WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Barbra Fontana Olympian with the law degree keeps getting drawn back to the beach
VOLLEYBALL KEEPS PULLING BARBRA FONTANA BACK IN. It happened during her productive pro beach career after she earned a law degree in 1991, then passed the bar exam and began working as an attorney while still competing. Practicing law and practicing volleyball at the same time was a bit much, so she made a choice: volleyball over law. When she retired in 2010 from a playing career that included 20 tournament titles and the USA women’s top beach finish at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games (fourth, with Linda Hanley), she took a couple of years off to be a full-time mom with her two young boys, then began looking for law work. But a few of the top beach pros asked her if she’d coach them, and she ended up putting the legal profession on hold once again to work with soon-to-be Olympic silver medalists April Ross and Jen Kessy and AVP pros Jenny Kropp and Whitney Pavlik. To this day, law remains Plan B for the 51-year-old
native of Manhattan Beach, California, who now enjoys the flexibility of a coaching schedule that allows for activ- ities like snowboarding and surfing with her husband, Gil Horta, and their sons, Lucas, 13, and Giovanni, 11. She currently coaches in USA Volleyball’s Elite Development program, working with high-level athletes who have been identified as having Olympic potential. She is also part owner and a coach at Elite Beach Volleyball Club in Los Angeles with Olympic medalists Holly McPeak and Eric Fonoimoana.
“I always had planned on helping people through my law degree, and now I’ve just decided that I’m going to
Above: Barbra Fontana (second from left) shares her wisdom with players in USA Volleyball’s Elite Development program. Left: She was an elite defender herself at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Games. (Photos: Peter Brouillet)
beach volleyball. “I figured I should make as much money playing volley- ball as practicing law,” she says. “And if I had an injury, I had a backup. My bar number was always current, and it still is.” As a coach, Fontana is a stickler for technique, and she
puts particular emphasis on setting and court vision. “Those are the two most difficult things on the beach, but they’re the most important,” she says. “If you want to win consistently, you need to be a great setter, and if you can’t overpower your opponents, you need to learn to see the court.” Another focal point in Fontana’s coaching is the mental game, and she talks frequently with young athletes about ways to get into the zone, how to lighten up so you don’t overload your brain, the need for game-like focus during practice and the process of finding ways to beat your opponent. “Beach volleyball is such a mental load – more than indoor because you have to do it yourself,” she says. “I feel like indoor athletes are very spoon fed. [Coaches] tell them where to serve; they tell the setter where to set; they tell the hitters
help people through volleyball,” she says. “I feel really good about giving back to something that gave me so much. Yes, I’m teaching volleyball, but I’m also teaching life skills – how to set goals, how to work hard, how to believe in yourself, how to have goals you can reach and how to reach goals that you’re really stretching for.”
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where to hit.” In her day, she says, “it was a little more free-flowing. Now, I feel like indoor players are much more robotic and they’re literally following directions at every position rather than figuring stuff out. The
beach is opposite. I try to get the players to think on their feet from Day One.” — Don Patterson
Fontana, who stands a sliver under 5-6, stretched herself to the outer limits as a player, reaching four consecutive NCAA indoor semifinals (and two championship matches) as a starting outside hitter at Stanford from 1983-86 and then earning $1,031,455 on the beach, 13th all-time in the women’s game. She says becoming an attorney elevated her standards for
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