International Volleyball Association (1978-1979)
Tombstone
Born: 1977 – IVA expansion franchise
Folded: May 1980
First Game:
Last Game: August 20, 1979 (L 13-11, 10-12, 4-12 & 11-13 @ Santa Barbara Spikers)
IVA Championships: None
Arena
Seattle Center Arena (4,500)
Opened: 1927
Demolished: 2017
Marketing
Team Colors: Camel & Navy
Ownership
Owner: Bob Mussehl
Background
The Seattle Smashers were a co-ed professional volleyball franchise. The team lasted for two summer seasons in Seattle in 1978 and 1979. The Smashers formed in March 1977 as an expansion franchise in the International Volleyball Association (1975-1980) and had a 15-month ramp up to their debut in June 1978.
Seattle personal injury attorney Bob Mussehl was the majority owner. Mussehl got into the Seattle sports scene after Seattle Supersonics star Spencer Haywood suffered a knee injury in a slip-and-fall case in the Seattle Center Coliseum. Mussehl represented Haywood in the lawsuit and later became his agent. He then signed up several other stars of the Supersonics teams of the late 1970’s, including Zaid Abdul-Aziz, Fred Brown and Slick Watts.
It was Abdul-Aziz, according to this 2008 article by Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Dan Raley, who talked up the idea of a pro volleyball franchise to Mussehl. Abdul-Aziz would become a minority partner in the Smashers.
Flirtation with Wilt Chamberlain
The basketball theme continued when the fledgling Smashers announced in February 1978 that 41-year old NBA superstar Wilt Chamberlain agreed to the first half of the 1978 season – 15 matches – with Seattle. Chamberlain was already the Commissioner of the IVA. He suited up intermittently for various clubs in the the league during the late 1970’s. He planned to leave the Smashers at mid-season to concentrate on his league administrative duties, whatever those might have been.
Chamberlain, however, backed out of the agreement after playing just a single match in the Camel & Navy colored uniform of the Smashers. Chamberlain played for Seattle on June 1, 1978 in a home game against the Tucson Sky at the 4,500-seat Seattle Center Arena.
World Class Volleyball Stars
Chamberlain’s appearances in the IVA were always something of a sideshow. Beyond Chamberlain, the Smashers had some truly world class volleyball players, including the Polish Olympians Ed Skorek & Stan Gosciniak, the former UC-Santa Barbara All-American Jeff Reddan and the team’s female star Linda Fernandez, who had some notoriety as a two-time winner of ABC’s multi-sport Superstars competition for women. The IVA required that two female players be on the floor at all times.
The league enjoyed several years of modest growth on the West Coast. The high water mark, perhaps, was a national broadcast of the league’s 1977 All-Star Game on CBS television. But the league started to suffer some body blows towards the end of the decade. In August 1979, federal agents raided the office of the IVA”s Denver Comets franchise and the homes of several employees. The Comets were one of the league’s flagship clubs. It turned out the team’s owners were running a massive, multi-state cocaine and marijuana trafficking ring out of the front office.
Demise
The death blow came the following winter after President Jimmy Carter announced the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The league featured Olympians from all over the world and were counting on the games as a major promotional platform. The league also expected a TV contract on the fledgling ESPN network coming off of the Olympics. The American pullout deflated the league. Owners pushed forward half-heartedly with a 1980 season. Several clubs folded early on and ultimately the entire league shutdown without managing to complete the 1980 schedule.
The Seattle Smashers were the first club to fall by the wayside after the Olympic boycott. The Smashers ran out of money and folded in early May 1980, on the eve of what would have been their third season. (You can see in the pocket schedule above that the team had already printed up promotional material for a 1980 season, which was never played).
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