So here's an interesting but not unusual situation.
Dane Selznick, an American and former coach of Olympians Misty may and Kerri Walsh, is coaching the Chinese Beach Olympic contingent while Lang Ping, a Chinese Olympic gold medalist is the USA national women's volleyball coach prepping the team to play in Beijing this summer. Talk about cross "cultural" training!
Read on about the chinese training in America.
With the start of the 2008 SWATCH-FIVB World Tour season starting in South Australia, Team China has been training for the past month on the beaches of Southern California to prepare for the coming campaign that will feature their country’s hosting the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
Along with their coaches, the top Beach Volleyball players from China have been training in Southern California since 2005 where the Asian athletes have improved their skills while participating in workouts with American coaches and competitors.
Prior to leaving for the season opening event in Adelaide where more than 130 teams from 35 countries will begin competing starting Tuesday at Glenelg Beach on the Moseley Square courts, Team China was gaining media attention on a beach near the Los Angeles International Airport.
A television crew from NBC Nightly News was on hand to cover a training session with a pair of men’s teams and one women’s tandem from China participating in a practice with pairs from the American domestic tour along with coach Dane Selznick.
“I have been working with the Chinese for the past four years and have seen a lot of improvement in their skills,” said the 51-year old Selznick, who was honored as one of the "Legends of the Beach" at the 1997 SWATCH-FIVB World Championships.
“I think their training here has really helped them prepare for the international competition as any given day they can have a practice against a top American team or players with Olympic medals,” said Selznick, who coached Olympic gold medalists and three-time SWATCH-FIVB World Champions Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh of the United States.
Selznick’s point have been proven out as a Chinese men’s team and two women’s tandems are listed among the favorites to win medals at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games along with a second men’s team on the verge of qualifying for this August’s Summer Games.
“The Chinese players and coaches are like sponges during our training sessions,” added Selznick. “They want to hear and understand all the information they can to raise the teams performance. It's fun for me to see their desire out there.”
Selznick called women’s play Jie Wang “the most improved female. She has improved her speed and ball control. All the Chinese players keep improving certain habits I've pointed out over the years. There is still a lot of room for finer tuning.”
For China, the participation by the men in Beijing will be the first Olympic appearance led by Penggen Wu and Linyin Xu, who are currently the fifth-ranked team on the Summer Games qualifying list as the pair needs to place fifth or better in the inaugural Adelaide Australia Open.
Jian Li, who turned 23 Thursday, and Shun Zhou are currently 20th on the Olympic list that will change drastically once the top two American men’s Beach Volleyball teams (Phil Dalhausser/Todd Rogers and Jake Gibb/Sean Rosenthal) participate in two more SWATCH events to fulfill the requirement of a minimum of eight FIVB appearance between May 2007 and July 20, 2008.
With only two teams per country eligible for Olympic participation, the Chinese women are tied for second (Jia Tian/Jie Wang) and fourth (Chen Xue/Xi Zhang) on the Beijing list with a third pair (Lu Wang/Man Zuo) ranked among the top 15 tandems in the world. After not appearing in the inaugural Olympic Beach Volleyball competition in 1996 at Atlanta, China was represented by two women’s team each in Sydney and Athens with two players from those Games still participating on the SWATCH-FIVB World Tour.
Tian competed in both Olympics for China where she placed 19th with Jingkun Zhang in Sydney and ninth with Fei Wang in Athens after being ousted 21-11 and 21-18 by May-Treanor and Walsh in the first elimination round after winning one of three pool matches. The Chinese effort was slowed as Fei Wang had not recovered completely from a knee injury almost three months before the Athens competition. Lu Wang and Whenhui You placed 19th in Athens.
The development of the Chinese Beach Volleyball teams has improved greatly as neither the men or women had earned a SWATCH-FIVB World Tour podium placement until August 2000 in Dalian, China (FIVB Women’s event No. 68 of the 166 played to date), when Zi Xiong and Rong Chi placed third in the final women’s Olympic qualifying event before Sydney (finishing behind Liz Masakayan/Elaine Youngs and May-Treanor/Holly McPeak of the United States).
From 2000 through 2005, the Chinese women earned seven medals (gold medals in Bali and Milan) by Tian and Fei Wang. Since the start of the 2006 season, the Chinese women have captured 35 medals led by Tian and Jie Wang (19) and Chen Xue and Xi Zhang (10).
With the women’s FIVB Beach Volleyball competition beginning in 1992, the Chinese drought for a men’s medal was even longer since the start of the international events in 1987. The Chinese men had never placed higher than 12th in a SWATCH-FIVB World Tour event (1990 by Cheng Lu and Meng Qi in Enoshima, Japan) until Wu and Xu posted a ninth in the 2006 season opening event in Shanghai event.
Later in the 2006 season, Wu and Xu gained China's first-ever men's medal in Poland by defeating Marcio Araujo and Fabio Magalhaes of Brazil (FIVB Men's event No. 189 of the 208 played to date). Wu and Xu added a second medal in 2007 after losing a 72-minute three-setter of Marcio Araujo and Fabio in the semi-finals as the Chinese upset Russia’s Dmitri Barsouk and Igor Kolodinsky for the bronze medal at the Norwegian Grand Slam in Stavanger.
Selznick noted that Xu “has shown a lot of desire to be a more threatening blocker at the net. We've worked on some things that he's very comfortable with. His ball control has excelled too with some adjustments.”
With the Beijing Olympic Games less than five months from beginning, the Chinese teams are gaining more and more media attention starting with the 2007 SWATCH-FIVB World Championships in Switzerland when Lee Ann Gschwind of NBCOlympics.com wrote:
“The unofficial spokesman of the group is Linyin Xu, a gregarious 21-year-old from Shanghai who, at 6-foot-7, is nicknamed ‘Tiny’. Dane Selznick, the former coach of May-Treanor and Walsh, gave him the moniker. For the past few winters, Selznick has hosted several Chinese teams in the Los Angeles area for off-season training camps. The international exposure seems to be paying off for China and Xu believes the best is yet to come: Chinese beach volleyball, he says, is “still in its infancy.”
Remember the ball is in your court. Are you
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April Chapple is a freelance copywriter for volleyball products and promotions, columnist for USA Volleyball and the American Volleyball Coaches Association
Coaching Volleyballmagazine and author of numerous online articles on playing and coaching volleyball. Author of the upcoming ebook "How to Stop Serving Like a Wimp" April's volleyball sites are volleyballvoices.com, volleyballvoyeur.com, beijingolympicvolleyball.com, and aprilsbeachvolleyballog.com. She can be reached at april@volleyballvoices.com.
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