Sister Act - Petia Yanchulova '00

Lina & Petia Yanchulova (Courtesy of USD Magazine)

There are certain benefits to being one of only two sister teams in the world to play professional beach volleyball. You can borrow each other's clothes without having to tell, sleep in the same bed when the hotel messes up your reservation and know instinctively where the other will be when your opponent drills a hard spike over the net.

And on those rare occasions when you lose, having a sister next to you is the best benefitof all."Because she knows what I'm thinking most of the time, we can just look at each other and know we don't need to say anything," says Petia Yanchulova, 24, a 2000 USD graduate. She and her sister, Lina, are among the top 15 teams on the pro Beach Volleyball World Tour. "You know," adds Lina, 27, "that's still your sister after the game, and you just can't say goodbye. You'll still be sleeping together in the same room, eating together, hanging out together. There is a sister bond that can't be broken."

That bond is part of what makes the sisters so successful in beach volleyball, a sport in which breaking the connection between your two opponents is the primary strategy. By getting the other team bickering - usually by exploiting the weaker player - the Yanchulova sisters know that a victory is at hand. Their strategy was put to a unique test during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where the sisters played for their native country of Bulgaria just months after Petia graduated from USD. In their debut as the first beach volleyball team ever fielded by their country, the Yanchulovas played a team from the Netherlands in the initial round - the only other sister duo on the circuit. "It was sort of like playing ourselves, because we couldn't break them up,"explains Petia, who was a two-time All American while at USD, leading the university to back-to-back West Coast Conference titles and four straight NCAA Tournament appearances. "We won 17-15, which shows, I guess, how tough sister teams can be." The sisters lost in the next round, finishing 17th, an impressive showing considering they had been playing beach volleyball for only two years at the time, and were initially ranked 70th in the world.

Growing up in the Bulgarian capitol of Sofia, the girls were led to volleyball by their father, a member of the Bulgarian rowing team in 1972, and their mother, a competitive skier. Their father knew the girls would be a natural for volleyball - Lina stood 5 feet 11 inches at age 14, with Petia shooting up to nearly that height at about the same age. Their success at indoor volleyball landed Lina a scholarship to the University of Idaho in 1992, with Petia following her sister to the United States in 1996. After Lina graduated from college, she fell in love with beach volleyball and moved to San Diego to be closer to Petia and the sand. The family was reunited in 1998 when the girls' parents won a green card through the immigration lottery and moved to San Diego, where they manage an apartment complex and their daughters' career.

While Lina loves the freedom and independence of two-person beach volleyball, Petia was a tougher sell.Petia anticipated she'd be an indoor volleyball Olympian after USD, but never figured on the beach version until she watched her sister play in the 1997 world championships in Los Angeles. "Something clicked for her," Lina says. "I had a different partner at the time, but I needed a Bulgarian partner if I wanted to play in the Olympics. Petia and I always thought we would play indoor, but I looked at her after that tournament and said 'you're Bulgarian, let's do this.'" They never looked back.

This summer they'll criss-cross the globe and play in tournaments, hoping to ratchet up their ranking and land a higher seed in the 2004 Athens Olympics. In the meantime, they'll continue to perfect their sister act - both on and off the beach. "Sometimes I want to be the little sister and be told what to do," says Lina, throwing a sideways glance to her sister as they head across the sand. "OK," yells Petia, "do 10 laps!"