OLYMPIC REWIND
LONDON OLYMPICS PREVIEW
saw the team win the volleyball Triple Crown – gold medals at the 1985 FIVB World Cup, 1986 FIVB World Cham- pionship and 1988 Olympics – and it matched the Soviet record of consecutive Olympic gold medals. Kiraly, the team captain, was the Olympic
MVP, and Timmons had also come up huge with his terminating attacks from both the front and back row. A less heralded hero was 5-11 defensive specialist Eric Sato, whose blistering jump serves accounted for numerous key points.
One of the great sources of pride for Kiraly about the 1988 gold was the fact that, in a full- fi eld tournament, the team was able to deliver under the pressure of great expectations. “Win- ning is one thing – staying on top after win- ning is another,” he wrote in “The Sand Man,” his autobiography. “It’s much harder. … The pressure you face as a favorite, including the pressure you put on yourself, is the ultimate test for an athlete. And the one of which I am most proud.” Women — Finish: seventh • Record: 2-3 (1-2 in pool play, 1-1 in the consola- tion round) • Team: Deitre Collins, Caren Kemner, Laurel Brassey, Liz Masakayan, Jayne McHugh, Melissa McLinden, Kim Oden, Keba Phipps, Angela Rock, Kim Ruddins, Liane Sato, Tammy Webb. • Head coach: Terry Liskevych The Seoul Games marked the fi rst of three Olympics for head coach Terry Liskevych, and he says he was still fi guring things out in in- ternational volleyball after coaching women’s college volleyball at University of the Pacifi c. As he puts it, once you’ve been to an Olym- pics and gone through a quadrennial, you still may have butterfl ies in subsequent Olympics “but they fl y in formation.”
In Seoul, the U.S. women were in a brutal pool that included gold-medal favorite China and a potent Peru team that had won a bronze medal two years earlier at the FIVB World Championship. China beat the U.S. 3-0 in the opening match, but the Americans bounced back with a fi ve-set victory over Brazil in the next match.
Unexpectedly, though, Peru upset China
in pool play, which meant that the U.S.’s only chance of advancing to the medal round was to beat Peru 3-0 in the fi nal pool-play match and hold them to 34 points. Into the early part of the third set, it looked as if they might pull it off. The U.S. won the fi rst set 15-12 and set two 15-9. But the team ran out of steam in set three and lost. With nothing to play for, the U.S.’s motivation dissolved and Peru came back to win in fi ve sets.
In the non-medal round, the U.S. lost the
fi fth-place match to East Germany in four sets and then fi nished with a fi ve-set victory over
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South Korea to take seventh place. It wasn’t the fi nish they wanted, but people had told Liskevych the team wouldn’t qualify for the Games at all that quadrennial, so there was some consolation in the fact that they earned a spot in an Olympic women’s fi eld that in- cluded only eight teams.
Barcelona, 1992 • • • • • • • • Men — Finish: bronze medal • Re-
cord: 6-2 (4-1 in pool play, 2-1 in the medal round) • Team: Nick Becker, Car- los Briceno, Bob Ctvrtlik, Scott Fortune, Dan Greenbaum, Brent Hilliard, Bryan Ivie, Doug Partie, Bob Samuelson, Eric Sato, Jeff Stork, Steve Timmons. • Head coach: Fred Sturm Three-peat wasn’t to be. Up until a few months before the Olympics, U.S. coach Fred Sturm was still trying to get Karch Kiraly to return, but Karch ultimately decided that his priority was to conquer the beach, which he did – for most of the 1990s. The U.S. carried on without him, but with four returning starters from the 1988 team: Jeff Stork, Bob Ctvrtlik, Doug Partie and Steve Timmons. Controversy bubbled up after the fi rst match in Barcelona, which the U.S. won on the court in fi ve games over Japan, but lost when the FIVB ruled to reverse the outcome because of a supposedly overlooked infraction – a second yellow card that had been given to middle blocker Bob Samuelson with Japan leading 2-1 in sets and 14-13 in the fourth game, which in those days was a side out game to 15. The ruling was this: the ref should have awarded a penalty point for Samuelson’s second yel- low card and, thus, Japan would have won the match. Not surpris- ingly, U.S. players disagreed – Samuelson said he was never shown the yellow card – and de- cided to wage a collective protest by shaving their heads, an action that altered the name of the sport to “Volleybald” for the remainder of the Games.
The shorn U.S. men were strong through the rest of pool play, winning four consecutive matches, and they advanced to the semifi nals with a four-set victory in the quarterfi nals over Russia, then known as the Unifi ed Team. But in the semis, a hot Brazil team that would go on to win the gold took the Americans down in four sets, ending Timmons’ quest to become a three-time gold medalist. The U.S. earned the bronze with a four-set victory over Cuba.
By many accounts, Kiraly’s presence on that team would have made the difference be- tween bronze and gold, but we’ll never know. By then, he was dominating on the beach and laying the groundwork for a third Olympic gold medal of his own – in Atlanta four years later in the fi rst Olympic beach competition. Women — Finish: bronze medal •
Record: 4-2 (2-1 in pool play, 2-1 in the medal round) • Team: Tara Cross-Battle, Janet Cobbs, Lori Endicott, Caren Kem- ner, Ruth Lawanson, Tammy Liley, Elaina Oden, Kim Oden, Teee Sanders, Liane Sato, Paula Weishoff, Yoko Zetterlund. • Head coach: Terry Liskevych Qualifying for Barcelona was as tough if not tougher for the U.S. Women than the Olympics itself. It came down to a do-or- don’t-go match at the FIVB World Cup in Osaka, Japan, where the U.S. edged Peru 15- 12 in the fi fth set to earn its Olympic berth. In Barcelona, starting setter Lori Endi- cott was sick for the fi rst match, and the U.S. lost to Japan in fi ve sets. But the Americans bounced back in a big way in their next two pool-play matches, defeating the Soviets in fi ve sets and crushing Spain in three to advance to the quarterfi nals. There, they took
ATLANTA CELEBRATION: The U.S. Men fi nished ninth in Atlanta, but had some high points. (Photo: Peter Brouillet)
care of Netherlands to set up a semifi nal show- down with Cuba. The match ebbed and fl owed, and the U.S. women looked to be in good shape when they took a 2-1 lead in sets. But the U.S.’s top hitter, Caren Kemner, struggled down the stretch, and Cuba prevailed in fi ve. It was a tough loss for the team, and especially for Kemner, who felt bad that she’d had an off night in the biggest match
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