Although Dad is widely considered a Southern California beach volleyball guru—he’s arguably one of the best coed doubles players ever—he sure took an interesting route to becoming a legend. As a kid, volleyball was barely in his vocabulary. He spent all of his free time on Waikiki surfing, swimming, skin diving, or fishing. Deep down, he wanted to be a football star, but physically, he was an extremely late bloomer. As a junior in high school in Honolulu, Dad was one of the smallest players on the team. He stood six feet tall, but weighed just 131 pounds. Back in those days, Dad says, he looked like E.T., the alien movie creature, with an oversized head on a pencil-thin neck and torso.
Truth be told, Dad stumbled onto beach volleyball. In 1951, at the age of ten, he began working as a shoeshine boy, setting up his box at the banyan trees beside the bus stop at Kuhio Beach Park on the Diamond Head end of Waikiki. Behind a nearby pavilion, there was an asphalt volleyball court where many of Oahu’s best players congregated. Some played in shoes, some in bare feet. Dad was mesmerized by how high they could jump, how hard they could spike the ball, and how esteemed they were in the eyes of others. Being such a beanpole, whenever he asked to play, Dad always got the brush-off. “Stand aside, kid,” they’d say time and again.
That is, until one afternoon, five years later. Dad, then fifteen, had just finished surfing and was walking back up Waikiki toward his family’s house. He spotted a group of locals and tourists playing volleyball on the sand in front of Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village resort. Arthur Lyman, one of Hawaii’s leading musicians, was on the locals’ team, and he noticed Dad looking longingly at the court. When Dad asked if he could play, he heard a resounding, emphatic no. Except from Lyman. “Just put the kid in the corner,” he insisted.
From that moment on, Sundays at 3:00 P.M., Dad played with the Kaiser volleyball crew. To be accepted, on and off the court, was very important to him. They’d pass around buckets of beer, but Dad only took a couple of sips, mind you. As a rookie, he hung back on the sidelines before the start of the games, waiting for the tourists to form their teams. The rule was rookies never could play with the best local players, but they could participate as fill-ins on the tourists’ teams. The thought of being part of the inner circle of volleyball in Honolulu was enticing to Dad. He’d heard that Honolulu’s Outrigger Canoe Club, one of the most prestigious private clubs in the world, located near Waikiki in Kapiolani Park, had, by far, the best volleyball players in town. In fact, he was told, they even played on their own private courts. An entrée to the Outrigger and a shot at legendary status in volleyball became Dad’s ultimate goals.
As luck would have it, Dad had stumbled upon some of the best coaches in the sport. He learned the nuances of volleyball from Neil Eldredge, a member of the Air Force, who played volleyball several months of the year for the military. Eldredge, who stood five feet five, partnered with Gordon Mew, who was six feet five, and together they beat the best players at Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village. Eldredge was passionate about volleyball, and very patient, and he spent hours tutoring Dad.
Most important, Eldredge suggested Dad train with legendary volleyball coach Col. Edward B. (Burt) DeGroot, who was inducted into the Volleyball Hall of Fame in 1990. DeGroot, also an outstanding track coach, introduced drills to improve jumping, explosiveness, quickness, and flexibility, something nobody else was doing in volleyball circles at the time. With DeGroot’s input, Dad’s game started to take off.
In 1957, at sixteen, after a year of playing with the Kaiser crew, Dad met the man who later would change his life: Robert Franklin (Bob) Nikkel. A jovial, cigar-smoking gentleman from Northern California, Nikkel called himself “the largest smallest lumber broker in the world.” He later became a member of the board of regents at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Nikkel loved playing six-man volleyball on the beach. He also had a passion for the Olympics—he’d attended the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia—and he’d regale Dad with stories about the athletes and the competitions. Nikkel took a strong interest in Dad, both athletically and academically. Soon, Dad looked on Nikkel as his “second father,” and Nikkel was indeed a great role model for Dad. Nikkel promised Dad a job in a Northern California lumber mill after his high school graduation, along with a spot in classes at the University of the Pacific.
“I’ll send you a plane ticket,” Nikkel told Dad.
On May 29, 1959, at seventeen, Dad took Nikkel up on his offer. Dad lied to his mother, telling her he’d gotten his high school diploma, even though he hadn’t (he still needed to pass algebra), sold his surfboards, and off he went to the Mainland. He ended up in Loyalton, California, a little town in Sierra County, where he worked as a laborer for the Feather River Lumber Company, making $1.17 an hour. At the end of the summer, he moved to Sacramento to live with Nikkel. (Nikkel’s wife, Phyllis, and their two children were living in Rome, Italy, site of the 1960 Olympics. He’d relocated his family to the Olympic city, a year before the Games, to soak up the ambiance.) Dad enrolled in high school in Sacramento, repeated his senior year, and graduated at eighteen.
Nikkel continually stoked Dad’s fire for sports. Everything was a contest to him. He pitted Dad in races against his two nephews. One was an 800-meter runner, the other was a miler. In order to better compete with them, Dad suggested they run a two-mile race, a mile out and back, barefoot. The hot asphalt blistered the bottoms of their feet, and Dad caught them at the turn. Nikkel was livid because it put his nephews out of commission for a while. But Dad had won, which was all that mattered, of course.
Nikkel also regularly talked up the Olympics to him.
“Great athletes go to the Olympics,” Nikkel would say. “Do you want to go to the Olympics?”
“Of course,” Dad replied.
“Earn it,” Nikkel challenged him.
But which sport? Dad figured he was too slow for track and didn’t know enough about field events. When it came to swimming, he was a sinker. What about crew? He’d paddled in Hawaii, so maybe that might be his ticket. But he’d also watched members of the University of California–Berkeley crew train and couldn’t believe their size and physique. They were absolutely fit, incredibly cut. He weighed only 140 pounds, soaking wet. Wrestling, perhaps? Growing up in Waikiki, professional wrestlers Sky High Lee, Stan Kowalski, and Lord Blears had lived two doors from his family. The first time he tried wrestling, though, he got tied up in a knot and pinned in thirty-seven seconds by a seventy-year-old veterinarian with arthritis. Afterward, Dad says, he was so tired his toenails needed oxygen.
So, what, then? Dad concocted a crazy plan to improve his five-and-a-half-minute mile time. He had his pal Huey, who wasn’t even old enough to drive, get behind the wheel of Nikkel’s Jeep and motor it at a steady pace of seventeen miles per hour along the levee at the American River. Dad hung on to the back for about half a mile, then he let go and tried to keep up his foot speed for several more minutes. But, of course, he never could. After three weeks of this wacky training, Dad wasn’t getting any faster. So, he gave up.
The day he graduated from high school, Dad moved back to Loyalton to work in the lumber mill. Then, one day, while attending a local rodeo, he noticed the bull-riding competition had a twelve-hundred-dollar purse. “What does it take to enter?” Dad asked. “Just pay twenty-five dollars and hang on,” was the reply. He finished fourth, winning $158, and thought he’d struck it rich. Instantly, bull riding became Dad’s new passion. It was exciting to him because it was so dangerous. Young and naïve, he thought he was bulletproof. Nikkel knew better. He wasn’t at all happy about Dad’s attempt at rodeo stardom—he worried about Dad’s health and safety—and he did everything he could to discourage and distract him.
And that included securing tickets to the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, and asking Dad to go along. Dad recalls watching U.S. figure skater Carol Heiss win the Olympic gold medal, with first-place votes from all nine judges. He also saw the U.S. ice hockey team defeat the So
viet Union in a thrilling, down-to-the-wire, 3–2 victory. (A day later, the U.S. went on to win its first gold medal in ice hockey, defeating Czechoslovakia, 9–4.) Both of these events were held in Blyth Arena, open-air on its south side, enabling a view of the mountains.
One afternoon, after eight and a half hours of watching figure skating and ice hockey, Dad, frozen to the bone, walked into the back of the Olympic Village Inn, home to more than 750 athletes. He ate, warmed up, and talked with athletes from around the globe.
“Where are you from?” somebody asked.
“Sacramento,” Dad replied.
“What country is that?” someone else wanted to know.
“What event are you in?” another piped up.
“Nothing. We’re here to watch all of them, or as many as we can,” Dad said.
That’s when he found out he wasn’t supposed to be in the Olympic Village.
Those four days at the 1960 Olympics had a profound impact on Dad’s life. He felt a strong connection to the athletes. He described his experience as “a walking Sports Illustrated magazine.” From that moment on, Dad desperately wanted to be an Olympian. But although his heart was in it, his mind certainly wasn’t there yet.
For the next few years, Dad bounced around a lot, from state to state, job to job, college to college. He put much more energy into being a free spirit and following his wanderlust than he did into chasing his Olympic dreams. A rascal and a rebel, he got himself into quite a few crazy situations. After multiple brushes with prejudice at Magic Valley Christian College in Albion, Idaho, he became so outraged by the rigid atmosphere that he dangled the two prized goats of the school’s president, by their horns, from a telephone pole. After illegally hitchhiking on Dallas highways, he was thrown into the back of a Texas Highway Patrol squad car and handcuffed to a prostitute named Rose. After consuming a quart of whiskey and a dozen beers and passing out in the basement of a Reno restaurant, he woke up long after closing, pushed open the front door, and set off the security alarms. The next thing he knew, the place was swarming with dozens of cops. Dad says he saw more guns that night than he has ever seen at Wal-Mart.
Dad was young. He had no ties, no obligations. He was so unpretentious, so unmotivated by material things, that he only needed money for the bare necessities. And even then, he didn’t need much. In fact, for several months, when work in Loyalton was difficult to come by, Dad lived in an abandoned shack with holes in the windows and roof. To stay warm, he’d sleep in the sawmill beside the steam-operated machinery. Eventually, Ralph Johnson, a well-respected logger, and his wife, Dixie, “adopted” Dad, luring him to their ranch with promises of a warm bedroom and plenty of home-cooked meals.
It took a horrific rodeo injury in summer 1961 to shock Dad into reality. He was thrown under a bull, and the animal stepped on the inside of his leg, pinching off an artery. He retreated to San Francisco, where his parents now lived. His foot was so swollen that he couldn’t put on a sock, much less a slipper. It was about the size of his thigh, Dad says. His body temperature soared to 104 degrees. His mother begged him to have a doctor check it. Finally, Dad relented. The doctor advised Dad to keep his foot elevated and prescribed some medicine. A few days later, the swelling subsided. When he went back to see the doctor, Dad learned how incredibly lucky he was that his leg hadn’t had to be amputated. Then the doctor joked, “Why don’t you take up a noncontact sport, like girls’ volleyball?”
Volleyball.
A lightbulb went off in Dad’s head. Great memories came flooding back. However, Dad resisted taking up volleyball again because his tough-guy friends in the logging industry and on the rodeo circuit thought it was a “sissy sport.”
And then, several months later, in the winter of 1961, after another failed stint in Loyalton, Dad moved back to San Francisco again. Soon after, he followed the doctor’s orders: He began playing volleyball at the Embarcadero YMCA, through the coaxing of some Hawaiian friends he’d made. It was the first time he’d played organized indoor volleyball, and he really threw himself into it. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he played at lunchtime with local businessmen. Tuesday evenings, he participated in group practices, and Thursday evenings, he played in organized games. Saturdays and Sundays, he trained or latched on to pickup games.
As he honed his skills and got into better shape, Dad followed some of his volleyball buddies to San Francisco’s legendary Olympic Club. Dad recalls waiting outside for the kitchen workers to throw away food scraps, then sneaking into the Olympic Club through a side door to play volleyball. While at the Olympic Club, he discovered that DeGroot, one of his early mentors, had retired from the Air Force and had coached the club’s volleyball team. In 1962, Dad bumped into DeGroot at a volleyball tournament at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California.
“Do you remember me?” Dad asked.
“Sure, I do,” DeGroot said.
“What do I have to do to become a member of the Olympic Club?” Dad asked.
“Practice,” DeGroot said.
DeGroot wasn’t being a smart aleck, he was just being honest. The Olympic Club team was one of the nation’s elite. But Dad figured it would take more than practice to make that team. He’d spent all of his life on the outside looking in, and to be accepted at such a lofty club would take money, social stature, a college education, and athletic prowess. At that point, he had no claim to fame. He’d recently spun his wheels for a semester at California State University–Fresno, majoring in agriculture so he could try out for the school’s rodeo team. He’d also been playing for the Fresno YMCA volleyball team.
Then, DeGroot went one better.
“Why don’t you move to Santa Monica?” DeGroot asked.
He explained to Dad that he was now coaching at Santa Monica City College, where he’d won the national college championship in 1961. So, in August 1963, Dad set off for Southern California. He stayed at DeGroot’s house the first night he arrived in Santa Monica. He registered at Santa Monica City College the following day and joined the volleyball team in informal fall practices. The season started in spring 1964.
“I’d like you to meet somebody who has just arrived from New York,” DeGroot said to Dad before the first practice.
Then, DeGroot introduced Dad to Ernie Suwara, a talented East Coast volleyball player. In July, Ernie had hitchhiked his way across the country, estimating he’d taken about eighty different rides, to train under DeGroot and to play for a Southern California volleyball team. Dad and Ernie became fast friends—today, Dad considers him a brother—and they lived together in an apartment on the last block in Santa Monica before you got to Venice Beach.
Dad was instantly smitten by the Southern California lifestyle, its beach culture, and the idolization of local volleyball stars. He played in his first Southern California beach volleyball tournament, in the spring of 1964, at Muscle Beach, with Ernie as his partner. They finished third in the single-A class.
Dad felt the lure of the beach. It was different from Waikiki. There was so much more sand and so many more beach volleyball courts. Plus, this was the early 1960s, and this was Southern California, where surfers were big shots. The world was captivated by the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, surfin’ safaris, and little deuce coupes. And now, great Southern California volleyball players were being elevated into gods, too. Dad ate it up—all of it.
In one season under DeGroot at Santa Monica City College, Dad was transformed from a solid recreational player into an aspiring Olympian. DeGroot told Dad that by understanding the fundamentals of the game and implementing them flawlessly, he could raise his level of play. DeGroot was right on. Finally, with focus, fine tuning, and excellent coaching, Dad became one of the best volleyball players in the country.
Even though he was serious about volleyball, Dad wasn’t beyond letting a little fun get in the way of his game. One time, he had been out too late the night before, and he showed up hungover for a tournament at Santa Monica City College. DeGroot could smell whiskey
on his breath—it also didn’t help matters, Dad says, that his eyes were orange—and he was benched. Until the finals, when DeGroot inserted him so Santa Monica City College could win the tournament.
However, it was another incident that really ticked off DeGroot. As Dad tells the story, he and Ernie, and some of the rest of their teammates, had “goofed around” in a tournament at UCLA, losing to the Bruins. If they’d won, they’d have automatically qualified to play in the United States Volleyball Association (USVBA) national college championship tournament. Although they were one of the best teams in the nation, DeGroot said he wasn’t going to take “an embarrassment” to nationals.
“I’m going to let the student body decide if you should go,” DeGroot said.
The Santa Monica City College student body voted to send them.
“You guys are so damn lucky,” DeGroot told the team after the votes were tallied.
Off they went to the USVBA national college championship tournament, which was held at the U.S. Air Force Academy, north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Before the tournament started, Dad and his teammates stumbled upon a noncommissioned officers’ club. Leave it to college kids to sniff out “fifteen-cent beer night.” DeGroot sniffed it out, too. Dad had just sat down at a table overflowing with beer bottles when DeGroot walked up.
“Damn it, whose beers are these?” DeGroot asked.
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