Gene Mick keeps a photo of himself and Charlie Saikley, commonly referred to as the godfather of beach volleyball, on the refrigerator at his home. In the picture, the two are standing on the tournament stands during the 2001 Six-Man tournament, which has since been named after Saikley.
The 58-year-old El Segundo resident and self-described beach volleyball fanatic has been into the sport since 1994. He worked for Chevron for 15 years – the first 10 in the Bay Area, where his passion for the sport ignited. When he saw an internal job listing in Orange County, he jumped at the opportunity. That way, he said, “I could just drive to the South Bay instead of flying down for tournaments.”
Last summer, he noticed that the modest wooden stand just south of the Manhattan Beach pier, where Saikley and other tournament directors have run the scoreboard and called the teams to the courts for decades, was splintering and decaying.
And so began his yearlong, self-funded $1,000 project to restore and repaint the tournament director stand. He installed new pilasters to hold up the stand after removing the decaying wooden ones, and added a new layer of plywood to the top of the stand. Mick put the final coat of aqua-colored paint on the stand last month.
“I’m very happy with it,” he said, while munching on a slice of veggie pizza at Manhattan Pizzeria one recent afternoon.
Mick dedicated the restoration to Saikley – on the stand, he attached a small brass plaque that reads: “restored and maintained in honor of Charlie Saikley.”
“I thought the world of him, I really did,” Mick said, tearing up. Saikley died in 2005, at age 69, from cancer. “We lost, what I would call, a near saint.”
Mick views the beach volleyball community as family. “I don’t have kids, I don’t have uncles or aunts, both my parents were only children,” he said. “The volleyball community is my extended family.”
Former volleyball player and CBVA tournament director Kevin Cleary said that if Mick hadn’t stepped in to restore the stand, it would’ve likely been torn down. Not only was it decaying, but it was also a prime location under which transients could sleep. Mick installed a screen underneath the stand to prevent that from continuing.
Cleary appreciated Mick’s efforts to preserve the stand. “I’ve seen him down there, fixing it up. He bought his own plywood,” he said. “He’s done this on his own time.”
The origins of the stand are unclear. “It’s kind of a mystery to me,” Mick said. “I think the exact history died with Charlie Saikley.” He’s heard from residents that it was originally a lifeguard stand, where guards could watch the surfers south of the pier and make sure no one was swimming in that area. But, he added, “Nobody took responsibility for maintaining it.”
