USD Magazine, Summer 2002

Petia (left} and LinaYanchulova dive for the ball during practice at Mission Beach.

HERE ARE CER– AIN BENEFITS TO ING ONE OF ONLY TWO SISTER TEAMS THE WORLD TO play professional beach volleyball. You can borrow each other's clothes without having to tell,

says Petia Yanchulova, 24,

who was a two-time All American while at USD, leading the university to back-to-backWest Coast Conference titles and four straight NCAA Tournament appearances."We won 17-15, which shows, I guess, how tough sister teams can be." The sisters lost in the next round, finishing 17th, an impres– sive showing considering they had been playing beach volleyball for only two years at the time, and were initially ranked 70th in the world. Growing up in the Bulgarian capitol of Sofia, the girls were led to volleyball by their father, a member of the Bulgarian rowing team in 1972, and their mother, a competitive skier.Their father knew the girls would be a natural for volleyball - Lina stood 5 feet I I inches at age 14, with Petia shooting up to nearly that height at about the same age.

a 2000 USD graduate. She and her sister, Lina, are among the top I5 teams on the pro Beach Volleyball World Tour. "You know," adds Lina, 27, "that's still your sister after the

Siblings Take World Stage in Beach Volleyball

player - the Yanchulova sisters know that a victory is at hand. Their strategy was put to a unique test during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where the sisters played for their native country of Bulgaria just months after Petia graduated from USD. In their debut as the first beach volleyball team ever fielded by their country, the Yanchulovas played a team from the Netherlands in the initial round - the only other sister duo on the circuit. "It was sort of like playing ourselves, because we couldn't break them up;' explains Petia,

game, and you just can't say goodbye.You'll still be sleeping together in the same room, eating together, hanging out together.There is a sister bond that can't be broken." That bond is part of what makes the sisters so successful in beach volleyball, a sport in which breaking the connection between your two opponents is the primary strategy. By getting the other team bickering - usually by exploiting the weaker

sleep in the same bed when the hotel messes up your reserva– tion and know instinctively where the other will be when your opponent drills a hard spike over the net. And on those rare occasions when you lose, having a sister next to you is the best benefit of all. "Because she knows what I'm thinking most of the time, we can just look at each other and know we don't need to say anything,"

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