No Woofs for Kobe

An hour before the Monday evening's first beach volleyball match, in an empty Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Ground, an army of fresh-faced vounteers was receiving lessons on how to lead cheers and sing-a-longs to a typical beach volleyball crowd -- and how, for example, the proper answer to the question "Who let the dogs out?" is unequivocably, "woof woof woof."

And yet, during the evening's first match, as Americans Nicole Branagh and Elaine Youngs earned a hard-fought victory over Germany, the question went unwoofed when posed, musically, over the loudspeakers. Several times. Nor did anyone in the building seem to realize that the universal response to the well-known beat--"Boom-boom-tsch, boom-boom-tsch"--is to sing, "We will, we will rock you!"

Perhaps it was the gray skies, which constantly threatened rain, or the rows of empty seats scattered throughout the small stadium. Or maybe the Chinese still need some work to grasp the most American of all Olympic events. (Yes, it's more American than baseball, which Cuba usually wins.)

Or maybe it was the presence of Kobe Bryant, who attended the match at Youngs's invitation and distracted both fans and volunteers with his presence. More digital cameras were trained on Kobe than on either the players or the "cheerleaders" -- both sets of which were wearing skimpy bikinis.

Surely, Kobe knew who let the dogs out, but even he remained silent during the music

"We've been having a lot of run-ins with Kobe lately," Youngs said. "We talked about beach volleyball when we were working out [together] in the gym. He gave me a high-five because he'd watched us against the Netherlands. He said, 'You guys kicked [butt].' "