Word: beach
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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These are the good vibrations of August: soak up some rays on the beach, sip a brew or two and slap a volleyball over a net. A few years ago, Los Angeles beach boys thought it was cool if they were given a couple of six-packs for winning a beach-volleyball tournament. But times have changed. Last year Sinjin Smith, 32, beach-volleyball's top professional, earned nearly $135,000 for a season of bumping, setting and spiking out there on the sand, and he may do even better this year. Predicts Christopher Marlowe, an ESPN sports commentator...
...Beach volleyball was once part of the laid-back Southern California style -- a bunch of parking-lot attendants and cabana boys devoting their spare time to fun in the sun. Today the game is a hard-charging sport, complete with big- bucks sponsors, a 29-tournament tour of 13 states, an aggressive players' association, lucrative television deals and mobs of loyal fans. "Players used to party all night and wake up under a coffee table an hour before the game," remembers Jay Hanseth, 37, a 19-year veteran player. Now, he says, "there's so much money at stake, players...
Dave Welsh knows. He's down at Reed's Beach, fishing with his father. For the umpteenth time since he worked these waters as a boy, Welsh, now 42, curses and starts reeling in his line. Nothing biting today except the horseshoe crab. Agitated, he untangles one from his line and tosses it back. He has few kind words for the crabs; the fact is, he finds inanimate objects more provocative. "Each year, you see ten or 20 articles about the crabs, but you never see any about the sandbars," he bellyaches, pointing to the tidal flats along...
Late one afternoon, as the spawning crabs are returning to the water, Zack Gandy and a redheaded pal pace the beach, looking for late departers. Zack, a ten-year-old imp with a Mohawk haircut, sits in the sand poking at a live crab with a stick. "I like watching how they mate," he says, launching into a kid's version of the birds and the bees on the beach. "He climbs up on her back, holds on to her tail, puts his claws under her shell and just mates. That's all I know...
Sometimes the boys intervene. They comb the beach looking for a female, and once they find one, they pull an unattached male from the water and place him atop the female. Explains Zack: "If he goes off, just push him back on and say, 'Mate!' Then they'll do it." Easy -- but then it should be, after 200 million years...