Beach legend Sinjin Smith to retire
By David Leon Moore, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES
When Sinjin Smith finished a brilliant volleyball career at UCLA in 1979, he never dreamed of playing professional beach volleyball for the next 22 years. "Absolutely not," Smith says. "Back then most guys played on the beach a few years, and then they had to go get a job."
Smith, however, turned beach volleyball into a job and a good one. During the sport's
phenomenal growth in the 1980s and early '90s, Smith and Randy Stoklos formed a
dominant partnership that won 113 tournaments, a record that still stands.Counting his victories with other players, including 21 with Karch Kiraly, Smith has won 139 tournaments, second only to Kiraly, who has 142 titles. Smith has one more chance to win: this weekend at the AVP Manhattan Beach Open. He is retiring as a player, and this is his last pro tournament. Smith is amused when he is asked what prompted him to make the decision. "You mean, 'Why now?' " he says, laughing. Smith is, after all, 44 years old.
Most people in the sport figured Smith was near retirement 8 years ago when he quit playing full time on the AVP tour to concentrate on promoting the world tour run by the FIVB, the sport's international governing body. But Smith continued to play on the FIVB tour, kept enduring the surgeries on his right knee (he has had six) and in 1996 at age 39 qualified for the U.S. team as beach volleyball made its Olympic debut in Atlanta.
The Olympic qualification procedures for the U.S. players in 1996 sparked a bitter feud between Smith, who qualified through the then-less-competitive FIVB tour, and the AVP pros. Kiraly, Smith's former partner, was Smith's most vocal critic.
But in a memorable Olympic quarterfinal played in front of 11,000 fans in a
concrete stadium in the middle of the woods of Jonesboro, Ga., Smith and
partner Carl Henkel nearly pulled off a monumental upset of heavily favored
Kiraly and Kent Steffes. Smith and Henkel held match point before losing 17-15.
Kiraly and Steffes went on to win the gold, and Smith and Henkel finished fifth. But Smith had proven his point: He still could play. "I was mistaken," Kiraly said after the stirring duel with Smith. "They gave us all we could handle and more." Smith continued to play after that, and last year at 43 he finished second in an FIVB tournament in Belgium.
But the knee is just not cooperating any more. "I didn't want to finish playing and not be able to be active with my kids," says Smith, who lives in Pacific Palisades, Calif., with his wife, Patty, and three young sons. "You see some of these football players who are finished playing and they can hardly walk." Smith's many victories include four Manhattan titles, the last one 12 years ago.There will be a special presentation honoring him Sunday before the men's final, which is not likely to include Smith and partner George Roumain.
"It'd be a nice way to go out, though, wouldn't it?" Smith says. Smith is president of the FIVB's beach volleyball world council and plans to remain active in promoting the FIVB and AVP tours. After two NCAA titles and 139 pro wins, he says he can't come up with one
moment in his career that means the most to him. "What I enjoyed most about playing," he says, "was playing well and winning." He did both, and he did them for a very long time.