She Wants to Take a Stand on Men’s Disabled Team

Allison Ahlfeldt has played volleyball on the beach and in grade school. She has played volleyball on her high school team, Notre Dame Academy, and on a local club team, South Bay. She was recruited by such colleges as Hawaii-Pacific to play.

Never has Ahlfeldt, a bright, 21-year-old UC Irvine junior, thought of herself as disabled in any way. Her right leg might be made of space-age components and her right ankle joint might have been turned into a knee joint but Ahlfeldt has never not done what she has wanted.

So when Ahlfeldt received a phone call two years ago from the director of the U.S. men’s disabled volleyball team, Ahlfeldt wasn’t interested.

But Ahlfeldt accepted an invitation to the team’s Maryland training camp. She thought she might be able to help the team in some way, give some coaching tips or something.

“Then I got there,” she said, “and saw all these guys towering over me and I found myself staring, trying to find the disability or the fake limb and I thought, ‘I might try this.’ ”

More than trying it, Ahlfeldt made the team. There is no U.S. disabled women’s team. And as hard as Ahlfeldt had fought all her life against the label “disabled,” these men played and beat college men’s club teams. The competition was good and she was happy.

Until 14 months ago. In September 1998, the U.S. team traveled to Poland to compete in an international event that was part of the Paralympic qualifying system. When Ahlfeldt stepped onto the practice court the first time, all action stopped.

“Somebody asked what I was doing, who I was,” Ahlfeldt says. “The coach said I was a player. That was the wrong answer.”

No women, officials said, would be allowed to play in this tournament. Ahlfeldt wasn’t even allowed to sit on the bench. She spent her time at the Polish event sitting in the stands, wearing her USA uniform and clapping.

After several meetings by members of the international governing body, Ahlfeldt has been told she can’t play in international events, including the 2000 Paralympics in Australia.

“It’s not like there’s a women’s team I could play for,” Ahlfeldt says. “The reason I was given in the meeting I attended in Poland was that the presence of a woman demeaned the sport.”

And, yes, Ahlfeldt says, she finds this all ironic. To find this hurdle in an organization that fights for inclusiveness for its athletes.

Ahlfeldt is sitting outside the Cornerstone Cafe at UC Irvine. She is wearing blue jeans and open-toed sandals which have two-inch-high rubber soles. Ahlfeldt also has a perfect pedicure, toenails painted a deep maroon. It isn’t until Ahlfeldt begins describing the magic performed for her by a man named Carlos Hernandez at Lifelike Prosthesis in Carson, when Ahlfeldt is talking about real joints and fake legs, that you take a second look at the toenails on the right foot and realize that the foot and the toenails are not real.

“I was born with Proximal Femoral Focal Deficiency,” Ahlfeldt says. “Just call it PFFD.” The end of Ahlfeldt’s thigh bone closest to the hip did not develop.

Ahlfeldt has gone through a series of complicated operations. Her right foot was rotated 180 degrees so that her ankle joint functions as a knee joint. The rotated foot became the below-knee stump where a prosthesis has been attached. Ahlfeldt’s parents chose this procedure, the Van Nes procedure, because having the ankle joint function as the knee joint gave their daughter the greatest chance of walking and running.

And always Ahlfeldt, who is 5 feet 11, has run. She played softball and basketball but, since she was growing up in Manhattan Beach, volleyball was her favorite. “Even when I’d be in body casts after surgery, I’d be doing body slams playing volleyball,” Ahlfeldt says. “My mom would get extra plaster so she could repair the casts.”

As Ahlfeldt moved through the volleyball ranks, in school and on club teams, she would always get resistance. She would hear the coaches who didn’t think the girl with the prosthesis could play the game. “And so I just went out and played better than everybody else,” Ahlfeldt says.

After playing at Notre Dame Academy, a high school volleyball power, Ahlfeldt went to Hawaii-Pacific. She didn’t play volleyball. “I had played all day, every day for nearly 10 years and I guess I was a little burnt out,” Ahlfeldt says. She majored in marine biology until, after two years, when it was time to do an internship, Ahlfeldt couldn’t find one. “I began to think if an internship was this hard to get, what kind of job would I ever find?”

She’s majoring in English and management at UC Irvine and traveling often to play and practice with the men’s national team. As it stands now, Ahlfeldt hopes to be able to sit on the bench with her team at the Paralympics.

“I’ve written to my congresswoman and to everybody I can think of involved with international volleyball,” Ahlfeldt says, “but I’m not getting very far. I’d love to be able to play. I wish there were women’s teams but there aren’t. So I’ll keep writing letters and I’ll play when I can.”

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