EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
Feature Story
|
||||
|
Karch Kiraly knew the sport of beach volleyball had regained its place in the national consciousness when his two young sons returned from lunch at McDonald’s last fall unusually excited. “They really got a charge out of seeing a photo of Misty and Kerri celebrating, (which was) printed on the McDonald’s bags,” says Kiraly. “It was large-scale recognition for beach volleyball they weren’t used to seeing.” That Kiraly’s sons weren’t exposed to much beach volleyball in the mainstream media the last couple of years is instructive. After all, their dad is the sport’s most legendary performer who at 44 is still competing, and, almost unbelievably, still winning on the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour. Beach volleyball’s first Olympic gold medalist and the owner of 147 tournament titles during a remarkable 27 seasons in the sun, the San Clemente resident has seen the sport’s popularity take the trajectory of a ball after a perfect set, spike and dig soaring high over the net, suddenly plummeting toward the sand only to be kept aloft by an electrifying save. “The AVP has had some serious growing pains the late 1990s were very disillusioning but the cycle of our sport is definitely on the upswing,” Kiraly says. “In fact, I’m really impressed with our current sponsors and tour management, and with the path we’re on. I think with the boost from the Athens gold medal won by Misty May and Kerri Walsh, we’re on the best footing we’ve ever had.” What’s the attraction? With its combination of California cool lifestyle, all-American athleticism and universal sex appeal, beach volleyball grew from a picnic pastime played by a few adventurous locals into a thriving professional sport, complete with men’s and women’s tours, live television coverage and multimillion dollar sponsorship deals. Although beach volleyball seemed like an overnight sensation in the late 1980s when it was a regular part of the programming on fledgling cable sports networks and had begun to challenge surfing as the sport of choice among activewear retailers, the journey actually took more than 50 summers. Played since the 1920s at private beach clubs in California and Hawaii, beach volleyball, a two-man derivation of the indoor six-man game, blossomed in the 1950s when municipal recreation departments in Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica, Laguna Beach and other coastal enclaves began stringing up nets on permanent courts and hosting tournaments. Wilt Chamberlain loved the game and was a 7-foot fixture in Santa Monica during the NBA’s offseason, playing informal matches. In the 1960s, superbly athletic indoor volleyball stars with all of the diverse ball-handling skills, quickness and power the beach game demands like Gene Selznick, Ron Lang, Mike O’Hara and Ron Von Hagen, began to dominate the tournaments, which usually offered a simple T-shirt or pitcher of beer to the winners. The 1970s brought bigger crowds, bigger prizes (a T-shirt, pitcher of beer and a pair of shorts) and, with Chamberlain among them, some bigger players. An indoor volleyball star and a basketball guard at UCLA, Jim Menges and Greg Lee, combined to form the decade’s most formidable team, winning an unprecedented 13 straight and 16 of 18 tournaments in 1976-77. Kiraly, the future king of the beach, was concentrating on indoor volleyball, leading UCLA to national championships in 1979, ’81 and ’82 (he went on to win Olympic gold medals with the USA Men’s National Team in 1984 and ’88). He gave a hint of what was to come on the sand, winning the 1979 Santa Cruz Open with Sinjin Smith, who would dominate beach volleyball in the 1980s with Randy Stoklos. Old look, new look Classic black-and-white photographs from beach volleyball’s ’70s reveal thousands of fans crowding the court without a single sponsorship banner, metal grandstand or television camera in sight. That changed dramatically in the early 1980s when Jose Cuervo Tequila found the combination of athleticism, lifestyle and sex appeal irresistible. Cuervo sponsored a national tour that extended the “beach” thousands of miles inland with tournament stops in Colorado and Illinois joining traditional California and Florida venues. The players, sensing the rising tide of prize money and popularity, formed the AVP, which eventually assumed operational duties of the tour and signed Miller Lite as the title sponsor. The late 1980s and early ’90s were a golden era for beach volleyball in terms of national exposure. The sport reached a coveted marketing plateau the lifestyle brand with “volleywear” competing with “surfwear” in national clothing retailers like Nordstrom and Macy’s. Orange County-based companies like Quiksilver, Club Sportswear and Mossimo had complete volleywear lines. Sinjin Smith and other players like Newport Beach native Steve Timmons became part owners of their own volleywear companies. Smith sported Sideout and Timmons modeled Red Sand clothing on the tour each weekend, setting lifestyle trends that mirrored the nation’s obsession with the California casual approach to life. By 1995, the party known as the Association of Volleyball Professionals/Miller Lite Tour was raging. AVP players were competing coast to coast for $4 million in prize money and NBC, smarting over the loss of NFL football, began live telecasts of the largest tournaments in Manhattan Beach, Huntington Beach, Chicago and Hermosa Beach. Women’s beach players were enjoying heady times, too, competing on their own Women’s Professional Volleyball Association tour and in the Bud Light Four-Person league. Players like Karolyn Kirby, Liz Masakayan, Linda Hanley and Holly McPeak showed that dynamic athleticism wasn’t confined to the male gender; their brilliant play built a large and loyal fan base. An end to a means It wasn’t to be an endless summer, however. Even with Kiraly and Kent Steffes winning the sport’s first Olympic gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games and prize money soaring past the $4 million mark, signs of a great unraveling had begun. Ego clashes within the AVP surfaced more frequently and seemed more bitter. Charges of financial mismanagement and favoritism led to a lawsuit that turned partner against partner in 1998 when Steffes sued the AVP board that included Kiraly for lack of fiduciary responsibility. Similar internal problems plagued the WPVA, which crashed and burned the same year. A sport as strong as baseball can survive a string of surly athletes. A sport as big as the NFL is enhanced by showmanship. And the NBA can evolve from a team sport into an individual one and remain strong. Beach volleyball didn’t have the history, the national need, or the sponsorship patience to play bad boy and get away with it. By 1999, the AVP party was over. Miller Lite, tiring of the sandstorm of AVP politics, pulled its sponsorship. By November, the AVP filed Chapter 11. Suddenly the sizzle was gone. Beach volleyball was limping into the new millennium. A way back in “This sport has incredibly powerful imagery,” says AVP Commissioner Leonard Armato, “and it has the highest perceived value among sponsors of any sport. Ninety-five percent of our sponsors have renewed and we expect significant growth to continue. It’s exciting for everyone involved right now.” The excitement of the AVP tour never really went away after it emerged from bankruptcy, but large sponsorship dollars did. A scaled-down some say a healthy “return to basics” style tour offering about $1 million in prize money for both men’s and women’s tournaments began to recapture some of the magic. Armato, a sports agent who has represented basketball superstars like Shaquille O’Neal and Hakim Olajawon and who was involved in the original formation of the AVP, bought the tour in 2002. The AVP’s new stability prompted Nissan, XBox, Bud Light, Paul Mitchell and McDonald’s to reinvest. Coupled with the business-side energy, play on the court got a boost from two collegiate All-Americans who began to dominate the tour in historic fashion: Orange County’s Misty May and Kerri Walsh. May, who grew up in Costa Mesa and starred at Newport Harbor High School, and Walsh, a four-time All-American at Stanford, won a record 15 consecutive AVP titles with a 39-0 match record in 2003. Their legend grew in 2004, capped off by a perfect, prime-time televised run to the gold medal at the Athens Olympics. They became America’s sweethearts and May graced the cover of OC METRO Magazine in last October’s Hottest 25 People of Orange County. The American team of Holly McPeak and Elaine Youngs, May and Walsh’s biggest rival on the AVP tour, won the bronze medal. Kiraly, who broadcast the men’s Olympic matches for NBC, says the Olympic medals put a headline on the rebirth of the AVP story. “Everyone I talked to after I returned from Greece mentioned Misty and Kerri’s gold and Holly and Elaine’s bronze,” he says. “The Olympic coverage bumped beach volleyball up to an A-level sport.” Armato agrees: “There’s no question beach volleyball was one of the stars of the Olympics. Of the 25 top-rated televised sports programs from 2004, seven had prime-time beach volleyball coverage from Athens as a part of it.” Solid 2005 footing Armato says the AVP is poised to capitalize on the Olympic momentum. Indeed, news on the 2005 tour seems all positive. Consider: • Prize money has been doubled to $3 million. • Domestic television hours are growing 33%, with NBC Sports carrying 14 hours live and Fox Sports Net bumping up its tape-delay tournament coverage to 60 hours. • Attendance at tournaments, which increased 40% from 2003 to 2004, is expected to top 1.2 million. • The AVP has signed a contract with the Chinese network GDTV, which will broadcast AVP tournaments into 500 million households in China. Armato says the AVP’s future is establishing a global brand. “The contract with GDTV is a real clear cut example of a sport that works extremely well all over the world,” he says. “Beach volleyball is clearly growing worldwide and there’s an unsatisfied demand for this kind of sports programming. I expect this to be the first of many international television deals to be announced.” Kiraly, still training on Doheny State Beach in Dana Point three to five days a week as he prepares for his 28th season, believes the AVP, once famous for its short-term thinking, is now taking a long-term approach by sponsoring AVP Next youth tournaments at each tour stop. “Encouraging young players is vital,” he says. “How ecstatic I would have been to play at the same site as the pros when I was learning the game. Young players can watch the pros, go down the beach and play their own matches, and then come back and watch the pros some more. It’s great for the future of our sport.” The 2005 Nissan AVP Pro Beach Tour is scheduled to stop in San Diego on June 10-12 and in Huntington Beach on Aug. 11-14. Dennis Steers of San Luis Obispo co-founded Volleyball Monthly in the early 1980s. He is co-publisher of the bimonthly DIG magazine, which covers beach volleyball. |
||||
RSS Subscribe
Digg This ArticleSEARCH THE SITE
