Have a Voice and No Fear to Use It
Watch the Episode
Listen to the Episode
Episode Summary
Todd Merkow sits down with Liz Masakayan — Santa Monica High School alumna, two-time NCAA national champion at UCLA (1984, 1985), Broderick Award winner for collegiate player of the year in 1985, UCLA Female Athlete of the Year in 1988, five-year Team USA member, Olympian at Seoul 1988, World Championship bronze medalist in Beijing, and one of the most decorated careers in the history of American volleyball. On the pro beach side: 47 tour career wins, 61 finals appearances, a 13-year pro career, WPVA World Champion in 1991, FIVB World Champion in 1994 (with Most Outstanding Player honors), and a 1999 World Championship bronze. As a coach she led teams to Olympic bronze in Athens 2004 and a fifth-place finish in Beijing 2008. She was inducted into the UCLA Hall of Fame in 1996. Todd also notes she should be in the Santa Monica High School Hall of Fame — if one existed.
The episode opens with Liz's origin story: a Santa Monica kid who played everything — soccer for seven years in AYSO, Little League baseball (one of the first girls allowed to play in Santa Monica), track, pickup basketball, body surfing, and playground volleyball at the beach. She didn't play organized volleyball until 10th grade, which at Santa Monica High means she had exactly three years of high school volleyball before being recruited to UCLA. She had never learned to rotate. She didn't know positions. She split her chin open diving on the first day of JV tryouts and had to get five stitches. Her coach was Bertha. She made varsity anyway.
The multi-sport section is one of the richest in the series. Liz's mother raised four kids and her version of sports support was: if you can get a ride and pay for it, I'll sign the papers. Liz skateboarded to Memorial Park for practice. She took the bus to the Sato family's house on Lincoln and Pico to get a ride down to Hermosa Beach for club. She describes this not with resentment but with gratitude — her mother gave her the freedom to figure it out, and that freedom shaped everything. The Sato family — Leanne Sato's family — were her war buddies for three years. Leanne Sato, her playground partner at five-two, later became her Olympic teammate.
I was just grateful my mom gave me that freedom to kind of be on my own. As long as you give me the freedom, I can ride my skateboard down to Memorial Park for practice.
The indoor-to-beach transition section is a practical guide for volleyball families. Liz's core message: if your kid has any interest in beach, try it. The culture is different — no substitutions, you're on the court the whole time, you pick your partner, you play outdoors. Her niece quit the indoor club team and joined the high school beach team coached by an engineering teacher, and it was the most fun she'd had in years. Liz is direct about what parents get wrong: they see the beach environment as more casual and assume it's less serious, when in fact it demands more from the individual athlete — every contact, every decision, every moment of adversity has to be worked through with one other person and no coach available to break a tie.
The partnership and communication section is the most distinctive in the episode. Liz spent 95% of her time as an Olympic coach mediating — not drawing up plays, not running drills, but managing the relationship between two people who are competing at the highest level of their sport and sometimes don't like each other very much. Her system: assign roles. One person is the offensive manager, one is the defensive manager. If there's a disagreement, the person who gets served most wins the tie. She coached her teams to coach themselves — because at the FIVB level, coaches aren't allowed in the box. They sit in the stands. The best coaching she could do was make herself unnecessary.
95% of my job on the road with my Olympic teams was mediating. Get along. This is a crazy lifestyle. There's only one winner, and if it ain't us, we don't like each other.
The parent section lands with a specific and memorable image: beach volleyball is the sport where you can put your beach chair right on the sideline and hear everything happening on the court. Liz's advice is the same as it is for every sport, but the proximity makes it more urgent. Just cheer. Positive cheering only. When she hears a parent yell "move your feet" from the sideline, she looks over and thinks: that's a no-kidding comment. If you're going to say something, say something constructive. Better yet, say nothing. Let them work it out. The athlete looking over at the parent in the middle of a point is the tell — that's the moment the parent has taken the athlete out of the game.
When I hear a parent yell 'move your feet,' I look over and go — that's a no-shit comment. If you're going to say something, say something constructive. But I suggest not saying anything. Keep it to the cheering.
The episode closes with Liz's final thought, offered unprompted: what she learned growing up — from her mother, from the freedom she was given — was that she had a voice and no fear to use it. That voice made her a whistleblower in her own career, someone who couldn't sit back and watch unfair things happen to athletes in a system that is supposed to be merit-based. Her definition of Be Valiant: courage. Having a voice. No fear to use it.
I had a voice and I didn't have any fear to use it. It was hard for me to sit back and watch some things that were happening. Especially in sports, which is so merit-based.
Top 5 Takeaways
Late starts don't disqualify greatness. Liz Masakayan didn't play organized volleyball until 10th grade. She didn't know how to rotate. She didn't know positions. She split her chin open on the first day of JV tryouts. Three years later she was recruited to UCLA, where she won back-to-back national championships. The lesson is not that late starts are better. The lesson is that the years she spent playing everything else — soccer, baseball, basketball, body surfing, playground volleyball at the beach — built the athleticism, the quick feet, the ball control, and the competitive instinct that made her coachable when she finally stepped into a gym. The sport didn't make her. The years of unstructured play made her. The sport just gave her somewhere to go.
Freedom is a form of support. Liz's mother raised four kids and her version of sports support was: if you can get a ride and pay for it, I'll sign the papers. She wasn't at practices. She was working. What she gave Liz instead was freedom — to skateboard to Memorial Park, to take the bus to the Sato family's house, to figure out how to get to Hermosa Beach twice a week. Liz describes this not with resentment but with gratitude. The freedom to navigate her own sports life gave her the self-reliance, the problem-solving, and the voice that defined her career. Parents who manage every logistical detail of their child's sports life are not giving more support. They are giving less of the thing that matters most.
Try beach. Liz's message to volleyball families is simple: if your kid has any interest in beach, try it. No substitutions. You're on the court the whole time. You pick your partner. You play outside. The culture is different. Her niece quit the indoor club team and joined the high school beach team coached by an engineering teacher, and it was the most fun she'd had in years. The beach doesn't care how tall you are or what position you were assigned indoors. It cares about ball control, quick feet, and the ability to work through adversity with one other person. For players who have been pigeonholed indoors — told they're too short to hit, too slow to play outside, too small to matter — the beach is a reset. Try it.
The best coaching makes the coach unnecessary. Liz couldn't sit in the coaching box at FIVB competitions. She was in the stands. So she built teams that could coach themselves — that knew when to call a timeout, when to switch sides, how to manage a disagreement without her. She assigned roles: offensive manager, defensive manager. If there's a tie, the person who gets served most wins. The goal was not to make players dependent on her instructions. The goal was to make her presence irrelevant by the time the match started. This is the standard every youth coach should be working toward: not players who execute what they're told, but players who understand the game well enough to make good decisions when no one is watching.
Don't point the finger. Figure out how you can help. Liz's advice to young beach players when their partner is struggling is the same advice she gives to coaches, to parents, and to anyone in a high-pressure partnership: catch yourself before you point the finger. Your partner shanked three balls in a row. What did you do differently? Did you call in or out? Did you tell them the server has been going short? Did you take a step over? The athlete who learns to ask 'how can I help this person' instead of 'why is this person failing me' is the athlete who will be worth playing with at every level. That habit — looking inward before looking outward — is one of the rarest and most valuable things a young athlete can develop.
Parents: just cheer. Beach volleyball is the sport where you can put your beach chair right on the sideline and hear everything. Liz's advice is the same as it is for every sport, but the proximity makes it more urgent. Positive cheering only. When she hears a parent yell 'move your feet' from the sideline, she looks over and thinks: that's a no-kidding comment. The athlete who looks over at the parent in the middle of a point has already lost that point. You are not helping. You are not coaching. You are a distraction. The most powerful thing you can do from the sideline is make your child feel safe enough to fail, get up, and try again — and the only way to do that is to stay quiet and let them know that whatever happens out there, you are on their side.
Have a voice and no fear to use it. Liz's closing thought was not about volleyball. It was about what her mother gave her — the freedom to develop a voice, and the absence of fear around using it. That voice made her a whistleblower in her own career. It made her someone who couldn't sit back and watch unfair things happen to athletes in a system that is supposed to be merit-based. Her definition of Be Valiant is one word: courage. Having a voice. No fear to use it. For every young athlete who has been told to stay quiet, to be grateful, to not make waves — this is the counter-argument. The athletes who change their sport are the ones who were given the freedom to speak.
This episode is free because of supporters like you.
Help us reach more families — so more kids have happy moments and fewer harmful ones.
