Tennis star Venus Williams joined three other sports pros at the annual EA Sports media event today (July 13) at EA Canada in Burnaby.

On the agenda for the Fall Starting Lineup event were NBA Live, NHL 10, FIFA 10, and Grand Slam Tennis.

The other stars of the show were Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic, Milan Lucic of the Boston Bruins, and Sacha Kljestan of Chivas USA.

After the media was sorted into four groups, we took to the field for some lessons from the pros.

First up for me was Howard with some lessons on how to work a post-up play into the key. He told one media volunteer that he’d have to yell louder if he wanted the ball.

“You’ve got 20,000 people watching you, the music is blasting,” said the young superstar, who led the Magic to the NBA finals this year. “You’ve gotta be loud.”

Next was a session with Lucic, a Vancouver native who was a member of the Vancouver Giants junior team before making the move to Boston to play with the Bruins.

David Littman, NHL 10 producer, was messing about with a stick and a puck when we walked up. Littman was a goalie in the pros for a time, and I asked him why he wasn’t wearing the thick pads between the pipes for the demonstration.

“When you’re a goalie for 30 years,” he confessed, “all you want to do is try and score goals.

“NHL 10 is all about emotion and intensity,” he told the assembled media, “which is Milan’s game. Checking, fighting, and board play are all part of his game.”

One of the main features of NHL 10 is its board play, which allows gamers to get in close along the boards. Lucic said that he uses the boards offensively for puck protection.

“You need to know how to use the boards to your advantage,” he said. One of the best ways to stop the offensive cycle strategy, he explained, was to use the boards to “hit and pin”.

After a demonstration in which Lucic took Littman into a section of boards that had been set up along the fence in the court, Littman joked, “I think you hurt my spleen.”

Tennis was next, and Williams told us the top things to remember when serving. First, get a proper grip on the racket. Second, the toe of your front foot should point at the net post ahead of you. Third, the ball should be held in the fingertips, not the palm.

“I have a lot of fun [at these events],” she said. “It makes you think about the game differently.”

Williams said that she liked meeting other professional athletes because it gives her a chance to ask them about their training regimens and “what kinds of injuries they get and how they deal with them”.

When asked if Roger Federer, who just won at Wimbledon, was a male Venus, she said, “There is no male Venus.”

Finally, we got some tips on designing free kicks from Kljestan, who plays for Chivas USA in Major League Soccer and for the U.S. national team.

“When you design your own set plays,” he explained, “you always have a chance to score.”

After the lessons came the King of the Court competition, which pitted the four athletes against each other to answer this question: who’d be better at the other’s sport?

My money was on the hockey and soccer players at having the best cross-sport skills. Or at least the most familiarity with the other sports. Williams admitted that she’d never picked up a hockey stick before.

In the first event, an EA-modified version of the basketball game Horse, she said that when she plays basketball, she kicks her leg out like she’s serving in tennis. “I can’t help it,” she laughed. Sure enough, in her last basket attempt, she jumped in the air and brought both her feet up.

Howard was the day’s class clown. During the King of the Court podium presentation, in which he was awarded the largest trophy, he gave an “acceptance speech”, in which he thanked the people of Earth. His planet, he said, is populated by supermen like Shaq and Obama.

The four athletes were, if you’ll pardon the pun, good sports.