The former “King of the Beach” kept his crown tucked away Saturday night.
Clad in denim jeans and a plain white shirt, Sinjin Smith hovered on the sidelines of the sand.
When Hagen Smith — the son and spitting image of Sinjin — sailed a serve too far, Sinjin craned his neck back and clenched his jaws.
“On the court, he tells me to serve short, and I never listen,” Hagen said.
And when Hagen — a UCLA alum like his father — uncorked a spike that thudded into the sand untouched, Sinjin’s arm sliced the air as a grin stretched across his face and his applause echoed.
“I wasn’t disguising anything,” Sinjin said.
Anonymity didn’t stand a chance as Sinjin watched Hagen and Logan Webber locked in a razor-edged three-setter against the Palm Beach Passion that twice spilled past regulation.
But as Sinjin rode every rally, Hagen and Webber eked out a narrow victory, going 13-15, 18-16 and 18-16. The L.A. men’s duo remains undefeated through five weeks of AVP play, helping offset the L.A. Launch female duo’s first loss of the year earlier Saturday. Their combined records will determine whether they win the AVP League regular season crown.
Two dozen years removed from his final outing on the sand, Sinjin carved his career on the chaos of close calls. But Friday, with his son trading kills in a battle that felt like it refused to end, Sinjin was dodging heart attacks.
As the crowd learned in, Sinjin leaned back.
“It’s nerve wracking to watch him — you couldn’t get a better match for the fans, but I hated it,” Sinjin said. “I want to win in two and go home.”
While Sinjin might’ve winced through every extra-point rally, Hagen soaked it all in — steady under pressure.. He may be “trying his best to live up to” his father, but to hear Sinjin tell it, Hagen had already surpassed the myth.
“He’s an unbelievable resource to me. I’ll ask him at like, midnight, ‘Hey, can you come out in the morning and coach me?’ He’s there,” Hagen said of Sinjin. “I’ve modeled my game after him, through and through. If I can be as anything like him as a player, I’m honored.”
Sinjin marveled at Hagen with the awe of a fan.
“He’s his own person. He’s playing for himself, trust me,” Sinjin said. “He may be wanting to prove something to me, I don’t know, but he’s done so much more than I ever expected. He’s so fun to watch — the fact that he’s my son, that’s just icing on the cake.”
Sinjin, the UCLA and International Volleyball Hall of Famer, tapped his temple twice when asked where he and his son aligned on the sand. The resemblance, he said, lives in the mind — because Hagen’s style has taken on its own shape, forged far from his father’s shadow.
“He jumps and he’s powerful and he moves in the sand,” Sinjin said. “I did everything pretty well, which was my strength, but he really excels in — for one, attacking the ball, he hits the ball harder and more explosively when he attacks than I ever was.”
For as long as Hagen could remember, Pauley Pavilion was the lighthouse in the distance — the promised land of his childhood dreams. And when he finally walked into the arena, his eyes fixed to a familiar face.
There was Sinjin, featured on the walls around the Bruins’ home.
“Getting to see that, it’s like, ‘Ah, this is home to me. I’ve got dad helping me out, I’ve got dad watching over me. Luckily I got to wear his number that was retired and that felt awesome,” said Hagen, who wore his father’s No. 22 jersey in college.
Sinjin played under Al Scates — the architect of UCLA’s volleyball dynasty and the winningest coach in NCAA men’s volleyball history. Under Scates and his 19 national titles, winning was the annual expectation.
And under Scates’ tutelage, Sinjin bookended his career with national glory, and flooded his cabinets with individual accolades — two All-American recognitions, a Most Outstanding Player distinction at the 1979 national championship and a stalwart of the historic undefeated 1979 squad.
“[Scates] was the best coach of all time in the United States,” Sinjin said. “Al had a knack for picking players that had more than just a physical game. They had a mental game as well. … There’s so many of them that Al trained and went on to be the best of the very best in either beach or indoors.”
Decades later, Hagen was coached by Scates’ protege John Speraw.
After rattling off the names of former teammates and sand-side partners, Sinjin paused, seemingly struck by a pattern he couldn’t ignore: “God,” he said, “there’s a lot of UCLA legends going around.”
Two of those share the same last name.
“[Sinjin] tried to get me into tennis,” Hagen said, “and I was like, ‘Dad, I just want to play volleyball. I just want to be like you.’”
Other AVP results
In other AVP action Saturday, Palm Beach Passion’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson handed L.A. Launch’s Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft their first loss, winning 12-15, 15-6, 15-10.
San Diego Smash’s Devon Newberry and Geena Urango defeated Miami Mayhem’s Kelly Cheng and Molly Shaw 15-10, 15-11.
And San Diego Smash’s Chase Budinger and Miles Evans beat Miami Mayhem’s Chaim Schalk and James Shaw 11-15, 15-11, 15-13.
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