End of the road

Defending champions out, top seeds advance to semis

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Posted: Friday July 31, 1998 09:24 PM

USA's Karolyn Kirby (right) goes up to block a shot by Brazil's Shelda Bede AP

NEW YORK (AP) - Age and injury caught up with Karolyn Kirby and Liz Masakayan at the Goodwill Games.

The defending women's beach volleyball champions were eliminated from the tournament Friday, losing to a Brazilian pair that is their latest successor as the world's top team.

Shelda Bede and Adriana Behar won 15-9 on the Central Park sand, running off nine straight points largely on crossing serves by Behar for a 10-1 lead, then scoring four of the last five points to wrap it up.

"What happened at the beginning of the game for them to get a big lead is exactly what happened at the end of the game when they got their last points," the 33-year-old Masakayan said.

In between those two runs, the San Diego pair scored seven of eight points with play that brought back visions of their days at the top: an ace, three kills and a block by Kirby, and pressure behind Masakayan's serve.

"Once we started getting points, it was really the old Liz and Karolyn started coming back, where we started gaining some confidence and we had something we could work with," the 37-year-old Kirby said. "It's just too bad we didn't think of that a little bit earlier."

With just one win in three preliminary matches, Masakayan and Kirby still had a slim chance of advancing to Saturday's semifinals. That evaporated when Pauline Manser and Kerri Pottharst of Australia beat winless Kristine Drakich and Guylaine Dumont of Canada 15-8 to reach the final four.

"It would have been nice," Kirby said.

There will be an American team in the semifinals.

Holly McPeak and Lisa Arce of Manhattan Beach, Calif., defeated Maike Friedrichsen and Danja Musch of Germany 15-11.

They will meet Manser and Pottharst, while Bede and Bahar face Italy's Laura Bruschini and Annamaria Solazzi, who beat Eva Celbova and Sona Dosoudilova of the Czech Republic 15-7.

Kirby and Masakayan dominated the Women's Pro Volleyball Association tour in the mid-1990s, taking 13 straight tournaments at one point. They won the gold medal in the 1994 Goodwill Games and reached the final of the world championship that year, before things started to go bad.

Masakayan tore a knee ligament in that tournament and had to have surgery. She snapped her kneecap nine months later, forcing her sixth knee operation. Kirby had shoulder surgery in 1997.

They played with different partners for a while and watched the U.S. pro league fold. Now they are together again, rekindling memories if not repeating results. Kirby called it "kind of nostalgic."

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