Budinger's Career Nearing Final Chapter
by Frank Burlison, Long Beach Press-Telegram
April 14, 2006 After the better part of four years, along with 120 matches, the final pages of the Long Beach State chapter of Duncan Budinger's volleyball career are rapidly turning. But the senior computer science major who, some day, might design the video games you play, or lend his technical skills to the movies you watch, would prefer to think of the end of his days in a 49ers' uniform as something other than "sneaking up on him."
He sighed.
"People remind me of that all the time," he said moments after a practice in the Walter Pyramid earlier this week. "I'd rather look at it as 'seeing the end in sight." "
No matter the semantics, there is, at the very most, barely three weeks remaining as 49ers for Budinger and fellow seniors Tyler Hildebrand and Robert Tarr.
They were three key elements to the Long Beach team that came ever-so-close to winning a national championship against the Brigham Young University Cougars two years ago in Honolulu.
And, if things turn out the way that Budinger, his classmates and the rest of coach Alan Knipe's team believe are possible, they'll get another crack at a title three weeks from Saturday night in College Station, Pa.
"As a team," Budinger said, "there are always things you can be better at. But as long as we have no letdowns and we stay focused, we have the players to make it that far."
After struggling with consistency most of the season and losing three consecutive matches for the second time this season but only third time in three years, the 49ers probably turned in their best back-to-back performances in 2006 with a sweep of then-No. 3 BYU in the Walter Pyramid last week.
The 49ers lost the first two games of the first match with the Cougars, then Budinger who had been playing the opposite (right-side hitter) position for nearly two months was moved back to the middle blocker spot he had always played on the club and college levels.
Knipe said he made the move, in large part, to get the hitting ability of sophomore reserve Norm Hutton (an opposite) on the court as much as possible.
That certainly couldn't have been the only reason for the turnaround but Long Beach won the next three games in the match and then beat the Cougars the next night, 3-1.
They'll take an overall record of 19-9 and Mountain Pacific Sports Federation mark of 12-8 into their regular-season finales against Pacific (tonight, 7:30) and Stanford (Saturday evening, 7) in the Walter Pyramid.
Because of the BYU sweep, Long Beach moved from No. 7 to No. 5 in the current American Volleyball Coaches Association ratings and kept its chances of playing host to a MPSF quarterfinal on April 22 mathematically intact.
Budinger, a second-team All-America selection by Volleyball Magazine as a junior, came into this season with the all-time best (.474) career hitting percentage in the program.
With 408 kills this season (second to Tarr) his percentage is at .388 but that's probably due to the switch in positions and the fact that, with 768, he's had roughly 250 more swings than during any of his first three years in the program.
Unlike an opposite or outside hitter, a middle blocker is substituted out for a defensive specialist (libero) when he rotates to the back row.
And therein is why Budinger, if given the choice, would prefer staying at opposite.
"It's a little frustrating, not being on the court as much or being in on as many sets," he said.
It's the nature of the competitive spirit that rages in Budinger, just as it does in his older sister, Brittanie (an All-America at USF who plays the sport professionally overseas) and his younger brother Chase, a University of Arizona-bound McDonald's All-America in basketball who is widely viewed as the finest high school volleyball player in the country.
It's the way Duncan Budinger Sr. and wife Mara raised their three kids in their Encinitas home.
"To me," the 49ers' Budinger continued about the move back to the middle, "it feels like I have less impact now like I wasn't good enough at opposite, so I got benched. To me, it's like I failed. I guess it's the natural competitor in me."
But …
"If we have a better chance of winning (while he is in the middle)," he quickly added, "then I'm all for it."
Knipe said it's far from a situation in which he was disappointed in Budinger's play as an opposite.
"He proved he's one of the best opposites in the league," he said. "But we needed his size and punch back in the middle, and we needed to get Norm's (Hutton's) heavy and explosive arm on the court at the same time."
Should the 49ers earn another match on their home court on April 22, it would give Budinger's parents and siblings another opportunity to make the familiar 80-mile northbound trek on the 5 and 405 freeways to the Walter Pyramid.
The "one for all and all for one" phrase was coined for groups like the Budinger Family.
Duncan and Mara have attended nearly all of Long Beach's matches this season, just as their oldest son attempted to see as many of his sister's matches as possible when she was a USF senior. And Brittanie and Duncan have watched as many of Chase's basketball games and now volleyball matches as possible in his senior year.
Chase, in fact, turned down an invitation to play in the Michael Jordan All-America in New York City on April 22 because he knew it would mean missing what, conceivably, could be his older brother's final match as a 49er.
Budinger's father, a vice president for a San Diego-based commercial real estate developer, said, "We're usually on the road (for Long Beach) by no later than 5 or 5:30.
"And there are a lot of (extended) family members in and around Manhattan Beach, so they are usually at the matches as well."
He laughed.
"Of course, when we can, we try to leave as early as 3:30, so we can get to El Torito (on Pacific Coast Highway, just south of the campus) in time for Happy Hour," he said.
"They've come to know us very well over there."
But the opportunities for those visits are dwindling to the very few.
Budinger, the middle blocker-turned-opposite-turned-middle blocker, will put his four seasons as a 49er into context later.
For now, the focus is just on the tasks winning matches and, if everything clicks, spending his last weekend as a 49er in Pennsylvania immediately at hand.
"When you're in the moment, it (a season) seems like such a long time," he said. "But when you look back, it's gone by a lot faster than you had realized."
Yeah. Seasons and careers and time are sneaky like that, aren't they? |
