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Gimmillaro a Casualty of Own Eminence
by Doug Krikorian, Long Beach Press-Telegram
November 13, 2007
His women's volleyball team is 20-5, is 13-2 in the Big West, and is
in second place only a game behind Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo.
Cause for a celebration, right?
Well, not quite.
Certainly it's still another successful season for the Long Beach State
coach, Brian Gimmillaro, in a career of successful seasons - three NCAA
championships, eight Final Four berths, 20 postseason appearances, endless
national honors for his players and for himself - but once again it's
not quite up to his own expectations and to the expectations of his team's
loyalists.
After all, there was a time it would have been incomprehensible for the
49ers to have dropped two matches to, of all schools, Cal Poly as they've
done this autumn.
Actually, there was a time when it was an unusual development when the
49ers even were beaten, and they weren't in 1998 when they went 36-0 and
they nearly duplicated the achievement in 2001 when they won their first
33 starts before losing to Stanford in the NCAA title game.
If Dan Monson's basketball team started off 20-5 this season, Dr. F. King
Alexander and Vic Cegles doubtless would commission artist LeRoy Neiman
to do a portrait of Monson and display it in a glass-enclosed trophy case
in front of the Walter Pyramid.
But, with Brian Gimmillaro, it's different.
He has become a victim of his own past prosperity, and he has set the
bar so steep for his team that disappointment looms when it doesn't seem
destined for the Final Four.
It stretches one's imagination to envision this season's 49ers advancing
that far, and I asked Gimmillaro how disappointed he was about his team's
deportment.
"I really thought we'd be a great team," said Gimmillaro, who
has a 314-87 record during his 23 seasons with the 49ers. "I really
thought at this time we would have only lost one match. But things happen.
We lose our senior defensive specialist Iris Murray with an injury in
the spring. And then we lose our senior setter, Dyanne Lawlor, to the
White House (she accepted an internship) in August, and you lose some
chemistry when that happens.
"Not that their replacements, Nicole Vargas and Talaya Whitfield,
haven't done their jobs. They've been terrific. Nicole has handled the
setting chores so well, and Talaya has been one of the best at her position
in the country.
"I still think this team has a chance to do something special. We're
coming. We're getting better. I feel good about the direction that we're
now headed."
Still, it's not like the past for Brian Gimmillaro.
There was a time when Gimmillaro's teams were dominant and pounded the
opposition with a relentless efficiency.
There was a time when in the middle of November that you knew those 49er
teams that had players on it like Antoinnette White and Tara Cross and
Danielle Scott and Misty May and Cheryl Weaver and Tayyiba Haneef were
headed deep into the NCAA tournament.
There was a time when the 49ers were as feared as anyone in the country.
No more.
The 49ers are still quite formidable, but their aura of invincibility
has vanished.
The most logical explanation for such a development is that the major
football schools in recent years have started pouring more financial resources
into their women's volleyball teams - and they now get many of the top
prospects that once wound up in Long Beach.
While acknowledging that competition for such players has increased dramatically,
Gimmillaro gave another explanation for some of his team's struggles in
recent seasons.
When I asked Gimmillaro how hard has it been for him to accept the 49ers'
diminished stature, he replied coolly, "The hardest thing for me
to accept has been the more than 10,000 hours of practice that my injured
players have missed in recent years. I thought the best recruiting class
we ever had came after the 2002 season, but all the key players from that
class got injured and few were even able to play. Dyanne Lawlor was the
only one from that group to stay healthy, and that we had chance to develop."
Brian Gimmillaro will tell you he enjoys his work as much as he ever has,
but one wonders if he privately now regrets declining offers he once received
from places like Stanford and USC and Texas.
Not only would he be earning a greater income at those venues, but he
also would find it easier to lure the kind of heralded recruits that have
been eluding him in recent years in Long Beach.
Still, typically, Brian Gimmillaro remains optimistic.
"Listen, we still have a pretty darned good team," he says.
"I'm proud of what we've done, and, like I said, we're going to get
better. I think in Alexis Crimes that we have one of the best players
we've ever had here. We've never had anyone who can leap like her. And
Michaela Hasalikova has been tremendous all season.
"When I first came here, no school near the bottom had been able
to rise to the top, but we were able to do it. Now we want to find kids
who want to go to the top at a school without a big-time football program.
And I think it can be done. I think it will be done.
"If we can just stay healthy, and have a chance to develop the kids
we get, we're going to be fine."
But whether Brian Gimmillaro ever again will get players the caliber of
Misty May, regarded by many as the top beach volleyball player in the
world, or Tayyiba Haneef, whom Gimmillaro himself says is now the top
indoor player in the world, or Dannielle Scott, who will play in her fourth
Olympic Games next year in Bejing alongside Haneef, remains unclear.
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