WORLD SPORTS SCENE : Phipps Has Age and Experience 10 Years Later

Ten years ago, Keba Phipps was primed to become the best U.S. Olympic women’s volleyball player of all time when she joined the national team at 16.

As is often the case, though, the promise far exceeded the reality. Phipps’ only Olympic competition was in 1988 when the U.S. women failed to advance beyond pool play four years after winning the silver medal. The volleyball community acknowledged it expected too much from the young woman.

Now 26 and a veteran of the Italian professional league, Phipps is expected to return to the U.S. national team this week, giving the Americans a big boost in their quest to win at Atlanta.

The 6-foot-3 Phipps is one of a growing number of U.S. Olympians returning in time for next summer, but her situation is vastly different than most.

Phipps, who grew up in Lakewood, was exiled from the national team in 1990 after failing a drug test for an undisclosed substance. At the time, it seemed a sad ending to a disappointing national team career.

“She never had the opportunity to be compared to the best,” said Terry Liskevych, U.S. national team coach.

Since leaving the United States, Phipps has become something of a superstar in Italy, where she is a three-time most valuable player. But the best pro women are competing in Japan and Brazil.

“We still want to see how she does against Cuba, Russia and Brazil,” said Liskevych, who also has welcomed the return of ’92 Olympians Caren Kemner and Paula Weishoff.

Phipps’ experience could be invaluable to the U.S. women, who won the bronze medal in Barcelona, Spain, but will be hard pressed to improve as Cuba and Brazil have dominated competition.

“We’re not that far behind,” Liskevych said. “We might have the right blend of players now.”

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Jeff Rouse, world record-holder in the backstroke, has scheduled a news conference at next week’s Santa Clara Invitational to call attention to his anti-drug crusade. For the past nine months, he has circulated a petition to fellow athletes asking for swimming’s leaders to wage a stronger fight against doping.

So far, the response has been underwhelming.

“I’m a little disappointed,” Rouse said last weekend at the Mission Viejo Swim Meet of Champions. “When I talk to them on the phone, they are excited about it.”

But few have taken action like Rouse, who said he is more concerned with issues in swimming than the times of his competitors and friends.

“Sometimes, I can’t even remember my world-record time,” he said.

So he doesn’t forget, it is 53.86 seconds for the 100-meter backstroke.

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Rouse’s concerns are relevant in the wake of the International Swimming Federation’s recent investigation of China’s swimming program. Chinese swimmers and coaches told a group of FINA officials they used herbal remedies such as bee’s jelly and ground deer’s antlers, and that might have caused some of their drug tests to turn up with the steroid dehydrotestosterone. Chinese athletes had an extraordinary number of positives at the Asian Games last fall. The investigators found that antler powder contained 5% methyltestosterone, an anabolic steroid.

China’s swimmers have been banned from the Pan Pacific Championships in August in Atlanta.

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A call for volunteers for the Atlanta Olympic cycling events was posted on the Internet last week by U.S. Cycling Federation official Les Earnest.

The benefits for those volunteering: “Transportation by bus from parking facilities to venues and return. A uniform, which you get to keep.”

The disadvantages:

“No housing.

“No food.

“No transportation to Atlanta.

“No local transportation other than from the parking facilities to venues.”

What a deal.

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How much goodwill is too much? Harvey Schiller, Turner Sports president, reported there is increasing interest in a Winter Olympics-style Goodwill Games, perhaps as early as 1999.

World Scene Notes

Amy Acuff, the 19-year-old UCLA sophomore who went 6 feet 4 to add the national championship in the high jump to her NCAA title, is aiming higher. “I always dreamed of jumping seven feet,” she said. “That sounds outrageous, but I’ve seen a lot of skinny guy jumpers do it. I’m hoping by the time I’m 26 or 27, I’ll be able to do it.” . . . Michael Johnson would like to become the first man in the Olympics to win the 200 and the 400 meters next summer at Atlanta. But he would not be the first athlete to achieve that rare double. Valerie Brisco won the 200 and 400 in 1984.

Bonnie Blair insists she won’t return to competition after retiring, but hardly anyone believes her. In a recent interview with the Dallas Morning News, she acknowledged it will be difficult for her to sit still when competition begins next winter. “My heart’s definitely going to be tugging quite a bit,” she said. “When the skaters start racing and the [skating] guns are going off, I know those tugs are going to be there.”

With no money to buy boxing gloves for the recent world championships in Berlin, Mongolia’s sports federation made a trade with the manufacturer--the gloves for 100 slaughtered sheep and their wool. . . . The World Badminton Championships at Lausanne, Switzerland, ended in a brawl when a Chinese fan accidentally hit an Indonesian official on the head with a flag after the Chinese team’s upset victory over the Indonesians.

Staff writer Randy Harvey contributed to this story.