Hometown boy Eric Fonoimoana caps an improbable run to Sydney, teaming with Dain Blanton to take Olympic Gold in beach volleyball
by John Tawa
Reprinted from Easy Reader, September 28, 2000.
Eric Fonoimoana and Dain Blanton stood on the rain-soaked sand at Bondi Beach Tuesday afternoon on the verge of making history.
The American beach volleyball duo had taken the first game in the best two-of-three gold medal match against the favorites Ze Marco de Melo and Ricardo Santos of Brazil, and led 11-9 in the second game, one point from the gold.
Blanton served the smaller Ze Marco. The pass to his partner Ricardo was good. So was the set.
But the block was better.
In a burst of speed and power, Fonoi rose high above the net and roofed Ze Marco, sending the ball straight down into the sand.
Blanton and Fonoi followed immediately thereafter, locking in a sandy embrace below the net, relishing a moment in time neither would ever forget.
“I couldn’t believe what just happened,” Fonoi said. “It was all in slow motion. After the block, I watched the ball hit the ground and thought, ‘What does that mean?’ It means the match is over. It means we’ve won the gold medal and all the stuff we’ve been doing has paid off.”
It meant they were Olympic champions. Gold medal winners. The best in the world.
“A lot of people didn’t expect us to be here, but Dain and I always thought we could do it,” Fonoi explained. “What a time to peak.”
Coach Cook
Mira Costa head volleyball coach Mike Cook was scanning the television at his Manhattan Beach home Monday night, searching for news on the gold medal match. Cook coached Fonoi in the indoor game at Mira Costa from 1985-87 and coached with him at the school from 1994-98. They continued to maintain a close relationship.
The telephone rang at Cook’s house at about 9:45 p.m. It was a family friend who had been “watching” the match on the Internet. NBC wouldn’t televise the final for another 21 hours.
“She said, ‘He won! He won!’” Cook stated. “I was ecstatic.”
“I think special people do special things,” Cook continued. “It happens to people who really prepare themselves physically and have something special mentally. He put a lot of intensity and preparation into it; he did all the right things.
“The volleyball family at Mira Costa is really delighted.”
Path to Gold
Getting to the gold medal game was no easy feat for the ninth-seeded Americans. In the four matches preceding their golden quest, Fonoimoana and Blanton avenged earlier defeats, withstood knockout attempts, took out friends and exorcized demons.
They began play in front of 10,000 sun-drenched fans at the Olympic beach volleyball stadium at Bondi Beach Sept. 17 against Germans Oliver Oetke and Andreas Scheurepflug, a pair they hadn’t beaten in two previous tries.
“Before [Fonoimoana] left, I told him the third time’s the charm,” Cook said.
He was right.
Dominating from the first serve, Fonoi and Blanton hammered the Germans 15-7 to advance to the single-elimination round of 16.
Five days later, Fonoi/Blanton faced off against the hard-serving Norwegian team of Jorre Kjemperud and Vegard Hoidalen, a pre-tournament medal favorite.
It was a battle, with the Norwegians, who train in Hermosa Beach, rocketing ace serve after ace serve to take an early four-point lead. The Americans chipped away, however, thanks to Norway’s 21 service errors and eventually scored the 15-13 win. A Fonoi dig and tip was the match winner.
A quarterfinal match with friends, training partners and fellow Americans Rob Heidger (Redondo Beach) and Kevin Wong was next. At stake was a spot in the semifinals and no less than the chance to play for a bronze medal.
Heidger and Wong had taken a fortuitous route to the quarters. After losing their opening match to fall into the loser’s bracket, they split the next two games but advanced to the round of 16 on point differential. Dubbed the “lucky losers,” Heidger and Wong got even luckier when the Mexican team they were set to face had to default due to injury, setting up the showdown with their countrymen.
Fonoi/Blanton made sure that the lucky streak of their compatriots would end with them. They smashed Heidger/Wong 15-3 on Sunday morning, using their superior speed to reel off 11 straight points en route to the win.
Fonoi described his team’s performance as “flawless.” Wong was equally impressed.
“To me personally, every other team we played against was in slow motion and these guys were at light speed,” Wong said.
A spot in the bronze medal match assured, Fonoi/Blanton took the court for the semi final Sunday afternoon, knowing that a win would clinch a silver medal and a chance to upgrade to gold. Across the net stood Portugal’s Luis Maia and Joao Brenha, a seasoned team which, four years earlier in Atlanta, had found itself in the same position only to lose its final two matches to finish fourth and out of the medals.
The match was tense throughout. It was deadlocked at 10-10 for 20 minutes before Fonoi cuffed one wide to give the Portuguese the lead, prompting a U.S. timeout.
What happened next was almost unbelievable. Thinking the Americans were slow to return to the court after the timeout, the Australian referee red-carded Fonoi and Blanton, awarding a point to Portugal for a 12-10 lead.
The bad break fired up the Americans. After Fonoi’s big swinger produced a sideout, Blanton took over the match. He served an ace down the line. A cross-court ace followed, tying the match. Fonoi then blocked Maia for a point, giving the U.S. the lead. A Blanton kill down the line and his ace between the Portuguese followed in rapid succession, giving the Americans the 15-12 win and a berth in the finals.
Winning time
By Monday, Fonoi had begun thinking about gold.
“We didn’t come here just to represent our country,” he said. “We came here to compete and win a medal. We’ve accomplished half our goal. We’d like to have a gold medal now.”
But winning gold was a tall order. Their opponents, Ze Marco and Ricardo, were from volleyball-rich Brazil and were one of the world’s best teams. To make matters worse, they had beaten Fonoi/Blanton in all four of their previous meetings, three times on the international tour in 2000. In Ricardo, a 6-foot-8 blocker, the Brazilians had the type of player who gave the 6-2 Fonoi and the 6-3 Blanton huge problems.
Fonoi and Blanton came into the gold medal match loose. The way Fonoi figured it, they had nothing to lose. If anyone feels pressure, Fonoi reasoned, it should be the Brazilians because of the expectations of fans of a country where volleyball is second only to soccer in popularity.
It was cold and rainy when the teams took the court Tuesday. Early on, it appeared the Brazilians would dominate. They moved quickly to a 10-7 lead in the first game — played to 12 points — of the best-of-three final.
Brazil surged to an 11-8 lead and appeared poised to take game one, but Blanton and Fonoi staved off four game points, including one where Ricardo netted a perfect set.
The U.S. battled back to 11-11. Blanton dug a smash back over the net and out of the Brazilians’ reach for a point. Fonoi blocked Ze Marco to get to within one and then served an ace to knot the score. They won the first game, 12-11, when Ze Marco’s kill attempt flew beyond the end line.
“When we came back and won the pressure was off us,” Fonoi said. “That’s the way we came into the second game, knowing they had to win to put us into a third game. Dain and I just let it all hang out.”
Using the momentum from the game one comeback, Fonoi/Blanton opened up 3-0 and 4-1 leads in game two. They never trailed in the game and resisted one desperate comeback attempt after another. The Brazilians got as close as 10-9 but couldn’t knot the match through 13 straight sideouts. Then, Fonoi tooled one off of Ricardo’s block to give the Americans a match point. Moments later, when Fonoi blocked Ze Marco, the gold was theirs.
“The only way we played that well was to play against a team that good,” Blanton told the crowd at Bondi Beach afterwards.
In Hermosa Beach, Tim Cooper followed the match on the Internet from Fonoi’s home,
cheering when Fonoi/Blanton did well, but pacing nervously around the house during tense times. Cooper, an athletic trainer at Mira Costa, has trained Fonoi for seven years and is one of his best friends. He’s been house sitting for Fonoi during the Games.
When Fonoi/Blanton scored the gold medal point, Cooper jumped out of his chair.
“I thought how awesome,” he exclaimed.
“Of all the people I know, I couldn’t think of a better person to represent the U.S. in the Olympics,” Cooper added. “His demeanor, the way he is… He’s not selfish at all. He never tells people he doesn’t have time for them. It’s an honor to be able to work with him and be his friend.”
An hour after gaining the gold, Cooper telephoned his friend in Sydney
“He was totally excited and thankful that he was able to accomplish this,” Cooper said. Fonoi’s most exciting moment came on the podium during the medal ceremony.
“You stand in honor of the flag and what it means,” Fonoi said. “It means you’ve accomplished something so special, not just for Dain and me, but for the country. We’re proud to be what we are — Americans.”
The Road to Sydney
Winning a gold medal must have appeared as remote as a distant star to Fonoi and Blanton as they toiled internationally during the summer to score enough points simply to qualify for the Games.
Teams scored Olympic qualification points by participation in international events run by the FIVB (Federation International de Volleyball). While Heidger/Wong played full-time on the FIVB World Tour, making their qualifying relatively easy, Fonoi/Blanton played a more limited schedule because of their commitments to the domestic AVP (Association of Volleyball Professionals Tour)..
But even that schedule didn’t sit well with the AVP. In June, it suspended Fonoi/Blanton indefinitely for registering without the AVP’s permission to play in an FIVB event in Italy July 12-16, the same week the AVP contended they were contractually bound to play the AVP Muskegon Open in Michigan.
“In an Olympic year, we should be focused on playing in the Olympics, not on whatever agenda is going on,” Fonoi said at the time. “Dain and I have already made compromises. It is a matter of them making compromises. There just haven’t been any.
“So we’re going to do the Olympic thing and when they decide – which is sad – when we get to play, we’ll play.”
The quest for a berth on the Olympic team continued into early August when Fonoi/Blanton battled with the team of 1996 Gold Medalist Karch Kiraly and new partner Adam Johnson for the right to represent the United States. In Portugal in late July, a fifth place finish put Fonoi/Blanton ahead. Kiraly/Johnson responded the following week with a fifth place finish in Austria, putting them in front by 86 points with just one week left to earn points.
Fonoi/Blanton headed to Ostend, Belgium knowing they needed a podium finish to reach Sydney. They received some good fortune early when Kiraly’s shoulder dislocation during the preliminaries forced Kiraly/Johnson to withdraw from the main bracket, but they still needed to play well to overtake them.
After steamrolling opponents in the first two rounds, Fonoi/Blanton came up against the world’s top-ranked team, Jose Loiola and Emanuel Rego, in the third round. They had to beat the Brazilians.
“To get in the Olympics, I think you should beat the best,” Fonoimoana said. “Going in against Jose and Emanuel, Dain and I had our work cut out for us. We knew what was at stake. Nothing was going to get in our way. Jose and Emanuel came out a little flat. We jumped on them early and ended up finishing them off.”
The 15-12 upset of the Brazilians propelled Fonoi/Blanton to a third place finish, good enough to suit up for the U.S. in Sydney.
Digging for kids
In August, Fonoi said that going to the Olympic Games would work wonders for the Dig for Kids charitable foundation he formed in March. The program offers both athletic and academic coaching for underprivileged kids.
“Because you have the Olympian name behind the non-profit, it helps a great deal when you approach people,” he said.
Winning gold in Sydney should have sponsors lined up at the door.
“I knew it was going to be successful and now it will be,” he said. “For all the kids who will benefit because of this, I’m really excited about it.”
“I just felt it was time beach volleyball had some sort of foundation to teach kids how to play and give them something to do besides regular sports,” Fonoimoana explained. “We are going to Hawthorne and Inglewood and Gardena and Carson. We’re going into the inner city schools and parks and recreation departments and teaching them how to play. I just want [kids] to get introduced to volleyball instead of waiting until high school or college to even see the game.”
Pay off
At the AVP Manhattan Beach Open a month ago, where he and Blanton finished a disappointing seventh in their final pre-Olympic tune-up, Fonoimoana talked about following in the footsteps of brothers Toa and Kirk on the AVP Tour.
“I knew it was going to be a struggle,” he explained. “I played every summer and was looking forward to the challenge of becoming a professional beach volleyball player. But I knew it was going to take a lot of hard work.
“And nothing’s been easy out here. Everything’s been a struggle. But it’s all paid off.”
In gold. ER
