Venice High’s New Fame Is Success at Old Game : High schools: School known for its successful baseball teams wins its first City 3-A Division volleyball championship.

When 5-foot-1 Myra Einberg was a volleyball player at Cal State Long Beach, she played mostly in the back row because it was felt that she could not handle balls smacked at her near the net by taller and supposedly stronger opponents.

But sometimes she talked her way into playing in the front row, where she often acquitted herself as if she were a six-footer.

“I had an awesome jump,” she said. “I can still out-jump people.”

Einberg, who now coaches the Venice High boys’ volleyball team, once again got the jump on the competition this season. The Gondoliers won the Los Angeles City 3-A Division championship, a first for the school in that sport, by sweeping three games from Van Nuys.

Venice didn’t win its championship with superior talent. Most of the boys on Einberg’s team had never touched a volleyball before they entered the school. She said some of them started playing volleyball because they did not feel they could make the school’s baseball team, which has won five City championships.

Before Einberg took over the program three years ago, she coached girls’ gymnastics and girls’ volleyball. She has had success with both.

Her 1986 gymnastics team was runner-up to Eagle Rock for a City title. She no longer coaches gymnastics, but she continues to coach girls’ volleyball, where her team reached the playoff quarterfinals last season.

Boys’ volleyball at Venice used to be an orphan program, coached by walk-ons who did not teach at the school. It was not noted for winning.

“It’s hard for off-campus coaches,” Einberg said. “They lose a lot of control.

“Guys (on the volleyball team) come in to my office and see me every day, which makes for that bonding that is so important. You can have a bunch of really good players, but if they don’t get along, then you have to be truly, truly awesome to win.

“When the going gets tough, togetherness plays a major part in what you do, especially if you don’t have a history of success. You’ve got to have that family feeling.”

There was no question that the Venice team was a family this year.

John Tripp, a senior and team captain, said, “(Einberg) works us very hard, mentally and physically, and we all respect her.”

Junior Eddie Rodriguez said: “She’s tough. She knows what she wants. She’s a real good mental coach and gets you prepared for games.”

Howard Enstedt, who coaches the Palisades High boys’ team, is an admirer of Einberg’s success. Enstedt’s teams have won eight City 4-A championships--including a title this season--in the 17 years that boys volleyball has been a City interscholastic sport. From 1963 to 1974, when boys volleyball was a club sport, Enstedt’s Palisades teams won 11 consecutive City championships.

If Einberg is a new kid on the block, Enstedt owns the block. But he says she is welcome.

Venice extended Palisades to five games before losing to the Dolphins this year, and Enstedt called the Gondoliers “a real scrappy club.”

“We had beaten them pretty badly in years gone past. We’re notorious for getting off to bad starts, and we just weren’t up for that match. Our kids were taking them for granted because they had never given us any competition before.

“I thought she did a fantastic job with the boys’ team. They have an awful lot of nice kids on that team. John Tripp is a tremendous role model, and I think (his teammates) really looked up to him.”

Einberg is not a rarity as a woman coach of a boys prep volleyball team in Los Angeles. In a recent directory of City coaches, 10 women were listed as boys’ volleyball coaches, and six of them coached girls’ volleyball as well.

Enstedt said most City high schools have long offered girls’ volleyball and that most of the coaches were women. When boys’ volleyball programs were added to a school’s athletic program, the women coaches often were asked by school administrators to take over the boys’ program as well.

Einberg applied to become the boys’ coach after the players asked her.

“Coaching these guys has been an experience,” she said. “They really get along well and I’ve learned a lot from them.

“Sometimes practices can be such a battle, but not with them. It makes me want to coach a lot when you have kids like this.”

Einberg said she does not want to coach or teach at all when she hears talk of scrapping athletics as a way of saving money in the financially beleaguered Los Angeles Unified School District.

“If they do that, there will be an uproar. Half of our kids stay in school because of athletics. It gives a lot of direction to a lot of kids.”

Einberg received a bit of direction in her own life when she started coaching boys’ volleyball. Before she took the job, she questioned if a 6-2 boy would ever listen to a 5-1 woman. But she got her answer.

“I learned that we could respect each other. That says a lot.”