourth in Fort Myers and fifth in Honolulu, Arizona, Fort Worth and San Diego.

“It’s certainly true that Mike is a rarity,” Stevenson said. “To pick up the sport at 27 and do this well after completing a career in another sport is not common.”

Whitmarsh isn’t done with basketball, however. He recently filmed two commercials--for an airline and a paint company--where he plays a basketball player. For one of them, he slam-dunked all day.

Dunking, he says, is easy compared to beach volleyball. To refine skills and master techniques, he trains daily with the top pros at Marine Avenue in Manhattan Beach.

“I don’t think people realize how hard it is to move and jump on that sand,” he said. “I’m getting better in all skills. At first I was real raw, but I know there’s still lots of room for improvement. They have a real advantage over me. They know the technical aspect of volleyball that I don’t know. Volleyball for them is like basketball for me. They know so much more.”

But Whitmarsh appears to be learning quickly.