Saturday, August 4, 2001
[ VOLLEYBALL ]
Riggers takes Players have come and gone at the Riggers Beach Volleyball Championships.
on new look
The tournament's 13th edition
promises to look very differentBy Grace Wen
gwen@starbulletin.comBut there was always one constant at the tournament -- the direction of the nets -- that is, until this year.
The 13th annual tournament, slated to start at 9 a.m. at Queen's Beach, takes on an entirely different look. Construction forced tournament organizers Jon Andersen and Randy Morris to rearrange the direction of the courts.
Instead of going from east to west and parallel to pedestrians on Kalakaua Avenue, the nets will be going in a north-south direction.
The direction of the nets isn't the only new thing. Former UC Santa Barbara player and Punahou School graduate Alika Williams will be reunited with Stevie Li for the first time since they won the event in 1997. Both say that they have good team chemistry, so it seems as though they had never been apart.
"He's aggressive and fiery," Li said. "Our personalities mesh and we have a good mix of emotions."
Williams competed on the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour the last two summers but opted to play only part time this year as the AVP struggled to get organized under its new owner.
Williams and Li will likely be the top seed with last year's winners, Pono Ma'a and Guy Kanino as the second seed.
The woman's tournament will showcase a blend of old and new. Former AVP pro Janice Harrer teams with Linda Nelson while Heidi Illustre plays with former Hawaii Pacific University All-American Tanja Fuumatu.
The new nets mean that teams competing in previous years won't have an advantage in gauging conditions.
"It's a whole new configuration with the construction," Williams said.
The tournament has 30-32 teams split into four divisions with a men's and women's Open and A division.