New Team Makes Sand Their Castle
Is it me, or has everyone on the women’s beach volleyball tour been each other’s playing partner at some point?
“It seems like it, doesn’t it?” says Holly McPeak, America’s all-time leader on the women’s money list. “It seems like we all end up playing with each other.”
People grow apart, they stop winning, they look for the bigger, better deal.
But McPeak might want to make her partnership with Elaine Youngs a permanent one. Since they hooked up this year they’ve been unstoppable, winning the first four stops on the AVP tour.
“We’re both very competitive,” Youngs says. “We like to win and hate to lose. My strengths and her strengths make for a good team.”
When McPeak played with Lisa Arce in 1996 and 1997, they won 14 titles. They got back together last year after McPeak played the 2000 season with Misty May, and won a 15th title. They’ve won more money together than any other U.S. pair. But a joint spot in the record books didn’t provide a strong enough bond.
“Last year we struggled,” McPeak says. “We did not have a good time together.”
So McPeak began training for the 2002 season with Diane DeNecochea. A month before the season, McPeak received a call from Youngs, who said she’d like to play with her.
“Last year on the international tour and the domestic tour, she was the most dominant player on the net,” McPeak says. “I thought she was way ahead of Diane at that point.”
Bye-bye, DeNecochea.
“It wasn’t easy,” McPeak said. “I really liked Diane. She had worked really hard.”
As a consolation, DeNecochea wound up playing with Youngs’ ex-partner, Barbra Fontana, who ranks second behind McPeak on the all-time earnings list.
“I wasn’t leaving her too high and dry,” McPeak said.
Youngs and Fontana won two U.S. events last year.
“We did great, but we didn’t win enough,” Youngs says.
Apparently, only a victory at every stop will do.
With three more AVP events, including this week’s stop at Manhattan Beach, McPeak and Youngs have a chance to run the table.
“I don’t like to think ahead,” McPeak says. “People are gunning to take us down every weekend. We’re the team to beat. There’s a lot of pressure.”
McPeak and Youngs crossed paths at UCLA in 1990 when McPeak transferred there from California for her senior year. But they didn’t play together because Youngs redshirted after knee surgery. And Youngs wasn’t around the beach scene until 1997 because she was on the U.S. national indoor team through the 1996 Olympics.
She broke onto the tour with another former Bruin, Liz Masakayan, and played with her until the 2000 season.
But with only one month to prepare, she’s surprised how well things have worked out. Practicing wasn’t easy, because Youngs lives in San Diego and McPeak in Manhattan Beach, which meant one of them had to drive two hours each way.
“I wasn’t sure how quickly it would happen,” Youngs says. “Luckily, it happened very quickly. Holly’s very easy to play with. Most people would say I’m fairly easy to play with.
“I think one thing that we have going for us is we’ve both played for a few years now. She’s on her 12th, this is my sixth.
“She’s got great ball control and can put the ball on the net for me; I’m a very powerful player and can put them down. I have a strong block, and she’s one of the best defenders out there. For us, it’s our heart and our heads. We’re smart players and we fight for everything.”
They’re even closer now after spending most of July overseas playing in international competition. Their main competition on the FIVB tour is the team of May and Kerri Walsh, which has won four events to McPeak and Youngs’ three.
Now McPeak is coming home, in more ways than one. She grew up in Manhattan Beach and first learned the game at a camp by the pier.
She would play volleyball all day long, with older guys, younger girls, even pros like Jackie Silva and Patty Dodd.
Now she lives in a house on the Strand with husband Leonard Armato, the AVP commissioner and Shaquille O’Neal’s former agent. It’s only a short walk from where the competition will be held this weekend.
“It’s so nice to be able to come home,” McPeak says. “Even just practicing today on the beach that I love, that I grew up on.
“This is a really prestigious tournament in the world of beach volleyball. It’s important to all of us.”
For McPeak and Youngs it could be another step toward history, and a clean sweep of all the events. That might even be enough to keep them together for another year.
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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.
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The Facts
What: AVP Michelob Light Manhattan Beach Open.
When: Continues today through Sunday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
Where: 100 Manhattan Beach Blvd., in Manhattan Beach.