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Wednesday, November 19, 1997

A&M volleyball player may be the Aggies' most colorful athlete

By BRENT ZWERNEMAN / The Bryan-College Station Eagle

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- You know Bozo if you know Stacy Sykora.

"The same things that happen to Bozo," Sykora says of her long-time clown doll, "happen to me."

Sykora is the Liberace of Texas A&M University volleyball. Bozo, who has been her (somewhat disturbing to outsiders) three-foot sidekick since the second grade, listens to Aggie matches tucked in the locker room at G. Rollie White Coliseum.

Bozo lost one of his big red shoes the night before Sykora competed in the state track meet when she attended Burleson High School. Sykora lost her track shoe the next day.

Bozo brandishes a Band-Aid on his chin from when Sykora's face broke out at the state volleyball tournament. But he also sports a Band-Aid on his noggin, now peeling from all of those years of protecting a make-believe cut.

"Bozo had brain surgery," Sykora explains.

The two -- and some reserved individuals may question this -- don't have that in common.

Bozo was a regular on the Burleson bench during all those competitive district matches, at least until the death threats started.

"When he started getting threatened," Sykora says with a face straighter than one of her patented kills, "he sat up with the family."

Sykora is a junior outside hitter for the high-flying Aggies and easily the university's most colorful athlete. Literally.

Her wardrobe screams, "Resale! Resale!" and her bedroom is a sensory overload that makes unsuspecting visitors dizzy from -- and here's just a few examples -- love beads, a disco ball with spotlight, a "glowing hairball" (her description), Christmas lights, sprayed Woolite (it glows under the right light), flowery Sykora paintings, a jumbo portrait of a multi-hued Volkswagen "Magic Bus," assorted butterflies and frogs, incense, a glowing pink telephone and a frightfully large poster of wayward Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman.

Nearly lost in the mix is Sykora's Georgia Invitational Most Valuable Player trophy, earned for her high-voltage act that makes her one of the best, most exciting players in the Big 12 Conference.

Her flashy, outgoing style makes Sykora a crowd favorite. She and Rodman have that in common, along with at least two other things.

"I love tattoos and body piercing," she says. "If I'm given a choice on a research paper, it's going to be about tattoos or body piercing."

Sykora hasn't jumped overboard on the body piercing, and she claims no tattoos. But she has spent long afternoons in a tattoo parlor, engrossed by the procedure and the detail.

She's also spent considerable time wondering what it'd be like to meet Rodman, whose face peers from no less than five large pictures plastered on her volleyball locker.

The Rodman collection has branched across the locker room hall to above the shower door, which is Sykora's justification to the coaches for a fetching photo of Rodman peering from a tub.

"I said that shows where the shower is," she says.

Sykora realizes buttoned-down Aggieland isn't quite accustomed to tie-dyed everything, lifelike Bozos and an undying love of Rodman, but she says her three years at A&M have been unforgettable.

"The campus is so not me, but the school is so me," she says. "When some of the recruits came, I showed them my room just in case they're a little different, too.

"In case they're not so A&Mee," she adds while inventing a word. "But everybody on campus is so friendly, and that's like me. I meet so many people in class, because I like to talk. And people here like to talk."

She lives with a couple of other volleyball players and they readily describe the experience as a trip.

"It's probably the most challenging thing I've ever been through, but also the most fun," senior Kristie Smedsrud says. "Sometimes, we just sit around and watch Stacy."

Sykora loves to crank the apartment stereo until her roommates' and visitors' ears are glowing, resembling most of her room.

"She is such a funny girl," senior Jennifer Wells says. "We could charge admission and have people come in and watch her dance and do impersonations of Lord knows who."

Meanwhile, Bozo takes all of it in from his perch in the wonder room, still armed with the emergency quarter stuck in his one shoe that Sykora's mother gave her years ago.

"Stacy's first year, Bozo was around quite a bit on road trips, but Bozo's learned to stay home," deadpans Aggie coach Laurie Corbelli, who finds herself discussing a clown while preparing for Big 12 Conference play. "We think Bozo is gross."

Sykora carries a mug shot of her clown when they're separated.

"There's a lot of people," Sykora says with a pause, "who think I'm weird."

On the team's summer trip to Japan, the natives immediately labeled her "Aho," Japanese for strange.

But Corbelli says her teammates have taken to Sykora's free spirit and smiles break out all over the court from her presence.

"It's wonderful," Corbelli says. "The team feeds off of her and she doesn't even realize it. The other players have started talking like her, but they don't dress like her. I guess that's next."

That would mean a raid on what Sykora affectionately calls "Thrifttown," or any second-hand store where most of her wardrobe originated. The fork bent around her wrist, however, came from the kitchen drawer.

Sykora says her family is as normal as the next and that her grandmothers, MaMaw and NaNa, possessed exceptional senses of humor.

"Sometimes, I sit around and wonder what happened to me," Sykora says with a smile. "I've always been the clown in the family."

Bozo begs to differ.

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Distributed by The Associated Press