Ex-UCSB teammates Fonoimoana and Heidger reunite
BACK ON SAND
8/16/01
By DAVE LOVETON
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Changes haven't been hard to find on this year's Association of Volleyball
Professionals Tour with a new owner (Leonard Armato), new rules and some new
faces at the top.
One constant has been the teams, which have normally gone through multiple
"divorces" and "hook-ups" by mid-August.
That feeling of togetherness came to a screeching halt this week as the
largest field in AVP history (108 men's and women's teams) prepares for The
Michelob Light Open at Santa Barbara's famous East Beach. The $125,000 event
begins Friday with 40 men's and 20 women's teams battling for the final four
berths in the Main Draw.
Less than a year after winning a gold medal at the Sydney OIympics, Eric
Fonoimoana and Dain Blanton will split up for the final two AVP stops in
Santa Barbara and Manhattan Beach. Fonoimoana, who earned All-American
honors at UCSB in 1992, will play with former Gaucho teammate, Rob Heidger.
Fonoimoana-Blanton have been together for four years and spent the last two
years almost exclusively on the FIVB international beach volleyball tour.
"I've been disappointed in our finishes," said the 32-year-old Fonoimoana,
who's earned five of his seven career victories with Blanton. "Our highest
finishes were fourth at the Grand Slam in France and fifth at the world
championships." The duo placed 17th at last week's FIVB stop in Belgium, dropping their
match record to 17-16 in eight international tourneys.
"I was frustrated," added Fonoimoana, who's known as ' The Body.' "I want to
compete at the top and when we're not doing it, I'm angry.
"I think (the change in partners) might be good. I was starting to be a
little negative toward Dain because he wasn't doing what I wanted him to do."
The pair will reunite for the Goodwill Games (Aug. 29-Sept. 5 in Brisbane,
Australia) and then play in the second-to-last FIVB event in Mallorca,
Spain."The Goodwill Games will be another chance to prove ourselves," noted
Fonoimoana, who lives in Hermosa Beach. "We've come up big when no one has
expected us to do much. I hope this makes us a better team mentally and
maybe we'll work a little harder as a team. I think it will be healthy."
Blanton, a former Stanford star, will play with 6-foot-7 Carl Henkel, the
longtime partner of Sinjin Smith. Smith, the second-winningest player in
beach history with 139 titles, will team up with ex-Santa Ynez High and U.S.
National team standout George Roumain, who's making his pro beach debut.
Smith, the oldest elite player in the world at 44, announced his retirement
last week. His final appearance will be next week in Manhattan Beach.
Chip McCaw, a rookie on the beach, combined for two "final four" finishes in
10 appearances this season with the 6-foot-6 Heidger. McCaw's new partner is
Colin Wellman."Chip has a lot of potential but Eric's a gold-medal winner," said Heidger,
a former basketball/volleyball star at SBCC who has one AVP victory in his
career. "He's been one of the top players on tour for a number of years.
Eric called me last Sunday and it was actually quite a shock."
Heidger added that his fourth-place finish with McCaw at the FIVB World
Championships in Austria two weeks ago made the decision a little tougher.
"A lot of the top teams were playing internationally this year and it's
difficult to switch partners on the FIVB because you have to sign-up 30 days
prior to the event. The prize money is down on the AVP Tour, which is why a
lot of U.S. teams have gone to the international circuit."
Other changes on the AVP circuit, whose eight-city tour concludes next month
with the King of the Beach in Las Vegas, include a smaller court (8 meters
by 8 meters), the addition of a women's division and rally scoring with a
point on every serve. Each match is best 2-out-of-3 with the first two games
to 21 and the final one to 15. When one team reaches 14 in the third game,
the scoring reverts to the sideout system.
The winning teams in both the men's and women's divisions will earn $14,000.
The top women's entries are Lisa Arce-Holly McPeak, Barbra Fontana-Elaine
Youngs, Nancy Mason-Leanne Schuster and Linda Hanley-Sarah Straton. There
was a signficant change on the women's side as well, with Dianne DeNecochea,
who teamed with Wendy Stammer to take fourth at the last AVP women's event
in Michigan, joining forces with Liz Masakayan.
While Fonoimoana and Heidger have previous experience as a team, playing 14
AVP events in 1995-96, they have almost zero experience in Santa Barbara.
Fonoimoana will never forget his first pro tourney in 1992 at Leadbetter
Beach. After winning his first match, his partner (Owen McKibben) failed to
show up the next day due to a modeling commitment and they were
disqualified. Heidger has never competed professionally in town.
"I haven't lost up there yet," joked Fonoimoana. "Hopefully, Rob doesn't
have anywhere to go this weekend."
This weekend's tourney also marks the 2001 debut of former Santa Barbara
High star Karch Kiraly. The three-time Olympic gold-medallist, who was
sidelined by an Achilles injury, will play with former partner Scott
Ayakatubby. Kiraly, who has won 142 titles and earned more than $2.95
million on the beach, won eight of 14 events with Ayakatubby in 1995.
Santa Barbara's Todd Rogers and Dax Holdren, two-time winners on the AVP
Tour this year, are the top seed for the 32-team men's main draw. They spent
the last two months on the FIVB Tour and their best finish was a fifth-place
effort at the world championships.
At next month's FIVB event in Mallorca, Spain, Rodgers and Holdren will
split up for a week. Rogers will play with Heidger while Holdren will team up with Stein Metzger.Fonoimoana-Heidger practiced a few times this week after using an
ulta-scientific formula to solve a dilemma."We're both left-side hitters, so we played rock-scissors-paper to see who had to switch and I lost," said Heidger.
While agreeing that the new rally-scoring format is a real benefit to
lower-ranked players, Fonoimoana and Heidger had opposite views of life on
the FIVB Tour."We were (in Europe) for four weeks, came home for a week (for an AVP
tourney in Muskegon, Mich.), then we went back for four more," said
Fonoimona, whose travels took him to the Canary Islands, Germany, France and
Portugal, just to name a few. "It's extremely tough. You don't have all the
things you need to prepare for the next weekend. It's hard to practice (due
to qualification tourneys), hard to find a gym and hard to find places to
eat. It's not very convenient."After a while, if you don't have all the things you need, you're just wasting time. Here, there's not enough time to do everything."
While acknowledging that the volleyball part can be difficult, Heidger said
he likes traveling the world."Some guys consider it a grind but I actually enjoy it," he stated. "I'vealways enjoyed Europe. It's a great chance to see the world and experience
different cultures while playing the sport I love. Language is a problem but
almost everybody speaks English. I know some broken Spanish and Italian.
Plus, you can get your point across with sign language."
Communication figures to be easier this weekend for Fonoimoana and Heidger,
the former UCSB teammates who hope their third time around is the charm.