ON THE BEACH / MIKE REILLEY : Smith, Stoklos Fighting the Fine

Does the fine always fit the crime?

In November, 1990, the National Football League fined the New England Patriots $72,500 for the sexual harassment of Boston Herald sportswriter Lisa Olson.

The Patriots were fined $50,000, along with players Zeke Mowatt ($12,500) and Robert Perryman and Michael Timpson ($5,000 each).

In August, 1992, the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals’ board of directors fined beach stars Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos a combined $70,000--for missing the $100,000 Seal Beach Open to play in Spain.

Smith and Stoklos argue that the fine isn’t fair.

They refuse to pay it, and are suspended for this weekend’s $225,000 Jose Cuervo Gold Crown Classic at Santa Cruz.

Their appeal was rejected by the tour’s board of directors on Wednesday, and they are pursuing further legal action.

Their status for the upcoming U.S. Championships Aug. 28-30 at Hermosa Beach remains uncertain.

The winning teams at the next two tournaments split $100,000 each. The fine, coupled with the suspension, could cost Smith and Stoklos a potential $240,000 if they don’t play in the tournaments.

AVP President Jon Stevenson said Smith and Stoklos violated the tour’s players agreement by skipping Seal Beach to play in the Olympic year ’92 tournament in Almeria, Spain.

Smith said he and Stoklos went to Spain to promote beach volleyball as an Olympic sport.

Stevenson said they went for the $70,000 in prize money.

Stoklos said it was “like the Dream Team got fined.”

Stevenson said the AVP can fine the players at least $10,000 for missing a tournament, and as much prize money as the team earns in the non-AVP tournament they play in.

Add fines: A typical fine for fighting in the NBA is $5,000 per player, although the league can charge as much as $20,000 per player.

Charles Barkley, then with Philadelphia, and Detroit’s Bill Laimbeer were each fined $20,000 for a 1990 brawl, with each team being fined $50,000. The maximum team fine is $250,000.

Their winning streak over, Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes hope to start a new one this weekend in Santa Cruz.

Kiraly and Steffes, winners of 13 consecutive tournaments, were eliminated in the losers’ bracket quarterfinals of the $100,000 Seal Beach Open last weekend by Brian Lewis of Corona del Mar and Mike Whitmarsh of Manhattan Beach.

The loss left Kiraly and Steffes tied for the tour record set in 1975-76 by Jim Menges and Greg Lee.

“I guess it’s appropriate that Menges and Lee stay in the record book,” San Clemente’s Kiraly said. “They kind of laid the foundation for the sport.

“I never cared about the record once we broke Sinjin (Smith) and Randy (Stoklos’) record (of 10 consecutive victories in a season). We’ll just have to start a new streak.”

San Diego’s Pat Powers, who won the Seal Beach tournament with Manhattan Beach’s Mike Dodd, said he expects Kiraly and Steffes will be ready this weekend.

“Karch is a very driven individual,” Powers said. “I’m sure he will go back to the drawing board this week, but so will we.”

Add Karch: Kiraly, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, said he won’t return to the Italian pro indoor league next season. He and Newport Beach’s Steve Timmons have played for Il Messaggero the past two seasons.

“I’ll never go back,” Kiraly said. “Two seasons was enough.”

Timmons has said he will not return to Italy and will instead train for next season’s beach tour.

Way to go: NBC’s telecast of Sunday’s finals went down like clockwork. The 30-minute match left the network with 11 spare minutes in its hourlong telecast, not including commercial time.

Kevin Monaghan, director of new business development with NBC Sports, said the network filled the extra time with footage of Smith and Stoklos playing at last year’s U.S. championships at Hermosa Beach.

NBC cut away from its live telecast of the winners’ bracket semifinals Saturday with Adam Johnson and Tim Hovland leading Whitmarsh and Lewis, 13-12, with 48 seconds remaining.

The match started two minutes behind schedule, and the network had to cut away because the match ran over its one-hour time slot.

Dodd, a member of the AVP’s board of directors, said he was disappointed to see the match cut off early.

“It’s kind of sad,” he said. “But you can’t always have a great World Series or a great NBA finals.”

Low key: The Seal Beach crowd once was one of the quietest ever at a beach tournament, and Lewis thought he knew why.

He blamed his team’s poor play in the final.

“They should have been subdued,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be out there cheering for guys who were hitting the ball out.

“Everyone was watching on TV. It was a joke. We wanted to give them a good game.”

Add Lewis: The former Orange Coast College standout was playing his first tournament with Whitmarsh after being dumped by Hovland earlier in the week.

Whitmarsh and Lewis beat Hovland and his new partner, Johnson of Capistrano Beach, 12-10, in the losers’ bracket final.

“It was sweet revenge,” Lewis said. “It was payback.”

Nina Matthies, a Women’s Pro Beach Volleyball Assn. board member, plans to retire after this season. She will play in her last beach tournament this weekend at the World Championships at Manhattan Beach.

Matthies, the tour’s only player to win tournaments in three decades, is seeded ninth at Manhattan Beach with Laguna Beach’s Gayle Stammer. Matthies will retire from playing, but will continue her duties as the Pepperdine women’s volleyball coach.

Turtle’s pace: We know turtles are slow, but . . .

The WPVA’s tournament scheduled for Sept. 19-20 at Boca Raton, Fla., is in jeopardy because sea turtles have nested on the courts.

Tournament officials say they can’t move the nests, and fear that the tournament will have to be moved or possibly canceled because the nests will still be there when the tournament begins next month.

Beach Notes

Fountain Valley’s Carlos Briceno, a member of the U.S. Olympic bronze-medal team, had 10 kills for Team Op in an American Beach Volleyball Assn. tour match at Avon, Colo., last weekend.

Briceno hit 66.6% in the Op’s 15-7 victory over Team Speedo in the finals.

Briceno, who was waived by the league earlier in the season, replaced Laguna Beach’s Scott Fortune on the Team Op roster. Fortune had a post-Olympic commitment in Europe and couldn’t play. It was Team Op’s fifth victory on the 10-stop tour.