Randy Stoklos (born December 13, 1960) is a retired

professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...

beach volleyball Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two or more players on a sand court divided by a net. Similar to indoor volleyball, the objective of the game is to send the ball over the net and to ground it on the opponent's side of the ...

player. He is the first player to earn $1,000,000 playing competitive beach volleyball. He won one U.S. championship and Five World championships with

Sinjin Smith Christopher St. John "Sinjin" Smith (born May 7, 1957, in Santa Monica, California) is a professional beach volleyball player. He won one U.S. championship and two World championships with Randy Stoklos. He began to compete as a professional in ...

. He is a four-time winner of the

Manhattan Beach Open The Manhattan Beach Open is a beach volleyball tournament held annually during the summer in Manhattan Beach, California. Held on the south side of the Manhattan Beach Pier, the Open is the only professional volleyball tournament in which amat ...

. Stoklos played college volleyball at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. He left UCLA early to focus on beach volleyball. He won his first Manhattan Open teaming with

Jim Menges James Menges (born January 10, 1951) is an American former volleyball player, coach, and Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) tournament director. He played college volleyball for the UCLA Bruins under head coach Al Scates. His college ...

in 1981. Stoklos has 123 career wins (which ranks Stoklos third of all-time), amassed almost two million dollars in prize money and received numerous MVP and Best Setter awards. In 1992, he reflected on his father's unwillingness to allow him to play volleyball at the beach. His father was a Pole who survived a German work camp noted in the LA Times as a "harsh old-country type" who was afraid his son would grow up to be lazy if he spent too much time at the beach. Stoklos was inducted into the Volleyball Hall of Fame on October 23, 2008. In 2015, he was inducted into the

National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame The National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame and Museum was founded in 1973. The mission of the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame is to recognize and preserve outstanding achievement by individuals of Polish heritage in the field of ...

. The pair of Stoklos and

was featured in the video game ''

Kings of the Beach ''Kings of the Beach'' is a beach volleyball computer game released by Electronic Arts in 1988 for the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS. A version for the Nintendo Entertainment System was produced by Konami (under the Ultra Games label) in 1990. Ga ...

'' released in 1988 for multiple computer platforms by

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...

and in 1990 for the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...

Konami , is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company, video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machin ...

, and also appeared in the 1990 film

Side Out ''Side Out'' is a 1990 American comedy-drama sports film about a beach volleyball competition, featuring C. Thomas Howell, Peter Horton, Harley Jane Kozak and Courtney Thorne-Smith. It was the last film from Aurora Productions, Hollywood, Aurora ...

as the nemesis team of Rollo Vincent (Stoklos) and Billy Cross (Smith).

References

External links

Profile at volleyball.org

American men's beach volleyball players 1960 births Living people Sportspeople from Santa Monica, California American people of Polish descent UCLA Bruins men's volleyball players {{US-volleyball-bio-stub