Top teams rule the beach

Bede-Behar, Arce-McPeak remain undefeated

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Posted: Thursday July 30, 1998 08:48 PM

NEW YORK (AP) - Both U.S. teams in the women's beach volleyball at the Goodwill Games both won Thursday. Things now get a lot different.

Karolyn Kirby and Liz Masakayan beat Kristine Drakich and Guylaine Dumont of Canada 15-5 to even their record after two matches.

Lisa Arce and Holly McPeak beat Eva Celbova and Sona Dosoudilova of the Czech Republic 15-9 to remain unbeaten in pool play.

On Friday at the sand-covered Wollman Rink in Central Park, each will finish round-robin play. Kirby and Masakayan need to beat the top-seeded Brazilian team to assure moving on to the semifinals, while Arce and McPeak, the second-seeded team in the competition, are almost guaranteed of advancing regardless of what they do against Germany.

"It was tough to rebound off yesterday's loss," Masakayan said of the opening 15-10 defeat by Australia. "It took time to heal. We knew we had to come back and collect ourselves, but it was still pretty devastating."

Kirby and Masakayan took command right away against Canada (0-2), winning seven of the first eight points. After Canada pulled within 9-5, the U.S. team scored the final six points, the last five on consecutive serves by Masakayan.

Now comes the undefeated beaten Brazilian team of Shelda Bede and Adriana Behar, which beat Australia 15-9 Thursday.

"We have to step up our game, our pace especially," Kirby said of herself and Masakayan, the defending Goodwill Games champions and one of the sport's dominating teams until both were forced to miss time over the past few years following surgery for injuries. "When they beat teams by a large margin, it's because they just spin them off the court, and so we need to get into the match, that tempo early."

Arce and McPeak finished second in the world championships last year and their attention is also focused on the Brazilians.

"The thing we need to do now is to be opposite the Brazilians in the semis," Arce said. "We want to play them in the gold-medal match. That's the best scenario. They're good friends of ours, and that's what we kind of said [to them], "Win all your matches and we'll see you in the finals." So we need to win tomorrow [Friday] to do that."  

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