Laguna Beach’s Berney Will Not Take Volleyball Sitting Down : Athletics: Standout for the Artists would rather play--keeping alive family tradition--than watch the high school game.

David Berney hasn’t exactly been the best high school volleyball fan, even back in the days when he was knee-high to a middle blocker.

Sure, he was loyal to the Laguna Beach High team. After all, his two brothers and sister all started there, giving him three reasons to pull for the Artists.

He just hated sitting still and watching the game. Especially when he could be playing.

“I’m still that way,” said Berney, now the Artists’ starting setter. “I never have liked watching very much. I can’t go to the beach and say, ‘I’m not playing today.’ I see the balls sitting there and I have to grab one and start playing.”

That work ethic started early with all of Stan Berney’s children. And it carried three of them to Division I college programs.

David, a senior and three-year starter for Laguna Beach, hopes to be family’s next, and last, college player.

Paula, the oldest child, starred at Laguna Beach in the early 1980s and was the South Coast League MVP in 1983. An All-Southern Section pick, she went on to play for Loyola Marymount, UCLA and Cal State Long Beach.

Stan Jr. had the family’s best vertical jump, 42 inches. He played on the 1985 Laguna Beach league championship team and attended UC Santa Barbara.

Roger, who occasionally teams with David on the beach, was a teammate of Stan’s during his junior year at Laguna. Roger played volleyball at Cal State Long Beach, but excelled at crew, leading the 49ers to the NCAA title in 1988.

Stan thinks David has the potential to be the family’s best player. David won’t argue.

“I would have to say it’s me,” said David, not being boastful about it. “It’s because I’ve been around the sport for so long.

“Their ball-control (passing) was pretty archaic back then. Today, coaches teach more technique, everything is so precise.”

He’s good enough to have attracted the attention of several Division I programs. USC, Penn State and defending NCAA-champion Pepperdine, have shown interest. He recently visited George Mason, an up-and-coming program where he could start right away.

At 6 feet, he’s small for a volleyball player, even a setter. But his 38-inch vertical leap, blocking and hitting skills and a cannon-like jump serve make him one of Orange County’s most sought-after players this season.

“I really want to play in college,” he said. “Everyone in my family made it to Division I in college, but then they sort of petered out. I don’t want that to happen with me. I don’t want to look back and have any regrets.”

After college, Berney hopes to make an impact on the pro beach volleyball tour. He has already played in several local beach tournaments with Roger and with Capistrano Valley outside hitter Aaron Garcia.

He and Garcia, fierce rivals during the high school season, won the Capistrano Beach tournaments together last summer.

“Aaron and I are the best of friends,” Berney said. “But we’re such competitors. When we go against each other, we’re trying to rip each others’ heads off. It’s blood-for-blood out there.”

David’s competitive nature has family ties.

Stan Sr. was a world-class quarter-miler at Nebraska in the late 1950s. He barely missed making the 1960 U.S. Olympic team.

Maureen, Stan’s wife of 28 years, played co-ed volleyball at San Gabriel High. Her children picked up her love for the sport and took it to a new level.

“We never pushed our kids to do any sport,” Stan Sr. said. “We always let them do their own thing.”

David started developing his volleyball skills more than a decade before high school. At 3, he was bumping the ball with his brothers and sisters.

At 5, he was shagging balls at practice for stars such as Olympian Scott Fortune and beach player Adam Johnson. He began attending volleyball clinics as a third-grader.

“They wouldn’t let me play at first because I was so young and so small,” said Berney, later adding that the clinic was for eighth-graders .

He started playing club volleyball at age 11 for the Balboa Bay Club team. He led the club to a national age-group championship and was a two-time All-American.

David joined the Laguna Beach varsity as a freshman and was a varsity starter by his sophomore year, when Michael Soylular took over as coach.

By his junior year, David established himself as one of the county’s top setters along with Newport Harbor’s Russ Gan and Esperanza’s Chris Pitzak.

Gan, The Times Orange County player of the year last season, has graduated. But Berney and Pitzak are back to settle who’s the best setter in the county this year.

Round 1 will be at the Orange County Championships this weekend at Marina High. The tournament attracts 20 of the county’s best teams, as well as several college scouts.

It will draw a few Berneys, too.

Stan Sr. and Maureen will be there to watch, as they have for the past 13 years, when Paula first played for the Artists.

Paula, now a manager and coach with the Crown Valley Volleyball club, might stop by, too. So might Roger and Stan Jr., who are now working in the computer business.

That’s just the way David figured it would work out. He watched them play a lot of volleyball when he was a kid.

Now, it’s his turn to play.

Volleyball Poll

Pos. School (League) 1. Capistrano Valley (South Coast) 0-0 2. Esperanza (Empire) 2-0 3. Huntington Beach (Sunset) 0-0 4. Laguna Beach (Pacific Coast) 1-0 5. Irvine (Sea View) 1-1 6. Newport Harbor (Sea View) 0-1 7. Santa Margarita (Sea View) 0-0 8. Fountain Valley (Sunset) 1-0 9. Edison (Sunset) 1-0 10. Dana Hills (South Coast) 1-2

Contenders: Calvary Chapel, Corona del Mar, El Modena, El Toro, Foothill, Garden Grove, Marina, Valencia, Whittier Christian.