Sky’s the limit

On his bio sheet, prepared and distributed by USA Volleyball, Kevin Barnett says the one thing he would change about the game that has consumed much of his life the past 10 years would be to “make it a full-contact sport.”

It might seem like an interesting proposal, but Barnett is quick to explain that he made that comment “years ago, before I had bad knees.”

And he admits to having mellowed considerably since he first burst onto the national volleyball scene in 1997, when he was named a second-team All-American at Pepperdine University.

“I grew up a big football fan,” explained the 6-foot-6, 205-pound Barnett, a two-time Olympian and outside hitter on this year’s USA Men’s National Volleyball Team, which opens its season against the Netherlands on Thursday night in the Spokane Arena’s Star Theatre, “and some of that aggressiveness was always lost on me in volleyball.”

But after missing all of the 2002 season and most of the 2003 season because of injuries to both knees, Barnett said he’s willing to settle now for simply “hitting people in the face” with the thunderous spikes that have made him one of the country’s top offensive threats.

“That’s about as close as I need to get to full-contact these days,” said Barnett, who was in town recently to help promote Thursday night’s season opener against a Dutch team that promises to provide a severe challenge.

“They’re a good squad for sure,” Barnett said of the Netherlands, which lost to the Americans 26-24, 25-20, 25-18 during pool play at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. “They’ve got a great history of volleyball, and they have several veteran players coming back who have played in the Olympics – some of them twice.”

The United States’ national team comes into Thursday’s match, which starts at 7, ranked No. 5 in the world and is coming off an impressive showing in Athens, where it lost to Russia in the bronze medal match.

Barnett is one of nine returning players from last year’s team, which unexpectedly came within a match of earning its first Olympic medal since 1992.

“We’ve got a pretty good history of volleyball ourselves,” said Barnett, who battled back from his knee problems last season to play in his second Olympic Games, where he finished third on the American team with 54 kills. “We won gold medals in ‘84 and ‘88. We hit a bit of a bumpy road after that, but, historically, we’ve been very good.”

And today, Barnett claims the difference in talent between the U.S. team and such perennial world powers as Brazil, Italy and Russia is minimal.

“I don’t know exactly what it is,” he said. “But how far were we from a medal in Greece? Maybe 2 percent. We’re not far away at all.”

Which makes the start of this season so intriguing.

“It’s always an interesting year, that first one after the Olympics,” Barnett explained. “It’s the first year in that four-year cycle again, where you have some old guys left over and a lot of new guys who are trying to make the jump from college to the international game.

“There’s always that period where you kind of watch things shake out – see which older guys won’t make the team, and which younger guys will. So the first year of the cycle is always questionable as far as what, exactly, to expect.”

Barnett predicted, however, at least half of the United States’ 2008 Olympic volleyball team will consist of players competing in the season-opening Pacific Northwest Tour, which also includes stops in Boise (Friday) and Portland (Sunday).

“It’s the first opportunity for the U.S. team to get out and play someone besides ourselves,” Barnett said. “It’ll be fun to have a different colored uniform on the other side of the net for the first time in 2005.”

Barnett said fans who show up for Thursday’s season-opener can expect to see a power game played by “athletes the size of NBA players.”

“What you’re going to see are guys who average about 6-6 to 6-7 tall, who can jump, on average, about 36 inches and who weigh well over 200 pounds,” he explained. “When the ball is being served, it’s traveling upwards of 70 miles per hour, and when it’s being hit, anywhere between 85-90 miles per hour.

“You’re going to see a real power game that people familiar with women’s volleyball don’t see as much. Women’s volleyball is true volleyball, while men’s is more ‘termi-ball.’ With us, it’s pretty much bump, set and stuff it down your throat.”

Which is physical enough – these days, at least – to satisfy even a “full-contact’ enthusiast like Kevin Barnett.