West Coast: In a rare moment of frankness, SDMLV Team Awesome coach, Lance Whippet, admitted his team is somewhat '...less than totally stoked ...' for their upcoming championship game with the Santa Carolina de la Jolla-by-the-Sea's Bitchin' Dudes. His admission is symbolic of the plague of ennui which has desimated the ranks of the Professional Out-Door, In The Sand, Volleyball League.
"I can't account for it, really." he began while picking at his sprouts-and-granola salad, "Except that some of the guys had high school reunions recently, and were pretty put-off by classmates getting up and telling what they'd done with their lives since graduation. It hit the dudes who graduated in the 60s the hardest. I mean, they had no idea they were supposed to do anything with their lives!"
This was only the most-recent in a string of incidents where real life has conflicted with the beach scene over the past year, and bodes not-at-all well for the up-coming Zinca World Cup Competition. This lack of total 'stoked-ness' has manifested itself on the sand, with a whopping 60% less 'diving to save the low return right in front of the camera's being recorded in the past two months. 'Sliding backwards in the sand to roll your Speedo's down below your buttocks and show your bitchin' tan lines' has come to a complete halt. Of course key injuries have played a part.
"We had some dudes still not at 100% in the Carmel game." Whippet pointed out, "I mean, three of my best net-men were still bummed from the San Luis de Francisco del Mar Linda game and my best server was down with sun-block poisoning. And you know how long it takes to bounce back from a solid bumming. It's still up to the Karma Gods, I'd say."
And so we greet the close of the winter season and the beginning of the spring season with a host of new challenges for these boys of the sand. Can they reconcile themselves to the fact that, for a large percentage of them, actual employment may be becoming the only option? How will they parley their volleyball skills, honed over three decades of doing little else, into gainful vocations? Does the nation really need a goodly number of tanning coaches and zinc-oxide models (Apart from George Hamilton, of course)? Time will tell.