May Makes Stop at Beach as National Team Waits

Qualifying for the U.S. men’s and women’s Olympic beach volleyball teams means traveling the world.

Well, traveling everywhere in the world but the United States, chasing ranking points in something called the Federation Internationale de Volleyball and forever more known here as FIVB.

And to qualify for the men’s or women’s indoor U.S. Olympic volleyball teams wouldn’t even mean a guarantee of playing in the Olympics, because neither team has qualified for the 2000 Games in Sydney and neither is a lock to do so.

Which brings us to Huntington Beach, just south of the pier, on a windy, cool, cloudy morning, the first day of the four-day Oldsmobile Alero Beach Volleyball Series.

Misty May, the two-time college player of the year at Long Beach State and a Newport Beach resident who is the daughter of former Olympic volleyball player Butch May, is playing a qualifying match with her partner Valinda Hilleary.

May is clearly the class of this group. She and Hilleary easily beat Kim Blankinship and Suzanne Radcliffe, 15-4. In the afternoon, May and Hilleary looked impressive again in beating beach veterans Linda Chisholm and Deb Richardson, 15-8.

If they win one more match, at 11 a.m. today, May and Hilleary will advance to the 16-team main draw of this event, part of a new series aimed at helping USA Volleyball officials identify the most promising Olympic prospects and helping them make their way to the FIVB tour.

Because May is playing in Huntington Beach this weekend, there were some tightened stomachs among the members of the USA indoor women’s volleyball team in Colorado Springs.

May is considered so talented that one beach volleyball expert Thursday said if she is the setter on the U.S. indoor team, it will qualify for the Olympics and maybe medal. And if May isn’t the setter, the U.S. women might not qualify at all.

So when May, with Hilleary, played at an American Volleyball Professionals (AVP) tournament in Clearwater, Fla., last weekend and then entered this new tournament in Huntington Beach this weekend, everybody was wondering: What’s up with Misty?

“I don’t know,” Gavin Markovits public relations coordinator for USA Volleyball said while May and Hilleary were winning their first match Thursday. “You’ll have to ask Misty.”

Misty was asked and Misty had an answer. May, who is finished with her collegiate eligibility and who brought homework with her to the beach, said she is off to Colorado Springs and the indoor national team training camp at the end of the month.

May has thought about both beach and indoor volleyball a lot since she led Long Beach State to the NCAA title last fall. “I absolutely thought about beach,” May said. After all, May began playing volleyball on the beach. While her parents sold pizza off the Santa Monica Pier, May would, in her words, “be hanging on the legs of Karch Kiraly,” while Kiraly was becoming the best and most famous volleyball player, indoor and beach, in the country.

And it is partly because May wants to be like Karch, to win Olympic medals in both indoor and beach volleyball, that she has chosen to put her Olympic eggs in the indoor basket.

Mick Haley, the coach of the women’s national indoor team, is eager to welcome May to Colorado Springs. He expects her on May 23 and expects to play her in a practice match with the Dominican Republic on May 24.

“We’re excited to get Misty,” Haley said. “She’s an exceptional athlete and we think she’ll add significantly to our setting. I don’t think there’s any question that Misty, especially if we get to the medal rounds at the Olympics, is the one player that little kids all over the country could copy.”

Some star power is needed at USA Volleyball, whether it’s an indoor star or a beach star.

It was a huge disappointment at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta when, despite a huge financial commitment from USA Volleyball, the women’s team finished seventh and the men’s team was ninth.

And now in beach volleyball, a sport born on the California beaches, a sport that seems so American, the U.S. men’s team with the highest FIVB ranking is Ian Clark of Boulder, Colo., and Bill Boullianne of Palos Verdes who are 10th. The top U.S. women’s team of Lisa Arce and Barbra Fontana of Manhattan Beach, are third in the world and Elaine Youngs of El Toro and Liz Masakayan of San Diego are fifth.

What seems hard to believe is that the U.S. beach team will be chosen totally outside of the U.S. No sponsors can be found in the United States to underwrite an FIVB event and so the men and women must travel the world for 22 months, scrambling to earn enough FIVB points.

Kiraly, who lives in San Clemente and who, with partner Adam Johnson of Laguna Beach, is seeded fifth this weekend, says he isn’t sure he wants to make the commitment necessary to qualify for the Sydney Olympics.

“Sometimes the task of traveling so much to all those foreign tournaments is a daunting task,” Kiraly said. “There have been two [FIVB] tournaments so far and Adam and I have played in one. We finished fifth. Adam and I have been going over the schedule, trying to see what might work out.”

As May looked around, she saw that there was no best route to the Olympics. So she has decided to aim for her own goals. Olympic medals in indoor and beach. Play indoor, which is more physically demanding, while she is young and then, when her knees begin to ache from all the pounding, move back to the beach. Where she began.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com