Loiola, Rego Cap Volleyball Run

A quick aside to beach volleyball teams at the Olympics: Don’t do anything to further annoy Jose Loiola and Emanuel Rego.

Angry they were not top seeded in the Olympics, Loiola and Rego took out their frustrations Sunday at the Manhattan Beach Open, capping a two-day undefeated run with a 15-13 championship victory over Canyon Ceman and Mike Whitmarsh at the most prestigious Assn. of Volleyball Professionals tournament.

Loiola and Rego, who live in Southern California and will represent Brazil next month in Sydney, finished well ahead of every other team in the Olympic qualifying standings, but were stunned to find out Saturday they were seeded No. 2.

In a departure from seeding protocol for the 1996 Olympics, the host country was given the top seeding, knocking Loiola and Rego into a potential semifinal against the second-best team in the world, third-seeded Jose Marco Ferreira and Ricardo Santos of Brazil.

Most people assumed the teams would meet in the championship, but the seeding decisions by the Federation Internationale de Volleyball, the sport’s governing body, ensures that won’t happen.

“It’s because they don’t want to see two Brazilian teams in the finals,” Loiola said. “The last two years, about 89% of the finals [in international tournaments] have been Brazil vs. Brazil. They don’t want to see the best teams in the finals. They want to see country vs. country.”

Bobby Clarke, a member of the FIVB executive committee, admitted the decision to give the host country the top seed was “a change from [the] Atlanta [Olympics].”

But, he said, the FIVB planned all along to give Australia one of the top three spots.

“It’s for marketing,” Clarke said. “They want to sell tickets. It’s just that players and countries tend to take it personally. As in, ‘That hurts me.’ ”

Loiola and Rego put the hurt on other teams at the most well-attended Manhattan Open in years.

The duo faltered only slightly, allowing Ceman and Whitmarsh to come back from a 13-7 deficit to tie the championship match. But Loiola delivered an ace and Ceman hit long. “This proves we’re peaking at the right time,” Loiola said.

The same can’t be said for the U.S. team of Dain Blanton and Eric Fonoimoana, who finished seventh. They were eliminated after a 15-3 loss to Eduardo Garrido and Paulo Azevedo.

“I always want to come here and win,” said Fonoimoana, who played and later coached at Mira Costa High, a couple of miles from the tournament site. “We didn’t deserve to win.”