I always was the girl on the elementary school playground, at recess, playing with the boys. I loved any sport. I ran in little Jesse Owens track meets in my Converse high-top sneakers. I always dressed in shorts or slacks. The only time I ever wore dresses was to my friends’ birthday parties. I remember riding a Big Wheel bike at one little boy’s party. The fabric from the skirt got caught under the wheels, but I kept riding, burning holes in my new dress by continually rubbing it against the cement driveway.
For me, the rewards of sports were, and still are today, the complete and utter joy I’m feeling, and more important, the intensely personal journey I’m undertaking.
My first foray into organized sports happened when I was five. But it wasn’t volleyball—it was soccer. I climbed up through the ranks, and I became so good at it that when it came time to start thinking about colleges, one of the dozens of recruiting letters I received came from the University of North Carolina, gauging my interest in the storied women’s program. If I’d wanted to, I could have gone to college on an NCAA Division I soccer scholarship. When I started soccer, I was involved with the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) program in Santa Monica. I played on a coed team, the Arrows, because, at that time, there were no all-girls’ teams.
Sometimes, being one of the boys led to funny moments on the field. Take the game in Beverly Hills where I scored a goal right out of the gate against a boys’ team. Only a couple of seconds were gone on the clock. I sprinted past Scott Caan, the son of actor James Caan, and I slammed the ball into the goal. SCORE!
“How can you let that boy with the long hair take the ball away from you and score?” James Caan ranted.
“Dad, it’s not a boy, it’s a girl,” Scott shouted back.
My first coach, in any sport, was my father. He coached my AYSO teams from the time I was five until I was about nine. I loved playing, and I was very competitive. After every game, my parents and I had a ritual: We’d stop at the bakery on Main Street in Santa Monica for carrot cake with butter cream frosting. I’d wash it down with a pint-sized carton of milk.
In addition to playing soccer, between the ages of five and nine, I competed in swimming meets at Santa Monica College. My friend Carol Luber and I would walk to the school, pay a quarter, and participate in the free swims. There were two pools—a deep pool and a lap pool. There weren’t any lane markers floating on top, so you could swim wherever you wanted. To be allowed off the high dive, in the deep end of the deep pool, you had to demonstrate that you were a good swimmer, swimming two lengths and treading water for the lifeguards.
Truth be told, I really hated the deep end. It was scary, with the black lines running along the bottom of the pool. From the moment I saw the movie Jaws, I had a huge fear of sharks. As a kid, I was too afraid to wash up in a bathtub because I was convinced a shark was going to shoot up through the drain and chow down on me. When it came to the deep end of the Santa Monica College pool, I couldn’t help but envision a school of sharks lurking down below. Those black lines looked so ominous. So I’d jump off the high dive as fast as I could, then quickly hoist myself right out of the water. On the way home from our swims, Carol and I had our special route. We’d stop at Foster Freeze for vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate. Delicious. Then, we’d walk past the cemetery, holding our breath from one end of the graveyard to the other, because we were so superstitious.
It’s a little known fact that I have Olympic swimming deep in my gene pool. Dad’s cousin’s aunt, Mariechen Wehselau, was an Olympic gold medalist swimmer in the 1924 Paris Summer Games. She was a member of the world-record 4 x 100-meter freestyle relay, along with the famed Gertrude Ederle. She also won a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle and held the world record in that event from July 19, 1924, until January 28, 1926. She was born, raised, and died in Hawaii. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1989, three years before her death at the age of eighty-six. She got hit by a car outside the Outrigger Canoe Club, Dad says, and she never recovered from the injuries she suffered in the accident.
The younger I was, the more I ate up the different sports. From dawn to dusk, I kept occupied with dance lessons, soccer and volleyball games, swimming and track meets. Still, my grandparents had high hopes for me in tennis, and from the time I was five, did everything in their power to steer me toward a career in it. They not only raised three junior tennis stars of their own, but they played the sport themselves, into their sixties and seventies. They believed I could go further in tennis than Mom or my aunt Betty Ann. To my grandparents, tennis was a much more genteel sport than soccer or volleyball. Tennis, my grandparents reasoned, was a better career choice and a much bigger moneymaker.
When I was in first grade, they started a tradition. Every time I hit the ball against the wall, they paid me a nickel. They kept that up until I was in fifth grade. If I could keep a rally going, say, hit the ball against the wall sixty times, it was three dollars. Easy money for me. At one point, my grandfather made the mistake of saying he’d pay me five dollars for every goal I scored in soccer. One game, I made a ton of goals, and he lowered his payments to two dollars each. A few weeks later, he lowered it again, to one dollar per goal. His soccer incentives lasted only a year or two because I scored too much.
Grandparents are, well, grandparents. I loved them so much. How could I ever get mad at them? They always filled the roles of my fairy godparents. If I wanted something that was too expensive, Dad and Mom would laugh and say, “Go ask your grandparents.” Take the tooth fairy, for example. I’d lose a tooth, and I don’t know why, but the tooth fairy wouldn’t take it at my house. So I’d put it under my pillow at Grandma’s. I’d play tricks on my poor grandparents, using the same tooth over and over. When I felt I could get away with it, I’d announce, “I’ve lost another tooth!” The payout was tremendous: two dollars a tooth.
When I was eight, I officially became a beach volleyball player. I entered my first tournament, playing with Dad in a mixed doubles event at Will Rogers State Beach in Pacific Palisades. I was the youngest player by about ten years. Dad passed the whole court, and I set him. When it was my turn to serve, I stood at the back line, balled up my fist as tightly as I could, and swung hard, praying just to clear the net. We finished fifth. He likes to say that I “copped an attitude” with him that day, that I never paid my half of the entry fee and that I refused to referee later matches. Give me a break. What was I supposed to pay with? Tooth fairy money? And why would adults listen to a little kid referee when they wouldn’t even listen to adults?
At ten, I was playing in six-on-six beach volleyball tournaments. In those days, I played in volleyball trunks, not bikinis. I was a real jock. But don’t get the wrong idea: I truly love bikinis. I got my first one in 1978, when I was a year old, a green and white floral, and it was a gift from a family friend. (I recently had it framed, along with my bikinis from the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Olympics.)
And speaking of provocative uniforms, I’ll never forget the time Dad, Mom, my half brother Brack, and I participated in The Gillis, a multi-tournament in Playa del Rey, California. It’s a fun event because people dress up in costumes, but it’s tough to win. If you do, you’re somebody. Your prize? Bragging rights! We called ourselves “The Dysfunctional Family.” Each of us wore a tank top spelling out “dysfunctional” by syllables. Dad wore DYS. Mom wore FUNC. I wore TION. Brack was AL. We played in the six-person, mixed division, and the four of us creamed every team we faced. We had a great time, yelling and screaming at each other—we were very dysfunctional, without even trying. At one point, Dad became, well, Dad. We all wanted to have fun, but he wanted to coach us.
“Why don’t you get off the court, Dad, then we’ll be FUNCTIONAL?” Brack cracked.
Today, I encourage kids to play with athletes who are older, if they want to greatly improve their skills. That’s what I did, right from the start. In the case of beach volleyball, I played with and against adul
ts.
One of Dad’s all-time favorite Misty stories occurred when I was twelve. I was playing in the 14-and-under age group in the Los Angeles City Tennis Tournament at Griffith Park. After my match, we ran into old family friends, Wink and Ann Davenport, whose daughter Lindsay also was competing in the 14s. Nobody had any clue at the time that she would one day be ranked number one in the world and win three Grand Slams (1998 U.S. Open, 1999 Wimbledon, 2000 Australian Open). Wink was Dad’s teammate on the 1968 U.S. Olympic volleyball team.
Suddenly, Lindsay’s older sister Shannon, who was sixteen, said, “Come on, Mom! Let’s go! I don’t want to be late for volleyball tryouts!”
Naturally, our ears perked up.
“Volleyball tryouts?” I said. “Can I go, too?”
“You’re only twelve,” Shannon said. “You’re not old enough.” She was trying out for a 16-and-under team, the youngest age group for this particular volleyball club.
However, we weren’t deterred. We followed the Davenports to Santa Fe Springs, California, to watch Shannon try out for the Asics Tigers volleyball club. Mollie Kavanagh, the club’s director, and Bob Crowell, the head game coach of the 16s, both said they had no problem with my trying out. My age wasn’t really a factor, Bob said, because the team was for 16 and under. All of the tryouts concluded with a game called “King of the Hill,” where the players broke into groups of three or four and played one point. The winner got to stay on the court and play the next group. I played very well, and I hit out of the middle as well as any of the best players trying out for the 16s team.
Afterward, I turned to my parents and said, “Can I quit tennis and play volleyball?”
When I started my indoor volleyball career, at ten, I always played with kids in one age division up (as many as two, three, or four years older). At thirteen, I joined the Asics Tigers, an elite indoor club team, and I challenged myself by playing with the 16s. Asics was one of the top programs in Southern California, and all of the girls were all-stars. I really bonded with club director Mollie Kavanagh, the coach of the 18s. Even today, I still keep in touch with her. Mollie had coached volleyball since 1964, leading Asics to five national championships, and she was one of my early volleyball mentors. As 16s, we intermixed with the 18s during drills, and I got a lot out of watching the older girls.
Dad designated himself my personal trainer, away from the court and the soccer field. We spent time at local recreation centers, first in Santa Monica and later in Costa Mesa, a suburban city in Orange County, located thirty-seven miles southeast of Los Angeles. We moved there before my eighth-grade year. Dad put me through all sorts of volleyball drills. I’d jump into pickup games with him at the local recreation centers, and in between games, we’d work on serving to others. We’d also go to local parks, where he’d set up cones and run me through soccer drills. I’d hit soccer balls back and forth to him with my feet.
To build up my endurance, he had me run hills and stadium steps. Even up until a few months before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Dad always insisted I go over to Long Beach State and push my car through one of the parking lots. He had other nutty ideas, too, including jump squats while holding fifteen-pound dumbbells in each hand and running miles and miles on the beach. I used to roll my eyes and say, “You’re crazy.”
And then, there was his ultimate harebrained idea.
“I can put the car in neutral; once you push it and the car starts getting up momentum, you’ll start jogging, and eventually, sprinting,” Dad suggested. “Then, I’ll start the engine, pull the car out of the way, and you can race by me.”
That’s what he’d done while training for the 1968 Olympics. Every time he brought it up, I’d protest or just change the subject altogether. That triggered his inner Vince Lombardi.
“You can’t rest when everybody else is resting,” Dad always told me. “You have to stay one step ahead of them. You have to do just that much more.”
In my second year with Asics, I found another powerful role model, Antoinnette White, an assistant coach for our 16s. A second-team All-American at Long Beach State, she was a member of the school’s 1989 NCAA championship team, its first in history in women’s volleyball. At that time, I was just barely a teenager. I idolized Antoinnette, who was an outside hitter just like me. I wanted to play like her. I wanted to be like her. I could relate to her size. Like me, she wasn’t very big, just five feet eight. She had a quick arm swing, was a great passer, and could set.
“She’s not that big, but she makes the game look easy,” I’d tell myself. “If she can do it, I can do it.” As luck would have it, Antoinnette later became my counselor at Long Beach State’s summer girls’ volleyball camp.
Playing for the Asics Tigers was very beneficial for me. Being surrounded by the older players made me grow up faster. Being surrounded by better players made me better. I didn’t mind being pushed. I didn’t think of myself as a little kid—“Oh, I’m just a thirteen-year-old.”
My first year with Asics, I was the outside hitter, and we finished second in the 16-and-unders at the Junior Olympics in Tampa, Florida. As we were getting ready to play in the gold medal finals, the chairman of the All-American committee came up to Bob Crowell right before the match and told him if our team won, they were going to name “the eighth grader”—me—the MVP. After we lost, I was named first-team All-American. Later, we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where we toured the island with the Puerto Rican Junior National team, playing in the hometowns of their 18s players. The following year, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we won the 16s—I was one of the middle blockers—and I was named the tournament MVP.
As my Asics teammates will tell you, I was a fierce competitor. I always wanted to win. Our 16s didn’t lose.
“I hate losing,” I said one day to my friend and teammate Jen Pavley.
“Misty, do you hate losing, or do you love winning?” Jen asked.
She was right: I loved winning more than I hated losing—because then I didn’t have to hear it off the court from Dad.
Analyzing it now, playing high-level soccer for so many years gave me a huge advantage in volleyball. It taught me proper footwork. It helped increase my foot speed. It improved my balance, taught me how to center myself. It allowed me to move easily to my right or my left. It instilled toughness in me. I wasn’t afraid to get hit with balls—I took them off my face and my chest. One time, I got a soccer ball in my mouth, and I had to rip my lip off my braces.
Throughout my childhood and into my teenage years, Dad and Mom hauled me to all their volleyball tournaments, both on the beach and indoors. Even when I was just learning the game, my parents always made sure to include me on the court. When they were doing passing drills, I was right there with them. When they were bumping the ball, I was bumping it, too. They practiced serving; I practiced serving. They practiced digging; so would I. They weren’t afraid to stick me in one of their games, even when I was eight and just starting out.
I watched, and I listened, for years and years.
Eileen Clancy McClintock, Dad’s longtime beach volleyball partner, tells stories about me as a little girl, growing up at Muscle Beach, describing how I’d saunter into huddles during Dad’s strategy sessions with her or any of his teammates. I’d lap it all up. Dad and I always went to Mom’s indoor tournaments, where he’d point things out to me for hours at a time. “Watch this person,” he’d tell me. “Did you see what that person just did?” Sometimes, I’d be the water girl for Mom’s team, and I’d squeeze into the huddle during time-outs, soaking up the strategy.
Very early on, Dad and Mom realized how sharp and aware I was. When I was just a kid, Dad says he knew because he had to cheat to beat me at Go Fish. But could he or Mom beat me at Pac-Man? Not in a million years. Not at Pac-Man or any other video game, thanks to my excellent hand-eye coordination. And, of course, my mountainous pile of quarters. Whenever my parents stopped in at the Mucky Duck, a British-style pub in Santa Monica, they were sitting ducks if they to
ok me on at video games. Our Muscle Beach family always gave me their change. Dad would walk by and see ten dollars’ worth of quarters on my table. He was notorious for having only three dollars in his pocket.
“Misty, can I have a few quarters?” he’d ask.
“No, Dad, this is for Kong,” I’d reply.
6
ALCOHOLISM
Alcohol has always been part of beach volleyball culture.
At some amateur tournaments, the winning prizes are free pitchers of beer at a local sponsoring tavern. At others, sponsored by beer companies, competitors are welcome to take leftover beer at the conclusion of the event. Then, it’s “Everybody over to my house for a barbecue!” time. I remember my parents bringing home stacks of six-packs of Labatt beer after amateur tournaments. And beer wasn’t consumed only after tournaments. I recall being at amateur events where people drank and played simultaneously.
Alcohol also plays an integral role in professional beach volleyball. Through the years, the Association of Volleyball Professionals’ sponsors have included tequila, rum, beer, and wine companies. Fans at AVP events come for the party as much as for the competition, to drink in the atmosphere and the alcohol, even if it is legally banned on that particular beach. Spectators still may try to find their way around the law, and typically, there are designated local bars for post-tournament parties.
I understand the relationship between alcohol and beach volleyball all too well. I’ve lived it, every day of my life, not only on the sand, but inside my family’s home.
While I’ve never talked about it publicly until now, my parents got swept up in the partying aspect of beach volleyball, and later in their lives, their drinking created major problems. It caused me a lot of heartache, embarrassment, shame, and insecurity. Although my father hasn’t had a drink in more than twenty years, and my mother was sober almost eleven years when she died in 2002, even today their alcoholism still has a profound impact on me. Trying to cope with their drinking problems shaped my personality, from the time I became aware of their issues, when I was four, until they’d both sobered up, by the time I was fifteen. It’s the reason I’m so quiet. It’s the reason I don’t express my feelings well. It’s the reason I can’t talk about what’s really going on inside me.
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