New City Game: Beach Volleyball

Downtown, lunchtime. Skyscrapers, traffic jams. Perfect for beach volleyball, right?

At least that’s what some folks are thinking. So they’re bringing the sand and nets and two-man game to nine cities for the Cuervo Beach City Challenge.

The series, which began Thursday in Atlanta, will feature Olympic champions Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes, the hottest duo in the sport, and Olympic silver medalists Mike Whitmarsh and Mike Dodd, whose partnership currently is the longest on the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour.

It also will provide fans an opportunity to compete against the pros in two-point games for charity after the AVP stars finish their matches.

“This a great idea,” said Whitmarsh, the only proven AVP player who actually grew up in a city, San Diego. “It gives people a chance to get out there and see the sport in person, and once somebody comes out and watches, they will be hooked on it. You just don’t get the feeling on TV that you get when you’re seeing it live.”

But live in a concrete canyon, far from the shore? Sure.

“If we have to go make our own beaches some places, well, as long as we have sand, we’re fine,” Whitmarsh said. “It makes for a nice change for people in the cities. We’ve had some great tournaments in places away from the beach, like in Boulder.”

Boulder, Colo., was one of the stops for the Cuervo Gold Crown series, which was disbanded this year after nearly a decade as the most prestigious and lucrative event in the sport. In the midst of the Rockies, the world’s best beachball players gathered since 1988, and drew nearly 20,000 each year.

So why not give a taste of the sport to people in Boston, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Denver, New York, Cincinnati and Phoenix, the other stops on the City Challenge tour?

Whitmarsh figures there might be some youngsters or teen-agers or perhaps even twentysomethings who aren’t familiar with beach volleyball, but might have the talent to excel at it. That’s how he wound up playing the game for a living.

“I played no beach volleyball as a kid or a teen,” he said. “I didn’t play until after college. ‘Yeah, I’m a city kid. Almost all the players on tour grew up on the beach. All I played was basketball.”

Whitmarsh, at 6-foot-7 the tallest player on tour, attended the University of San Diego on a basketball scholarship. He played for the Toreros until 1985, then went to Berlin to play three years of club ball.

Just before going to Germany, a friend convinced Whitmarsh to try beach volleyball.

“From Day 1, I loved it,” he said, “but I wasn’t very good at it. I was hooked on it, but it’s not an easy sport to start out in.”

So the city kid stuck to basketball. By 1989, he felt ready to attempt a move to the NBA and was invited to try out with the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves.

“I was the last guy cut,” he said. “Coach (Bill) Musselman wanted me to go play in the CBA, then they would call me back up when somebody got hurt or something happened. But I’d seen so many guys who end up in the CBA for a few years and I didn’t want to be one of them.”

That meant trying his hand on the beach. Whitmarsh nearly made a remarkable splash in the sport.

Whitmarsh and his first partner, Bill Boulliane, played Kiraly and Steffes in the opening round of a tournament in Fort Myers, Fla. They led 14-9, one point from victory.

“Slowly, more and more people began gathering around the court,” he recalled. “Nobody had any idea who I was, but Bill and myself were beating the best team around.

“We wound up losing, 21-19, in 2 hours 29 minutes. I thought this was going to be a piece of cake. Then, the next five weeks, we got killed and I thought about getting out the sneakers and heading back to Europe.”

Instead, he stayed on the beach. And now, he’s headed back into the city.