It is a sparkling list of honors and achievements adorned with Olympic gold medal winners, NCAA champions, a national Player of the Year and All-Americans, plus a beach volleyball pioneer.

Nick Becker, Dain Blanton, Bob Ctvrtlik, Al Janc and Dr. Julie Romias certainly accomplished a lot during their volleyball careers. Equally impressive is what they have achieved after their playing days.

Becker started with virtually nothing but capitalized on his analytical skills and volleyball connections to build his assets. He is now a successful investor in financial service companies and real estate, along with managing a hedge fund.

Blanton was the first African-American to win a major event on the AVP tour, and currently is a television broadcaster for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers.

Ctvrtlik was a three-time Olympian and captained Olympic squads twice, despite never having played 6-on-6 volleyball until his freshman year in college. He now owns a real estate company and has been heavily involved with the International Olympic Committee and the United States Olympic Committee.

Janc has been a sports marketing manager with Oakley for many years. He turned his Oakley contacts on the court into a new kind of grind in the corporate world, trying to make his cutting-edge brand sizzle.

Romias proved an academic advisor wrong who told her a career in medicine might be too ambitious of a pursuit. She now practices family medicine in the Los Angeles area and, at age 40, still plays professional beach volleyball.

They all have great stories to share about the triumphs they have experienced and the challenges they have overcome. We bring you these stories in hopes of providing information and inspiration on the careers and pursuits available to professional athletes, post-professional circuit–with a dash of amusement.

When asked why he simultaneously held two senior-level Olympics-related positions, traveled 200,000 miles in 2009 and maintained his own business while being a husband and father of three teenage boys, Ctvrtlik had a simple answer: “I just love to live life to its fullest. I think we’ve all been given certain talents and we should use them. It’s just the way I was raised that if you do something you do it right and you do it the best you can do it, whether it’s on a court or in an office or out in the field.

“I take pride in what I do.”

Al Janc

Join the family business or venture out on his own: That was the difficult decision Al Janc faced when his beach volleyball career ended in 1996.

Janc was invited to join his father’s rental property company, Beach and Bayside Vacations in San Diego, but he opted for a marketing position with Oakley, the avant-garde eyewear, apparel and accessories company that had sponsored him for 10 years.

“I think the decision was that I could always go back there (to his father’s company) but I had a small window of opportunities that were open to me through volleyball and I better go after it and see what it’s like,” Janc said.

It is safe to say Janc, 45, made the right decision. He has spent his entire career with Oakley and currently is the sports marketing manager for the beach volleyball, golf and sailing divisions.

“Al was an athlete for us long before he was an employee so obviously he had something special that people looked at and said, ‘Hey, this guy is a good fit for our company,’” said Todd Hayes, Oakley’s sports marketing manager for motor sports.

“The culture here is very unique − I’ve never run into anything like it,” Janc said.

Al Janc. Photo: Roger Snider.

“You wouldn’t know the difference between the CEO, the CFO or somebody building glasses down in the warehouse. Everybody is dressed the same. We want to have fun.”

Janc is responsible for positioning the Oakley brand in the marketplace, creating marketing plans, managing events and signing athletes to sponsorship deals.

Prominent beach volleyball stars in the Oakley camp include Phil Dalhausser, Sean Rosenthal, Matt Fuerbringer and Ty Loomis on the men’s side, and Elaine Youngs, Jenny Kropp, Michelle More and Angie Akers among the women.

Top golfers wearing the Southern California company’s space-age shades include Annika Sorenstam, David Duval, Rich Beem, Ricky Barnes, Ian Poulter, Rory Sabbatini and Henrik Stenson.

Janc said he feels at ease among famous athletes.

“I’m pretty good at getting along with people in general; I am kind of a chameleon,” he said. “I think that’s all you need is not to get starstruck by people that are bigger than life on television.”

“I can be abrasive and straightforward and he handles things a little bit different, more polished and more back-to-the-basics type negotiations and relationships,” Hayes said. “That works well for him.”

Janc added golf and sailing to his plate eight years ago after beach volleyball “went from one of the top-budgeted sports here at Oakley to almost off the radar. I don’t think I went to a meeting for six years around here about volleyball.”

Golf presents a challenge because the cutting-edge Oakley brand is competing for market share against long-standing companies with a more traditional sensibility.

“Golf in this country is a very tough category because it’s an older demographic,” Janc said. “There’s a younger movement because of Tiger Woods but it’s still not big enough of a movement to support these cool brands.”

“He’s done a good job of navigating his way through the maze of professional golf,” Hayes said. “It’s quite different because it’s more of an equipment and supply product. The tools that he has in his toolbox he has been able to use quite effectively. His goal and his job is to continue to capitalize on future opportunities and make Oakley look unique in a category that’s quite stale, that’s quite aged.

“… For the sport to grow more and accept Oakley (for) who we are it needs to also move forward. I think he’s probably the right guy to push it.”

Al Janc. Photo: Courtesy of  JDP publishing group.

Bob Ctvrtlik

Bob Ctvrtlik (pronounced stuh-VURT-lick) easily could have been fooled into thinking his volleyball glory would last forever. After all, as an outside hitter he had a career matched by few others: NCAA champion and Player of the Year, three-time Olympian in the 1980s and ’90s, two-time Olympic captain and a gold and bronze medal winner, and recipient of the International Volleyball Federation’s top honor.

This is all the more impressive considering he didn’t start playing organized 6-on-6 volleyball until his freshman year at Long Beach City College.

“He’s very focused,” said Jeff Ctvrtlik, Bob’s older brother and business partner. “He’ll do whatever it takes to be successful in that field. I don’t think he jumped the highest or was the most pure athletically gifted of all the volleyball guys but he just worked at it pretty hard.”

One of Bob Ctvrtlik’s personal creeds is “always prepare for success,” so even in the heyday of his volleyball career, he was laying the groundwork for his business career. Ctvrtlik served a multi-year internship with Coldwell Banker commercial real estate while training with the U.S. national team in San Diego, got his real estate and broker’s license, and began investing in property.

“A lot of players have a difficult time making the transition because they don’t start thinking about life after sports until it’s right upon them,” Bob Ctvrtlik said. “I was fortunate in that when I was on the national team, the Olympic team or even playing professionally I always kept small projects going... I always wanted to have something to fall back on because you never know when that big injury might occur.”

Ctvrtlik retired from volleyball in 1997 and founded a company, Green Street Properties, with 1992 Olympic teammate Nick Becker. Green Street refurbished and sold distressed properties in the decaying south central area of Los Angeles.

In the meantime, Ctvrtlik devoted a lot of time to his new role as a member of the International Olympic Committee’s Athlete’s Commission, a consultative body which serves as a link between Olympic-caliber athletes and the IOC.

“People don’t realize how many connections you make and how many good relationships you can make in a hurry working in a volunteer capacity,” Ctvrtlik said. “That greatly expanded my network of high net-worth individuals and my contacts just all around the globe to gather information and to have possible business interactions with.”

Ctvrtlik, 46, moved on from Green Street after four years and formed a partnership with brother Jeff. Their company, Veritas Investments in Newport Beach, Calif., owns and operates large, multi-family apartment complexes in the western United States.

“I absolutely love it,” Ctvrtlik said of working with his brother. “We talk to each other four to five times a day and I trust him implicitly. He’s just a great friend and a wonderful person to work with. We like to take vacations together, too.

“We really look forward to buying apartment complexes and we’ll take a little less of a value if it’s near a ski resort.”

Since 2003, Ctvrtlik has been involved with the IOC Athlete Career Programme, first as an advisor and the past three years as a member of the management team. The program assists individuals in 25 countries in making the transition into their post-athletic careers.

Ctvrtlik spent the last three years as First Vice President of the United States Olympic Committee with a focus on Chicago’s bid for the Summer Olympics. He is relinquishing the position in the aftermath of the Games’ award to Rio de Janeiro.
Ctvrtlik somehow managed three full-time jobs and hundreds of thousands of travel miles in his schedule.

“His appetite for work is second to none,” Becker said. “It’s true of the way he was as a player as well. That was one of the things I loved about playing with him on the national team and the Olympics is he works harder than everybody else.”

Bob Ctvrtlik. Photo: Roger Snider.	Bob Ctvrtlik. Photo: USA Volleyball.

Julie Romias

It is a conversation etched in Julie Romias’ mind: The words of an academic advisor at UCLA echoing that medical school might not be her best choice.

Other athletes had taken a pre-med curriculum and struggled because of the time demands and difficult subject matter, she was warned. Romias (formerly Bremner) was an All-American-caliber setter playing for a perennial NCAA title contender and was sure to be consumed by her sport, the advisor presumed.


Julie Romias. Photo: Roger Snider.



Romias ignored that advice, but held onto it for motivation. No one was going to tell her she couldn’t play volleyball at the highest level and become a doctor.

“I remember saying, ‘This is what I want to do and you’re not going to talk me out of it,’” she said. “I’m so glad I didn’t let anyone in a position of power tell me what I can and cannot do. If you want something bad enough, find a way to do it. Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t.”

Romias, 40, earned her medical degree from UCLA in 1998, completed her residency in 2002 and has practiced family medicine for seven years at Kaiser Permanente Inglewood in the Los Angeles area.

“I had no idea how fulfilling it would be,” she said. “I really enjoy people of all ages… From kids to adults and the elderly, everyone has something to offer being at whatever stage they’re at in their life.

“In family medicine you have to know a lot about a lot of different things. You’re not specializing on any one thing so it constantly challenges you to stay on top of everything.”

If practicing medicine wasn’t enough, Romias remains competitive on the AVP tour. In 14 tournaments in 2008, Romias placed ninth four times and earned more than $12,000 with partners Lisa Rutledge and Brooke Langston. She had shoulder surgery in January − the first serious injury of her career − and entered only two tournaments in 2009.

“I still love to play,” said Romias, who was the 1993 Pac-10 Player of the Year and a member of UCLA’s 1991 national champions. “I always said as long as I’m having fun and my body holds up, why not? It’s better than going to the gym and getting on the treadmill every day. It’s fun, for the most part. You’re out in the sun and running on the beach and hanging out with your friends.

“It’s a good release from medicine.”

Bonnie Pettigrew raves about her older sister. Pettigrew was a pretty fair player herself: Penn State’s first four-time All-American and a senior setter on the Nittany Lions’ first NCAA title team in 1999.

“I’m not even sure she’s peaked on the beach yet,” Pettigrew said. “I don’t know what the age expectancy of the beach player is but I’ll tell you every year she keeps getting better and better.”

Pettigrew called her sister “the most competitive person I know” and a tireless worker.

“She doesn’t sleep, she doesn’t stop,” Pettigrew said. “People tell me that I multitask, well, she is the queen.”

“I am a very driven person, and sometimes that’s really good,” Romias said. “It allowed me to become a doctor and do relatively well in volleyball. But it’s not always a good thing. That’s where my husband comes in (Dr. Brian Romias). He’s great. He’s more mellow and he’s helped me to schedule margin in my life, as he calls it.”

Dain Blanton


There is something to being an Olympic gold medal winner. When Dain Blanton was introduced to the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers as the team’s new television reporter, it was made perfectly clear that he’s no ordinary Joe.

“I said you know what, Dain Blanton has done something that none of you guys have ever done,” said Tom Feuer, executive producer of Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket. “He has competed at the highest level of his sport and won an Olympic gold medal.

“What I was trying to tell these guys is … not only is Dain going to interview you but you might learn a lot by talking to Dain about what being a competitor is and how to perform under pressure.”

Blanton, 38, is dealing with a different type of pressure now in his first season as the full-time sideline reporter for the Clippers on the FSW and Prime Ticket telecasts. A relative newcomer to television, Blanton is learning on the job by covering a major sport in the country’s second-largest market.

“The biggest challenge is making up for all those years I was a professional athlete when a lot of people were being professional broadcasters,” Blanton said. “You’re playing catch-up.”

“There are not a lot of people that get the opportunity that Dain Blanton has,” Feuer said. “It’s the No. 2 market and there’s always that fear that something major’s going to come down and the person may not be able to know what to do. We’re by nature conservative people in broadcasting in the sense that we like to minimize our risk.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, (hiring Blanton is) a bit of a risk. My ass is on the line in a decision like this and I’m very comfortable with Dain doing it because there are some people (who) you see something in them and they can leapfrog and be ready to do the big assignment when necessary.”

After doing 26 Clippers home games last year, Blanton will be introduced to the NBA grind with 79 telecasts this season. He travels with the team on charter flights and faces a schedule that periodically features four games a week.

Blanton contributes to the pregame and postgame shows, handles players and coaches interviews, and does in-game reports on breaking news and stories of interest. His hope is that diligent preparation leads to a polished presentation.

“He’ll come in with, generally speaking, three pages of story ideas,” Feuer said.

“You have to know your story and then you’ve got to be able to tell the story in a way that’s comfortable for the audience,” Blanton said. “I think over time you become smoother and you become better.”

Feuer has Blanton work with broadcasting coaches when the schedule allows.

“He is very amenable to feedback and a lot of people aren’t,” Feuer said. “He wants to be successful in this business and he is willing to be open to critiques and feedback to make himself better. He doesn’t come in here acting like he knows it all.

“He realizes that just because he had a pedigree in volleyball that doesn’t mean that that’s going to make him a great broadcaster. I think he understands that a lot of people came into broadcasting with a name and that they weren’t good in the long term because they did not work at the craft.”

Blanton broke into broadcasting as an analyst for AVP and International Volleyball Federation events within the past few years. In 2007 and 2008 he was the sideline reporter for Fox Sports West’s high school football telecasts. That led to limited work on college basketball and Major League Baseball before assuming his role with the Clippers last year.


Dain Blanton. Photo: Roger Snider.


Blanton last played on the AVP tour in 2007 when he failed to post a top-six finish. He works out five days a week and isn’t sure if he’ll return to pro volleyball.

His best season was 1997 when he won more than $118,000 and became the first African-American male to win a major beach event, the AVP Hermosa Grand Slam.

Blanton’s crowning achievement was capturing the gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics with partner Eric Fonoimoana.

Now, he’s focused on making a career in television with hopes of being a host someday.

“I miss the game. I miss playing a lot,” Blanton said. “At the same time, you kind of get to a point where you want to do something new and you’ve got to look to the next chapter.

“It seemed like the broadcasting thing was my calling and was something I really enjoyed and so it’s been working out for me.”

Nick Becker


Nick Becker thought he wanted to work for a leading investment bank when he retired from volleyball in 1994. He interviewed with some blue-blooded Wall Street firms but got the feeling he didn’t have the right pedigree.

“It’s a very clubby culture,” Becker said. “And if you’re not Ivy League educated … they really kind of stick close to that knitting. It certainly got me in the door having played in an Olympic Games but at the end of the day they kind of hire from their own, if you will. Having gone to USC, that really didn’t help me out all that much.”


NICK BECKER. Photo: Roger Snider.


Becker’s Plan B was to use a “very, very small pool of money” he had saved and an A-list of contacts culled from volleyball connections to go out on his own. He was banking on a proprietary model he developed to trade and invest in financial institutions.

Becker, 41, had the rare opportunity to learn from the best. While training with the U.S. national team in San Diego after winning a bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics, Becker lived with Charlie Jackson, whose Silicon Beach Software was an early developer of products for the Macintosh.

Through Jackson, Becker was able to meet heavy hitters like venture capitalist Roger McNamee. As his firm matured, Becker developed a diverse network of financial services professionals, which led to future opportunities in a highly successful career.

“Nick’s always been a real strong networker,” said Bob Ctvrtlik, an Olympic teammate and former business partner of Becker’s.

“I don’t know anyone who’s ever met Nick who doesn’t think he’s a great guy,” said Eric E. Jackson, a business associate of Becker’s and president of the Institute for Applied Management and Law. “… He’s a very, very engaging guy and easy to get along with, but also with a a strong moral fiber and a commitment to what he believes in.”

In 2000, Becker was hired by a Chicago-based hedge fund.

“He is co-manager of a hedge fund I’m invested in and it’s a bet on him,” Eric Jackson said. “If Nick came to me and said 'I’ve got this idea' it’s almost as if I wouldn’t have to really hear the idea. If he were to back it I know he would have turned over every rock that could have been turned over.

“He is extremely complete in those kinds of things and he has great judgment.”

Becker’s business interests also include real estate holdings and a San Diego-based private equity firm named Marathon Financial Ventures, which invests in financial services companies.

Asked when he knew he was a business success, Becker revealed his underlying insecurity.

“I always thought, OK, if I get to this level I’ll feel more comfortable, if I get to this level I’ll feel more comfortable − that’s never really been the case,” he said. “It’s probably an extrapolation of when I was playing sports. Even if you make the national team or even if you make the Olympic team there’s always this sense that you’re not there yet.

“I hate to use the term that I’m always looking over my shoulder but I think it’s served me well to always be a little nervous about everything because you never know. Especially I think the last couple years have been extremely difficult years for everybody. It would be a disservice if I told you anything differently.

“Never have I ever reached the point of (security) and if I get there I would say that’s the end of my investment career.”

From L to R: Dain Blanton, Nick Becker, Dr. Julie Romias, Bob Ctvrtlik and Al Janc. Photo: Roger Snider.

NICK BECKER. Photo: USC.