On Beach, There’s No Calm After Storm

Since when was life on the professional beach volleyball circuit supposed to be a day at the beach?

The Assn. of Volleyball Professionals’ tour stop in Dallas had to be canceled when a tornado swept through the tournament site late Saturday morning, knocking down several player tents, the media tent and destroying an estimated $100,000 worth of sound-system and production equipment. No one was injured, but a crowd of nearly 1,000 had to be evacuated.

From Dallas, the AVP players have moved to Baltimore for the U.S. Olympic beach volleyball trials, which are scheduled to begin today at the Harborview Complex. There, 16 two-man teams will compete for two of the three Olympic spots allotted the United States.

To hear some AVP players tell it, here is where the real hardship begins.

Top three AVP complaints about the trials:

1. Sinjin Smith and Carl Henkel, the top-ranked team on the rival international tour, will not have to compete, having been granted automatic entry into the Olympic field by virtue of their FIVB standing. The last time Smith-Henkel participated in an AVP event--Hermosa Beach, 1994--they finished 17th.

2. The FIVB ball, not the AVP ball, will be used at the trials.

3. The FIVB’s lax interpretation of the hand-setting rule will replace the AVP’s stricter “fingertips-only” regulation, which will lead, supposedly, to shabby play, a systematic lowering of standards and eventual anarchy by the bay.

“In our tour, you have to set the ball very cleanly,” Karch Kiraly, the AVP’s top-ranked player, said. “The ball can’t be held. In the other [FIVB] tour, if the ball doesn’t hit you in the face, it’s a pretty good set.”

The FIVB ball is a problem, Kiraly said, because it is rounder, more slippery and more balloon-like than the AVP ball, which has smaller seams and a protective sealant designed to absorb less of the players’ sweat.

Despite these handicaps, Kiraly and his partner, Kent Steffes, have consented to compete in Baltimore. Kiraly-Steffes, who won six of the first 10 tournaments on the 1996 AVP tour, are the top-seeded team at the trials.

FACTOID

In a poll conducted for Eastman Kodak Co., more than 30% of U.S. Olympic team members said the athlete they would most like to work out with is Michael Jordan. Second was Bonnie Blair with 19%.

NEWSMAKER

Just because this weekend’s Olympic freestyle wrestling trials in Spokane, Wash., will feature the sport at its athletic and cerebral best doesn’t mean some of the guys won’t behave like Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Just ask Kendall Cross of Raleigh, N.C., the two-time defending national champion at 125.5 pounds. He is expected to battle two-time world champion Terry Brands of Iowa City, Iowa, in the event’s most promising duel.

The last time they met, earlier this year, Cross defeated Brands at the national championships in Las Vegas. Brands was so upset, he walked off the mat without shaking Cross’ hand, a breach of wrestling etiquette.

“It was a letdown to see that happen--that must be how he shows his disappointment,” said Cross, who finished sixth in the 1992 Olympics. “I would never have done that.”

The rivalry was fueled again recently when Brands was featured with twin brother Tom (136.5 pounds) in a national sports magazine that assured readers both would make the Olympic team.

The story didn’t mention Cross, who has been only too happy to rip his opponent in other places.

“[Terry] is a very one-dimensional wrestler,” Cross said. “He comes at you with the same style. I feel I’m the best wrestler in the class.”

LAUREL WREATH

USC swimmer Kristine Quance, of Northridge, did the right thing last week in deciding not to sue U.S. Swimming. Disqualified because of an obscure turn violation in her best event during the Olympic trials, Quance did not want to see one of the women who qualified for the Olympics in her place removed from the team. Quance made the team in two other events.

THORN WREATH

Reebok plans to feature Dallas football star Emmitt Smith in its Olympic advertising campaign. The exposure, as well as the endorsement fee, could have better benefited genuine Olympic athletes, such as Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson in 1992.

*

Olympic Scene Notes

Chad Carvin, the swimmer from Irvine whose Olympic hopes were put off at least beyond Atlanta because of a heart condition, competed Sunday in San Diego in a triathlon--1,500-meter swim, 40-K bike race and 10-K run. . . . Even near the water, Atlanta is proving too hot for world-class athletes. One of the top professional beach volleyball teams, Adam Johnson and Jose Loiola, forfeited the finals of a recent tournament there to Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes after Johnson had complained in the semifinals of heat exhaustion.

Linford Christie ran a 10.04 in the 100 meters Saturday, breaking his European Cup record and showing that he has a chance to defend his Olympic title. He’s still saying he might not run in Atlanta, but hardly anyone takes him seriously. . . . Syria’s Ghada Shouaa, who won the world championship in the heptathlon last summer after Jackie Joyner-Kersee withdrew because of an injury, has served notice that she will be no pushover for Joyner-Kersee in the Olympics. Shouaa scored an Asian record 6,942 points recently in Gotzis, Austria.

Lindsay Davenport, named last week to the U.S. tennis team, is her family’s second Olympian. Her father, Wink, played for the U.S. volleyball team in 1968. . . . U.S. Olympic baseball Coach Skip Bertman didn’t attend the opening of the team’s training camp last Wednesday in Millington, Tenn. He’s coaching Louisiana State in the College World Series in Omaha. The earliest Bertman can get to Tennessee is Wednesday. . . . Outfielder Mark Kotsay, college baseball player of the year in 1995, also hoped that his arrival in Millington would be postponed beyond last week. But his Cal State Fullerton Titans did not advance to Omaha.

Times staff writers Randy Harvey and Bill Plaschke contributed to this report.