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The Wild Bunch PART 2 By Tom Feuer If you like colorful characters and spicy stories, pull up a chair and enjoy DiG’s historical look at five more greatest beach volleyball tales of all-time Ex-Green Beret Mike Normand could be intimidating with an open net as well as when brash youngsters opened their mouths. (Photo: Kevin Goff) erhaps more than any other vocation, beach volleyball has featured a and he took a couple of steps back and pinned me to the hood of a car and litany of characters and stories that could fill volumes. Maybe part of knocked the wind out of me.” It’s instructive to note that Hovland was one P the reason the sport has such a colorful history is that for years there of the finest athletes to ever come out of the Los Angeles city section, adept was little to no money to be made playing on the Open circuit. Most “nor- at a number of sports in high school including football and basketball. He mal” people confronted with that predicament would get a job. This group, even had a brief fling with track. the best in the world at what they were doing, were content to play for the “Hovland was very physical and strong,” Smith notes. “So he turns quickly love of the game, every day, all day. Throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, the and grabs the car’s windshield wiper like he is going to put it around my best of the best were literally living hand to mouth. As a consequence, the neck to strangle me.” Smith put his hand up in self-preservation mode and courts were filled with personalities performing, shall we say, rather eccentri- then “Hov pushed it out of the way and the blade got caught between his cally on the court. hand and my hand.” I looked at my finger and it was dangling down and Most of the stories below occurred during that time and are limited to there was blood everywhere.” Hovland straightened the finger out and said ones that can be told in a family magazine. it was “fine,” but then it drooped back down again and Smith was taken to the emergency room where the attending physician diagnosed it as a severed tendon. He sewed it temporarily back together but he told Sinjin he would “same time next year” be out four-six weeks. Arguably, the fiercest rivalry in beach volleyball history was the one However, if you are a beach volleyball player who doesn’t have the benefit between Tim Hovland/Mike Dodd and Sinjin Smith/Randy Stoklos. Over a of a contract or a bi-weekly salary, four-to-six weeks off in high season wasn’t nine-year period, between 1982 and 1990 these two teams met in the finals acceptable. So Smith used a paper clip to keep the finger straight and taped a whopping 62 times with Smith and Stoklos holding the advantage, 35-27. three of his digits together for support and he played the following week “They might have a slight edge on the total. But remember Hovland and in Rhode Island, defeating Dodd and Hovland in the semis while finishing Dodd were the big-game hunters,” Hovland said. “I am sure Smith and Stok- second overall. The story should end there, but it doesn’t … los would give us at least two Rhode Islands for a Manhattan or Cuervo!” One year later at the Boulder tournament, there was once again a big party Considering the intensity of their rivalry, off the sand both pairs were in a large theater space attached to the HQ hotel. “When (Hovland) has had surprisingly civil to one another as they traversed the country, arriving early several drinks, Doctor Hov shows up and he is not as nice as Tim.” At this at tournaments to drum up publicity and evangelize for each other and the time in the 1980s, Hovland was becoming well known for ripping off his sport. That is, they were collegial most of the time. shirt either in elation or frustration. On this night, Doctor Hov was in “rare The Jose Cuervo tequila events were big prize money events, and there form,” ripping shirts off of any players he could find. was a BIG difference between first-place booty and the scraps that were paid “I kept him in my sight all night,” Smith recalls. “I made sure I was always out to the rest of the finishers. (Another story for another time.) One truism on the other side of the room.” Somehow, the two found each other face about the Cuervo events is that they threw the best parties on tour. to face in a small hallway. Fireworks ensued. To keep his shirt from being It was at the end of June in 1988 in Boulder when the fireworks occurred ripped, Smith got Hov in a headlock. At some point while civilians were before the post-event party. While waiting for the festivities close by to the walking around the two of them, Hovland pushed Smith backward and he players’ hotel, Smith, Stoklos, Dodd and Hovland were in the parking lot hit his head on the corner of the hallway. “I was dazed,” Sinjin says. “And “horsing around” and having a little “pre-party.” “Hov and Randy were I reached back and there was no blood. I reached back a second time, no about 10 to 15 feet apart from each other in three-point stances ready to go blood. Finally, I reached back one more time and my hands were full of after it,” Smith says. “So I made my way around and jumped on Hov’s back, blood.” 20 digbeachvolleyball.com | 2017 #3 Again, Smith was rushed to the emergency room of the same hospital Lee’s first foray into playing Open tournaments occurred in 1971 following where he’d been the year before. The attending surgeon took one look at him his Bruin freshman basketball season. He partnered with his brother, Jon, and and said, “Didn’t I see you here last year?!” Needless to say, Smith got stitched they took fourth at Laguna Beach. up and played the following week in Sacramento, where he and Stoklos beat Just two months after leading UCLA to their eighth NCAA championship Dodd and Hovland in the final. For his part, Hovland says now, “It sounds with a win over Florida State in the ’72 title game, Lee was in Santa Cruz in like Sinjin was in the wrong place two years in a row. Unfortunate for him, what ultimately was his coming out party as a beach volleyball player. Earlier and again, sorry.” in the tournament the Lee brothers took down Ron Von Hagen and John What is perhaps most amazing is that Sinjin and Hovland patched things Vallely (another of Coach Wooden’s disciples) twice in a couple of eye opening up and remain friends to this day. upsets. After the second match, there were three teams left in the tournament. Larry Rundle and Bob Clem had emerged from the winners’ bracket, and Bill Imwalle/Matt Gage and the Lee brothers were left in the final of the losers’. At “18 patches” that point, the weather was so bad that the players decided on a novel way of In the modern world of beach volleyball, it would be hard to fathom all of determining the winner and the secondary places. “It was miserably cold and the fights and brouhahas that emerged in the 1970s and ’80s over which ball nobody was there to watch at the end,” Jon Lee says. “And, of course, there was should be used in a given match. Nowadays, players practice with count- no big paycheck, so we decided to use rock, paper, scissors to settle it.” less numbers of Wilson AVP or Mikasa Beach Champs or Spalding King of In the first game of Rochambeau, Imwalle and Gage beat the Lee brothers the Beach models, depending on what tour they play on. Rarely, though, is and thus advanced to face Rundle and Clem in the finals. Imwalle and Gage, there disagreement among teams about what orb to use because modern balls on a roll by now, defeated Rundle and Clem in the first bake off, so it went to almost all play very similarly. a double final. Under intense pressure, Rundle and Clem emerged victorious Things couldn’t have been more different in the 20th century, when the this time, and so ended the most improbable way to settle a tournament in the ball du jour was the Spalding 18 patch. The ball’s shape, weight and “feel” history of beach volleyball. depended on the age, the atmospheric conditions and storage parameters. Before we say goodbye to Santa Cruz, there was another classic story that “Each ball had its own identity,” says Jon Lee, one of the legendary players and characters from the ‘70s era. “Back then, balls were rare specimens.” Un- like today, elite players might have one or two balls to their name per season. In tournament matches, the choice of whose ball to use was decided by a pre-game roll to see who got closest to the opposite baseline without going over the line. Despite this, there were exceptions to the rule. Many players would defer, for instance, to Ron Von Hagen because of his status. He would label all of his balls, and they tended to be heavy. As one might expect, some hijinks came into play from time to time.

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