Utah native Gibb headed to Beijing

Bountiful native Jake Gibb and his partner Sean Rosenthal spent 18 months traveling the globe hoping to win enough beach volleyball points to qualify for the two-pair U.S. Olympic team.

It was nerve-racking and hectic, but the long qualification process was about doing something they know — playing volleyball.

But ever since last weekend when he learned while on a plane ride home from Russia that he and Rosenthal had, indeed, become Olympians, life has changed gears to the unknown for Gibb, who now lives in Orange County, Calif., and who has made a dramatic four-year rise in the world of pro beach volleyball.

"I have no idea what to expect," Gibb said by telephone this week. "We've been in the process of qualifying so long that all of a sudden I'm in the Olympics, and I'm trying to figure it out."

The Bountiful High and University of Utah graduate has been asking around to find out what dates the beach volleyball competition will be held in Beijing (Aug. 9-24). He also needed to learn about the opening ceremonies (Aug. 8) and hotel rooms and event tickets for his family — his wife (Jane), his parents (Lawrence and Saundra, who just moved from Bountiful to Huntington Beach, Calif.), two brothers (Gary and John), two sisters (Larali and Christine) and a sister-in-law (Allison) are all going to China.

He'll have to take an Olympic committee orientation class regarding proper Chinese behavior in San Francisco in a few weeks, and Gibb and Rosenthal will play in three AVP pro beach volleyball tournaments in Chicago, New York and Long Beach before going to Beijing a week before the Olympics start.

Gibb said it's best to keep playing and keep sharp rather than take time to relax or just focus on training.

Gibb and Rosenthal are coming off a 17th-place finish in Moscow last week, tying their lowest place on the world tour in the last year and a half. But Gibb attributes some of that to not really having to do well to qualify for the Olympics. They had a 980-point lead over the third-place team, and Matt Fuerbringer and Casey Jennings would have had to win the last two Olympic qualifying events to overtake Gibb and Rosenthal.

"I think we got into a stage where we were kind of playing not to lose our Olympic spot rather than going out and getting a win," said Gibb. "That's over now, so we can focus on this one event.

"We're going to take a medal," he said. "That's what I want to put out in the universe.

"I don't know what our chances are. I think we're going in something like an 8-9-10 seed, but we won an event earlier this year (the Prague Open in May), so we have it in us. But we've also taken 17th. Hopefully we don't have that in us."