Members of BYU men's volleyball team tasted the rare success of a national championship May 8 as they defeated the Long Beach State 49ers to win the 1999 NCAA volleyball tournament. The victory was all the sweeter as the 49ers were the only team to beat BYU this year in the Cougars' stellar 30-1 season.
The final game was a storybook finish to a year that saw BYU ranked No. 1 most of the time. The Cougars won their final match in three straight games, 15-9, 15-7, and 15-10. Their national championship at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion is one of the few times that a volleyball team won on its first appearance in the Final Four. It was a thriller, too, for the loyal BYU fans who followed them throughout the season and, at the finals, helped set an NCAA attendance record of 8,026. About 4,700 attended each home game at BYU.
What made the difference this year, said Coach McGown, is that this team was experienced and "we really could play." Team spirit was very high, shown by the team going places together. "They would go to the women's volleyball games dressed in silly outfits," he said. "They would select a '50s night, or a western night theme, and do all these things together; they were a team."
Ryan Millar, a Church member and prospective member of the U.S. Olympic team, agreed. "We are all pretty good friends, and that really showed on the court, the way we play together and stick together when things go bad. We kind of looked to each other to pep each other up."
The championship is an important one for BYU, said Millar. "Any time we can make BYU look good, that in turn makes the Church look good," he said. "That puts up a good image for the Church."
Prior to its national championship year, the BYU team has had a lot of opportunity to stick together when things went bad. This is a program that started with Coach Carl McGown in 1990 and won just two league games in his first two seasons, a 7-48 record overall for those two years. The second season was worse than the first. Along the way they were routinely thrashed by perennial powerhouses such as UCLA, which has 17 national titles.
The physical education professor-turned coach stayed with it because while "it wasn't fun, necessarily, it was very consuming."
BYU's fortune improved in 1994 when Millar of Lancaster, Calif., and Ossie Antonetti of Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico, joined the team. Both are now All-Americans, and work as a tandem. As Millar serves, kills and blocks on one side, Antonetti, who is small but compensates with a 40-inch vertical leap, fires kill after kill from the other side.
"We've been a work in progress for sure," said Millar. "When we first got there the team wasn't so good, but at times you could see glimpses that we were going to be good in a couple of years. Things finally worked out for us at the end."
Each season the team improved. Going into this year's tournament, their record was 65-13 for the past three seasons. Their defense was outstanding, allowing the opposing teams fewer than six points per game during one five-game stretch. It was at that point in February that the team was voted No. 1 in the nation. BYU's only loss during the season came at the hands of Long Beach State. Rather than fearing this opponent, however, the team wanted to meet Long Beach again, setting up a significant final, said Millar.
When the third game started, though, and Long Beach State went up 7-0, "I was thinking this is going to be a tough game to win because we had to come from pretty far back. But we just wanted to stick in there and keep the pressure on. Once they got to 7, we got a couple of blocks and a couple of digs, and everything started working out again."
All the players on the team turned in outstanding performances. Rich Lambourne and Steve Hinds, with 13 and 14 kills, respectively, peppered the opposition as the Long Beach 49ers geared to stop Antonetti and Millar. The All-American duo finished with 22 and 15 kills, respectively. Also turning in a strong performance was Hector Lebron, a second-team All-American from Puerto Rico. Mac Wilson made a key play in the final game, scoring off a block to start a scoring run in which the team went 5-0 to finish the game, 15-10.
