Spike Sisters : U.S. Team Is Hoping Odens’ Knack for Winning Will Be Golden Touch

SAN DIEGO —  It’s easy to tell which one is which when you walk into the Federal Building gymnasium in Balboa Park where the U.S. women’s volleyball team trains.

Bev Oden is there early, looking eagerly for the visitor she is supposed to meet.

Oden’s older sister, Elaina, arrives a little later and heads straight for the familiar, stationary bicycles.

“I’m a little more shy when I first meet people and [Bev] just jumps into it,” Elaina says. “She’s kind of flirty a little bit and I don’t flirt at all. She has a big group of friends and I have a few that I’m always with.”

Whatever the personality differences between the Oden sisters, who are originally from Irvine, one thing is clear--they are both accustomed to winning.

Consider their combined volleyball titles: Three from the NCAA, four from the Southern Section, two from the CIF (both Bev’s) and six from national club tournaments. Just for kicks, Elaina also won a state title in the shot put.

Elaina and Bev’s names have been on the American Volleyball Coaches’ Assn. first team a combined six times while they played at University of Pacific and Stanford, respectively. Each was selected the NCAA player of the year, Elaina in 1985 and Bev in 1990.

This summer, the Oden sisters will try to add two more trophies to their already overflowing family mantel: Olympic gold medals.

This isn’t the first time a pair of Oden sisters have competed in the Olympics. In 1992, Kim, the oldest sister, and Elaina competed at Barcelona, where the United States won a bronze medal.

The Odens had hoped that all three would compete at Barcelona but Bev, then 21 and heading into her senior season at Stanford, was one of the final players cut from the Olympic roster.

Kim, 32, retired from the Olympic team after the 1992 Games and is playing professionally on the Bud Light beach tour. Oden’s Team Sony Autosound is the defending league champion.

“It would be really neat if [Kim] were here,” Bev said. “She hasn’t lost a step. I don’t think it would be a problem for her to be here. So it’s disappointing, but we’re getting over it.”

Seemingly lost on the Odens is the astounding fact that all three sisters have reached the national team level.

“It has been so normal,” Bev said. “Everybody seems amazed by it, but we’re like, ‘Whatever.’ Our parents didn’t really push us, but we had the inner desire to do well. As soon as we got into sports we took to it right away, and now we can’t separate it anymore from anything in life. We have to win at cards.”

Charlie Brande, who coached Bev for six years and Elaina for four years in the Orange County Volleyball Club, said it is more than athletic talent that makes the Odens successful.

“There is a reason you win that much,” Brande said. “There are people equally gifted, athletically, who have never won. [The Odens] have won everywhere. I think that’s what separates the Odens from all the [others] is that they have won.”

Elaina led her Orange County Volleyball Club teams to three consecutive championships at national club tournaments from 1983 to ’85 and also led Irvine High to Southern Section championships in 1981 and 1984. Bev led her club teams to national championships in 1985, ’87 and ’89. She led the Vaqueros to Southern Section and state titles in 1987-88.

Both credit Brande with much of their success--Elaina still sends him postcards from all over the world and drops by practice whenever she’s in town.

“He was really strict, the strictest coach I’ve ever had,” Bev said. “He would put a lot of pressure on us, about showing up, about [not] missing anything. We were very intense for our age and I think that’s what has allowed me to get where I am. I had a lot of pressure on me early and ever since then, everything has been easy.

“The mental dedication was the main thing. We already had that desire, Charlie just cultivated it.”

Elaina was considered one of the top recruits in women’s volleyball history when she signed with Pacific in 1985.

“Elaina could run sideline to sideline faster than anyone else on the [Orange County Volleyball Club] team,” Brande said. “College coaches would look at her and say, ‘That’s unbelievable.’ [As a freshman], she could jump and grab the rim [of a basketball hoop] with both hands.”

After leading the Tigers to consecutive NCAA titles her first two seasons, however, Oden blew out the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee the summer after her sophomore year and sat out the next season. She became overweight, under-motivated and she almost quit.

But with the determination that had won her so many titles, Oden fought to get herself back in shape. She played the next two years for the Tigers before earning a starting position on the ’92 Olympic team.

“Elaina is quietly and extremely confident,” Brande said. “If you are around her at all you know that she has a great deal of understanding of her abilities.”

It is perhaps this confidence which keeps 6-foot-1 Elaina, 29, in the United States’ starting lineup at middle blocker. She is older and an inch shorter than both starter Bev, 25, and reserve Danielle Scott, 24.

“A lot of it comes down to experience,” Elaina said.

U.S. Coach Terry Liskevych places Elaina Oden among those players who have an innate feel for the game.

“She is just a great all-around volleyball player. She has very good back-court skills and she is a great blocker,” Liskevych said.

Despite her initial shyness, Elaina is also known as the most adventurous member of the Oden family--one magazine report even had her thinking about gambling away the $10,000 she won for being the best spiker at last year’s Grand Prix, where the United States won a gold medal.

“I don’t think she’s as crazy as she has been portrayed in the media, but for our family, she is [the risk taker],” Bev said.

Bev also insists that Elaina, who also played a year of softball and basketball, and participated in soccer and track and field for two years at Irvine, is the most athletic member of the family.

Elaina disagreed.

“[Bev] is really athletic. I just happened to play more sports,” Elaina said. “She wanted to hang out with her friends more.”

Kim and Elaina began playing volleyball with their father, Abe, a former Marine who had played with his unit in Vietnam. But Bev didn’t begin playing volleyball until she was 13.

“My sisters would come home every weekend with trophies and I [decided] I wanted to get some trophies, so that’s why I started playing,” Bev said. “I got over the trophy thing eventually.”

But she never got over the winning thing--it became rooted deep inside of her.

“If you looked at Bev, you wouldn’t think that she wanted to win, but she is as serious as anyone else about playing as hard as she can whenever she steps on the court,” Abe said.

Said Brande: “Bev’s [Orange County Volleyball Club] team won forever but you look at them and you didn’t know how they won. But I have a theory. Every girl on the team was the youngest child in her family, and [youngest children] are usually the toughest.”

Bev has another theory.

“I just really started to like winning and really started to hate losing,” she said. “I don’t think you can really get to this level without a real hatred of losing.”

Bev followed Kim to Stanford and led the school to its first NCAA title in 1992. The championship provided consolation for being cut from the Olympic team the preceding summer.

“She bounced back and is on the team now and I think that is a tribute to her and her perseverance,” Liskevych said. “She is more mature, more experienced, I feel she has a few more years of international volleyball under her belt. You can’t teach experience.”

But she is an Oden. And that’s a winning formula you can’t teach, either.

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Olympic Volleyball

The U.S. men’s and women’s indoor volleyball teams will be selected June 19. The men’s roster has been cut to 16 players, and the women’s team has been cut to 14.

Here are the other players with Orange County connections:

* Men’s team: Scott Fortune (Laguna Beach), Brett Winslow (Irvine), John Hyden (Tustin).

* Women’s team: Tara Cross-Battle (Southern California Christian High), Tammy Liley (Westminster), Elaine Youngs (Lake Forest).