4-Woman Teams Able to Dig Out of Deficits : Volleyball: Comebacks rule the day in the opening round of the tour stop at First Street Beach in Seal Beach.

It was a day for comebacks on the Bud Light 4-Woman Volleyball Tour as Team Lady Foot Locker--with international model/middle blocker Gabrielle Reece as captain--rebounded from deficits three times in Saturday’s round-robin action at First Street Beach.

But Team Forster benefited from the biggest comeback, when Antoinnette White, former Cal State Long Beach All-American, came back from playing professional volleyball in Italy. Forster was without captain Kristin Klein, who’s playing with the U.S. national team, and White, a tour alternate, returned from Europe late last week.

“We’ve only played together a couple of hours before today,” White said. “I think I started kind of slow today, but we got it going for awhile.”

As Reece’s team was rallying to win, 15-12, and 15-13, in its first two games, White was slamming home spikes as her team scored the last seven consecutive points for a 15-13 victory in the first game and then coasted, 15-8, in the second. White, who finished the day with 22 kills, had nine in the second game.

Lady Foot Locker fell behind, 10-7, in the first game, but Reece’s blocking and the hitting of Teee Williams, a two-time NCAA player of the year at Hawaii, was the difference in the end. They also took control of the net to overcome an 8-4 disadvantage in the second game.

The tournament format seeds the team with the best record directly into today’s 2:45 p.m. final and pits the two teams with the next-best records in a 1:20 p.m. semifinal. There are three more round-robin games to be played today, but when Lady Foot Locker and Forster met Saturday, the winner was taking a giant step toward the final.

Forster jumped to a 7-3 lead, scoring points on a White spike, block, dink and serve, but Lady Foot Locker came back to tie the score, 8-8, on two aces by Williams. Two more Williams aces were the finishing touch to a 15-8 victory.

White, who attended Lynwood High and earned All-American honors twice with the 49ers, was happy to have her feet back in the sand where she sometimes played while in college. But she was disappointed last spring when she wasn’t drafted as a starter on one of the five teams on the four-woman beach tour.

“I was bummed when I didn’t get picked,” she said. “Last year, when they just had a couple of tournaments because they were just starting up, I played in one and I think I played pretty well.

“I think I showed I can play on the left (outside hitter spot) out here, but I didn’t get picked. I don’t know, maybe it was because they weren’t sure when I’d be home from playing in Rome.”

After the power play she displayed Sunday, it’s highly probable she will be starting for some team on the four-woman tour before the season is over.

“I hope so, because this is really fun,” White said. “It’s very different from the two-person game. It’s a lot easier for an indoor player to adapt to.”

Despite a stiff on-shore wind that played havoc with high sets and serves, long rallies and diving saves were the order of the day, unless White was swinging at the ball.

Lady Foot Locker, at 3-0, meets Team Nervous (0-2) today in a round-robin match that offers Reece--one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People in the World--and her team a beautiful chance to clinch a spot in today’s final.