With Healthy Outlook, Silva Is Winning Again : Volleyball: After a nightmarish 1991 season, she has regained her status as one of the elite players on the beach.

The comeback road has been a tough one for Jackie Silva, who once dominated women’s pro beach volleyball.

The spunky Brazilian, who lives in Redondo Beach, says it took a great deal of physical and mental work to recover from a career-threatening shoulder injury that forced her to sit out almost half of last season.

Still the winningest player in Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn. history with 41 tournament victories, Silva competed in only nine of 17 WPVA events in 1991 and for the first time in her career finished a season without winning a tournament.

In 1987 and 1988 she teamed up with Linda Carrillo for 15 tournament titles. In 1989 Silva won 12 tournaments with two partners (Patty Dodd and Rita Crockett-Royster) and in 1990 she won 12 events with two others (Janice Harrer and Karolyn Kirby).

Silva, 30, may be close to regaining her winning form. She has placed in the top seven at every event this year and has two victories. She won the Hermosa Beach Open with Cammy Ciarelli on June 14 and the U.S. Open at Venice Beach on Aug. 2 with Angela Rock.

Before Hermosa Beach, Silva had not won an event since Sept. 2, 1990, when she teamed with Kirby at Cincinnati.

This weekend, Silva and Rock--playing their third tournament together--are seeded third at the $80,000 World Championships in Manhattan Beach, the year’s biggest tournament and one that Silva has won three times (with Carrillo in 1987 and ’88 and Crockett-Royster in ‘89).

Matches begin at 9 a.m. Saturday near the Manhattan Beach Pier and the final is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

Despite recent ailments, Silva is still considered the WPVA’s top setter and one of its best all-around players. Rock, 28, is a powerful hitter and server who leads the WPVA with 94 aces in 93 games this season.

Rock and Silva, each 5-foot-8, are not big blockers, but they use their quickness, defensive skills and ability to control the ball to win matches. Both women are intense and vocal during games.

“They are shining,” said Dennie Knoop, who lost to Silva-Rock at Venice Beach. “Jackie looks like she’s in better shape. I still think she’s one of the best players on the beach. She’s still explosive and she’s still exciting to watch. She’s a fiery competitor and she’s such a stud mentally.”

But the last couple of years were not easy for Silva, who started playing volleyball at age 9. The problems started midway through the 1990 season, when she felt a pain in her right shoulder.

She won 12 tournaments that year, but a loose capsule in the shoulder kept her from training for five months.

The three-time beach volleyball world champion says it was the most difficult time of her career. She had spent most of her life playing the game--first as a setter on the Brazilian national team, then professionally in Italy--and discovered a void without it.

“It was pretty hard last year,” Silva said. “No, it was really hard. It was a bad time for me. It’s still hard this year. It’s really hard when you have to come back because players play harder since I left the game.

“I had to learn how to lose. I knew how to win, but I didn’t know how to lose. I had a bad attitude. I had to understand to be OK even if I lose.”

Crockett-Royster, a friend of Silva for 12 years, said the injuries were humbling and emotionally draining for Silva.

“It was hard for her because it was something she had never been through,” said Crockett-Royster, a silver medalist on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team who also competes in an Italian pro league. “She just couldn’t deal . . . she had to work so hard to get back into shape that winning means a lot more to her now.”

Silva’s comeback started at the end of the 1991 season. She placed second in three events and spent the winter training in Rio de Janeiro. She returned to Redondo Beach stronger and more confident than ever in 1992.

“It just shows in her body,” said Dodd, who teamed up with Silva for 11 tournament victories in 1989. “She’s stronger and leaner. She lost weight, even from 1990. She looks much better. Working hard is not a question with Jackie. At times I think she overdoes it.”

Silva and her partner have come out of the losers’ bracket for the two tournament victories this year. Each time Silva and her partner upset second-seeded Carrillo and Liz Masakayan in a sudden-death double final.

After winning the Hermosa Beach Open with Ciarelli, Silva said: “This is the happiest day of my life.”

But Ciarelli-Silva placed third twice and second once after that before Silva decided to play with Rock at the July 25 Boulder Open in Colorado. Rock had recently split with longtime partner Kirby and had finished ninth with Janice Harrer at Atlantic City, N.J., on July 5 and fifth with Lori Kotas at Minneapolis on July 19.

In 1991 Rock and Kirby won a WPVA-record 17 tournaments. They teamed for five wins this year, but Kirby initiated the breakup after a ninth-place finish at the June 28 Cape Cod Open.

“It was a very traumatic change for me,” said Rock, a former U.S. national team member and All-American at San Diego State. “We had just lost that chemistry we once had.”

Rock and Silva placed fifth at Boulder but were impressive in their second tournament at Venice Beach. Both women acknowledged that they have had problems playing together, but they have been able to put their differences aside.

“The problem was we used to hate each other,” Silva said. “We always play against each other.”

After a loss in the Venice tournament Aug. 1, Rock says she had a talk with Silva, whom she had spent a great deal of the day bickering with.

“That night we were brutally honest with each other,” Rock said. “We made an agreement that we were just going to play. Her honesty really helped. She’s pretty blunt. Most women aren’t real good with that, with being direct.”

The next day, the team won seven consecutive matches to win the tournament. Rock said it was the highlight of her career.

“It was like coming from almost the lowest point in my beach career and making a turnaround and finding that spirit,” Rock said. “I had not won a tournament in a month.

“Jackie definitely took the leadership role. She got me into positive thinking. I’ve been kind of feeling a little sorry for myself. She’s what I needed to get me out of my slump. She’s a competitor, tooth and nails.”

Silva credits Rock’s play for much of the team’s success. She says Rock is one of the strongest players on the beach.

“Her serve is killer,” Silva said. “When she plays like this, no one could stop her. She’s incredible. She’s a great volleyball player and she’s so strong.”

In the past, Silva has rarely complimented her partners and Rock believes that she knows the reason.

“Jackie demands more perfection,” Rock said. “Jackie is never satisfied. There’s always something you could do better. You either play up to it or change partners.

“People have always gotten better by playing with her. However this season ends and whatever happens next year, I know Jackie will have made me a better player.”