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Sunday, October 1
Women rise, men fall at Games
Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia -- The U.S. women's volleyball team
struggled for years in the shadow of the men's team. The Sydney
Games changed that dramatically: The women soared beyond everyone's
expectations, while the men sank further than anyone imagined.
You go, girls! And guys, you go as well -- back to gym and to the
drawing board.
The women's team finished fourth, its second-best showing in
seven Olympics, next to the bronze in Barcelona.
"I'm really proud of this team. It's a young team. It's their
first Olympics, and I think they did really well," Tara
Cross-Battle said. "We were coming in here ranked 10th, and nobody
believed in us but ourselves."
The men were a disaster, taking 11th place and joining Egypt as
the only teams to go 0-5. It continued a distressing trend for the
United States, which won gold medals in 1984 and 1988 but fell to
bronze four years later and ninth in Atlanta.
"It's a funny game, and unfortunately we're not the ones
laughing," said coach Doug Beal.
The women weren't expected to do anything in Sydney. Chris
Marlowe, a member of the 1984 men's team and an NBC volleyball
analyst, predicted before the games that the Americans would win a
medal -- in Athens four years from now.
Yet there they were, in the semifinals against Russia, pushing a
better team to its limits before falling in the fifth game. Sure,
the team benefited from a favorable draw in their group, which
allowed them to avoid Russia until the semis and eventual champion
Cuba altogether.
Still, the Americans earned it. They started off by defeating
China, and went 4-0 until falling to Brazil in group play. The
finest moment in U.S. women's volleyball in years came in the
quarterfinals against South Korea, when the team rallied from a
12-9 deficit in the final game to win.
The Americans also impressed with their upbeat demeanor, even
after losing to Brazil in the bronze-medal match.
"We felt like we wanted a medal out of this," coach Mick Haley
said. "We felt like it was an all-or-nothing thing. We felt like
the country wanted us to do that, and we wanted to do that. Because
there's not much difference between fifth and 12th."
Haley is moving on, taking over the women's program at Southern
California. Cross-Battle isn't coming back, and Danielle Scott --
the only other player who was on the 1996 team -- wants to take
another shot at the WNBA.
That still leaves a core of talented young players on the team,
led by outside hitter Logan Tom, the 19-year-old from Stanford who
already is the best college player in the country. There's also
Stacy Sykora, one of the world's top defenders, and Heather Bown,
who became the Americans' enforcer at the net.
The U.S. team may never reach the heights of the Cubans, who won
their third straight gold medal in thrilling style by rallying from
two games down to defeat Russia. But the Americans can always take
heart in the fact that Regla Torres, who was 17 when Cuba won its
first gold medal in 1992, has to retire sometime.
At one end of the spectrum in the men's tournament was
Yugoslavia -- focused, unified, every player doing his little part
on every point. The team learned more than anyone else in the
field, and improved each time out. It lost to Russia and Italy to
start the games, and by the time the 16-day tournament was over, it
had beaten Italy and trounced the Russians for the gold medal.
At the opposite end of that great moment was the United States,
which got creamed by the Yugoslavs and everyone else it played. The
Americans hit their low moment in the final game of group play,
when, already out of the tournament, they lost to a backup-filled
Italian team in a match that wasn't worth the face value of a seat
in the rafters.
"I don't think we could've really put our finger on it," said
Erik Sullivan said of the team's myriad problems. "If it was just
one or two things, we probably could have corrected it. It was kind
of a culmination of everything."
The men's team is set for a serious house cleaning, and Beal
sounded like a man who didn't want to take four more years of the
punishment.
The squad has promise, however. Six-foot-7, 255-pound hitter
George Roumain is only 24 and could be a one-man demolition crew in
Athens if someone can be found to get him the ball where he likes
it. And Ryan Millar, 22, can provide instant offense at the other
side.
What's needed are blockers. And some heart. And the sacrifice to
give up two or three years of youth to move to Colorado Springs and
rebuild the program.
Beal is confident such men will be found.
"I'm optimistic we can turn this thing around," he said. "I
believe this team is going to get better in the next couple
years."
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