McPeak Climbs to New Heights

Here in sandy California, volleyball on television can no more be avoided than Lucy or Roseanne. Go channel-surfing with your remote control and you will surely find a game, indoor or outdoor, on one of the cable networks. We get volleyball the way Alabama gets stock car races.

I was flipping a few days ago when my eye caught a volleyball contest from someplace called Old Orchard Beach. The sand looked blistering hot as Holly McPeak went sprawling face first in it for an absolutely fabulous point-saving dig, and later when her partner, Nancy Reno, closed out the match with a sizzling service ace. Quite a large crowd then began applauding the winners there in sun-kissed . . .

“Old Orchard Beach, Maine” read a TV graphic that popped onto my screen.

Maine?

I would have imagined beach volleyball in Maine right up there with water skiing in Casablanca.

Nevertheless, you bet your life, Maine, because beach volleyball happens to be spreading like wildfire. It could be the hottest professional game on the globe, particularly for women, who have such a pressing need for a team sport in which they can play hard and prosper.

“The game is going international,” McPeak said when we spoke before this weekend’s U.S. beach competition at Hermosa Beach, where points are at stake for players trying to qualify for the 1996 Summer Olympics.

“I’ve been to Italy and to Brazil. I just got back from two trips to New England and on Tuesday I’m off to Korea, and then right from there on to Japan. It’s a grind, but the game is gaining popularity all over the world. It isn’t just some Southern California thing.”

And it isn’t for 98-pound weaklings, either. Two on two, four on four, indoor, outdoor, whatever, these people can play. I pause occasionally with my remote, watch Karolyn Kirby or Liz Masakayan or Deb Richardson or Linda Hanley or Angela Rock or any of them, and see boundless athleticism, as great as Boris Becker diving for a ground stroke or Jerry Rice for a forward pass.

At 26, a Southern Californian through and through, McPeak is at the top of her form, she and Reno having risen to the top of this season’s Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn. point standings. They have won several WPVA tour events, ranging from New Orleans to Austin, Tex., to the one in Maine.

Having grown up in the South Bay, in the cradle of volleyball, Holly, as a kid, was competing with or against her twin brother, Gary, in organized and pickup games the way other kids from nearby towns were out playing basketball or soccer. She played for Mira Costa High in Manhattan Beach and for UCLA’s 1990 national champions.

“Volleyball was always around. It was always part of our lives,” she says. “I can’t remember a time when someone wasn’t having a game. Volleyball was there for me. It got me a scholarship through college. It’s enabled me to make a good living financially. I owe this sport a lot.”

Adult women proficient at basketball or softball often have no outlet for their skills. They practice endlessly to perfect their art, then have little or no means of making it their livelihood.

These women on the WPVA tour, they may work on a sandpile, but they take their occupation very seriously. If in the morning McPeak isn’t with her trainer, lifting weights or running, she is doing jumping workouts, broad jumps or squats, or otherwise keeping herself fit. I’ve seen more body fat on an American Gladiator.

The sport does takes its toll. After colliding with her partner one day in Dallas, McPeak’s bell rang for a long, long time.

“And sometimes you’ll be in some interesting or exotic city, but you just don’t have the energy or strength left to leave your room,” she says.

“Or other times all you’ll want is to have a life. The tour went from Newport, R.I., on to Maine, but I came home in between. I’m a huge NBA fan and now I understand how hard that part of their life must be, being gone all the time.”

Being gone July 23-28, 1996, will be all right, as long as it’s to Clayton County, Georgia, where beach volleyball will become a medal sport in the Olympic Games. The finals will be held at Atlanta Beach. Yes, there is an Atlanta Beach.