This oral history interview is a project of the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The legal rights of this material remain with the Outrigger Canoe Club. Anyone wishing to reproduce it or quote at length from it should contact the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The reader should be aware that an oral history document portrays information as recalled by the interviewee. Because of the spontaneous nature of this kind of document, it may contain statements and impressions that are not factual. A transcript of the video may be found below.
An Interview by Marilyn Kali
August 4, 2017
MK: Good morning. Today is Friday, August 4, 2017. We’re in the Board Room of the Outrigger Canoe Club. I’m Marilyn Kali (MK), a member of the Club’s Historical Committee. One of the Historical Committee’s projects is to do oral histories of long-time members. Today it is my pleasure to be talking to Jon Stanley (JCS), a two-time Olympic volleyball player and one of the most honored volleyball players in history. Good morning, Jon.
JCS: Good morning.
MK: Before we start talking about volleyball could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? When and where you were born.
JCS: I was born in Bronx, New York. The other end of the world. I was there through fifth grade, then we moved to Southern California. My mom still lives in Vista, California, which is North County. I still go see her regularly.
MK: How old is she?
JCS: Ninety-seven.
MK: Good for her. What did your parents do in New York and in California?
JCS: My dad was a pilot, a navigator for Pan Am Airlines and my mom was a homemaker. Just transferred to the West Coast. My mom went to school, then she got her Master’s degree and became a school teacher, and eventually retired. My dad stayed with the airlines about ten years, anyway, in electronic aviation, electronic business. That’s where he retired.
MK: Did you have any siblings.
JCS: I’ve got three brothers. An older brother’s, trade name Paco Sevilla. He’s a flamenco guitarist. Still playing and teaching. Lives in San Diego, the Northern city of New Mexico or Mexico. In fact, he was just here last week for a week. My next younger brother, Chris, is just retired from Portland University. He had coached volleyball there and then he was a facilities manager for about the last ten years and then he retired. He’s been an All-American volleyball player. Played basketball too.
MK: Who did he play volleyball for?
JCS: For Multnomah Athletic Club in Washington. He didn’t play collegiately. Of course we didn’t have college per se. We had college teams but no NCAA. He coached at Cal Berkeley for about fifteen years, and then he went up to Portland and coached there, and then moved on to management.
MK: Did you ever play against him?
JCS: Yeah, we did. Actually a number of times. The nationals on the Big Island. I’m not sure the year. I know that my brother Chris and I were on the All Tournament team. Tony and Chris Crabb were on the All Tournament Team, and Ernie and Rudy Surawa were on the All Tournament Team.
MK: Wow.
JCS: Three brothers.
MK: Three sets of brothers.
JCS: Yeah.
MK: Then you have a younger brother.
JCS: Younger brother Pete. He played for Church College (now BYU Hawaii). Just one year. Played with Tony Crabb and a few of the other guys that we know. Then went back to San Diego State and graduated there as a chef. He’s been working as a chef since then. He’s retired. Lives in Hollywood.
MK: Are all of your brothers as tall as you?
JCS: No, I got the tall gene, I guess. The others are six foot or under but Chris was 6’2” — he had a little bit of height.
MK: What high school did you attend?
JCS: I was at San Dieguito Unionized High School in Encinitas (CA), probably not too many know it now. It’s a little more popular but it was right on the beach sort of. Moonlight Beach, that’s where a lot of the world champion surfers came from and then a few of us volleyball guys started out there.
MK: Did you play any sports in high school?
JCS: Well, I tried … Tried out for football my sophomore year but I’d been away all summer and they’d gone through all their summer practices. I came out a week before they were going to start playing and I’d never played before. My dad forced me into going out. Went out on a Friday, and of course I was the new guy and they were going to show me. They sort of picked on me and I had Saturday/Sunday to think about it and I decided I didn’t want to keep going.
I spent the rest of the year hiding from the football players and trying to get through the year. They roughed me up pretty good. Anyway, that took care of my sophomore year. Junior year I tried out for basketball and I thought, okay, I’m over the football, so I show up for the first day of practice and the first guy I run into is a quarterback from the JV football team and he said, “Oh, are you going to stay out for more than one day?” I went, “Oh, gee. I’m not over this yet,” so I didn’t have to worry, I got cut. I didn’t make the JV team.
Then my senior year you had to be on the varsity and I got cut from the varsity but one of the football players got hurt and didn’t get better by the time basketball started so they said I could come back. I was on the team and we finished with twenty-five wins, and one loss. Won our sectional championship and I played a total of thirteen minutes the whole year. I kept track. Scored eleven points. That was a big time for me. I didn’t really do that much in high school.
MK: How did that lead to a basketball scholarship to BYU?
JCS: Well, volleyball was a kind of turning point because since I had the time I would go to the beach in the summers and mainly mat surfing and body surfing is what we did. They had a volleyball court there and guys were playing. They wouldn’t let us play, myself and my friends, because we didn’t know how to play. We would come down at eight, nine in the morning and get on the court and practice. When they came down they had to beat us to get us off the court.
At first it was one and out, and then we’d sign up again and we’d have to wait. At least they let us try. By the end of the summer they couldn’t beat us so we ended up staying on the court from nine in the morning ’til we had to leave to go home for dinner. We kept track. I know it was in the two, three hundreds of straight wins. It was all just kind of raw beach play. We certainly weren’t-
MK: Were you playing two-man?
JCS: Two-man, yeah. They actually had a tournament towards the end of the summer and two guys came up from San Diego. Double A players, tournament players. They kind of laughed when they saw us play because we’d serve underhand and we’d alternate serves. If we set the ball over the net, we’d replay it and all this stuff was just rules that we had. They said, “Let us show you how you’re supposed to play.” We played by their rules and my partner and I ended up playing them in the finals and did okay. They invited us to go to San Diego and play in an indoor tournament, doubles. We did that. We finished, played them in the finals down there too.
They invited us to go up to Manhattan Beach and play in the six-man open and that was big time. We went up and did that and that kind of got us started playing at a higher level. Two years of playing every day, sand ball doubles, kind of helped develop some skills and I got taller and I got bigger, and I went to junior college. I was going to go to Purdue to aeronautical school. My dad and my uncle were airline pilots. I was talked into going out for the basketball team at Palomar and that was going pretty well, so after two years at Palomar, well, first year I started, second year I made the All-State, All-American Junior College Team. I had a choice to go to Purdue or go to BYU and play on scholarship, so that was an easy choice. I told my dad, I said, “I’ll do two more years of basketball and then I can do my flying.” I played basketball and that went pretty well.
MK: Then you transferred to BYU. How long were you there?
JCS: Actually, three years. I did the two years I played basketball, and they had a club volleyball team. That was the first I had been exposed to the six-man indoor. It just so happened that John Lowell was the club coach.
MK: John Lowell wound up, we’ll talk about it later, but he actually came to Hawaii and coached Outrigger in the first year they won a national championship. He was coaching at BYU?
JCS: Yeah. He and Carl McGowan helped put together a club team and I was up there just for basketball and happened to be in a gym when they were playing on one end. I went down and asked if I could work out with them and they said yeah. I played a little bit and one of the guys ran and got John Lowell. He told him to come, he had to see this guy. John Lowell showed up and kind of gave me a two-minute tryout. A couple of set ball and I hit one and he goes, “Okay.” He brought out his magnetic board and he showed me all the positions. We kind of got set up for after basketball to come out for volleyball, so that’s how that got started.
MK: It was a club sport. They didn’t have intercollegiate volleyball at that point. Who did you play as a club team?
JCS: There were a few other college club teams, there was some YMCA teams. We would drive to Denver and play in the Intermountain Volleyball Tournament that they held there in Colorado Springs. Then we would drive to Far Westerns in San Francisco and we’d play in that. Then we’d drive to the nationals. Then you just played in the open division and, the top college teams would be ranked by how they finished in the open. In 1966 we played in a college division and we ended up in third place. We beat (Tom) Selleck’s USC team and Santa Monica was first, I think, and maybe San Diego State or something was second. We were third.
Because of that, John Alstrom, you know John, he and I were selected to the honorable mention All-American and got an automatic tryout for the national team. That was summer of ’66 and then that was when we made the World Games team.
MK: Tell me about the national team. Today our national teams play part of the year, and they travel all over, and they play in a world championship. What was the national team like back then?
JCS: We would play with our club team and we’d go to the nationals. At nationals they would select eighteen players and we would go somewhere to train as a tryout. They’d select twelve and that was basically the national team for that summer. World championships, I think we practiced in LA for a couple of weeks and I’d have to drive from San Diego up to LA every day. We’d get on a plane and go to Europe. Actually, we went to Germany and practiced for about a week. Then we went to Czechoslovakia and … I don’t think we had any practice games at all, we just started playing the tournament.
MK: You had two weeks of practice with each other before you-
JCS: Yeah, before we left for Europe. Very limited. Where these other (European) teams were made up of army players and they’re military, they were year-around or they would take six months and go and they could take a train and go and play Czechoslovakia. Or out of Czechoslovakia and play Romania, or Bulgaria, or Russia, or whoever. Yugoslavia. I mean, everybody was right there so we were behind on the training. We did okay. We took a game off of Russia in our first game and-
MK: Were they the world champions then?
JCS: Yeah.
MK: Wow.
JCS: They broadcast that all over the country, but we did okay. We finished 12th, I think, overall. I noticed you had mentioned that it was a world cup and we qualified for the Pan Am Games. I’m not sure. We didn’t really have a world cup, it was a world championship. We automatically qualified for the Pan Am Games, and of course we had to qualify for the Olympics. We did barely but we beat the Cuban team and won one game off of Brazil, and that got us into the Olympics.
MK: Let’s go back a little bit. In ’66 you were on the national team and then you went back to BYU for school.
JCS: Yeah.
MK: Then in ’67 you … were on the national team again?
JCS: Right, yeah. I was still at BYU. I was doing a Masters at BYU, so I still played for the club-
MK: For the club team.
JCS: I was playing for Fresno as far as USAVB at the time. I was at BYU in Provo so they would fly me to LA to play in a tournament or to the Far Westerns. We finished fourth or fifth, we were pretty decent but John Alstrom and I were the middles. We had a 5’6 setter, and a 35-year-old outside hitter, and a small-ish Armenian left-handed hitter as an outside hitter. We only had seven on the team, so not much was expected of us, but we went to Detroit in ’67 for the nationals and I forget what we finished, third or fourth in the AAU tournament. Then of course won the (USAVB) Open Division beating Sand & Sea, all the Olympic guys from ’64.
MK: Now, was Tommy Haine on … Did you meet him there?
JCS: I was in Fresno. I mean, I was playing for Fresno at BYU. Outrigger, we didn’t play them. They dropped out somewhere along the line. The top teams were Sand & Sea, Westside, and LA YMCA and then we were up there in the top five. I didn’t know any of the Outrigger players.
MK: Well, now Tommy was on the Pan American team.
JCS: Yeah, and this was all after the Detroit nationals. We were all selected and went to tryouts. Tommy was there, (Pete) Velasco.
MK: You had to try out for the …
JCS: We ended up winning at nationals and John Alstrom and myself made the Pan Am team and that was it off of that group.
MK: When you were on the national team did they financially support you while you were playing?
JCS: Yeah, while we were on the team, at the tryouts, we would stay in a dorm. I’m not sure we were getting a per diem. I think we did get some money for food. When you’re at the venue, the site, or where the competition is, it’s all cafeteria-style and you guys go eat anytime you want.
MK: Where did you train for the Pan Am Games?
JCS: Pan Ams were in Los Angeles. We ended up in Vancouver or in Winnipeg. We were at Northridge for a while and then Santa Monica Community College.
MK: They paid for your travel to all of those places.
JCS: Nothing while we were training, though. We were kind of on our own. Once the team got together, was selected, and then … I’m not sure. I know for the Olympics, we went to Tahoe and we stayed in a lodge in Tahoe together, and we worked out together, and we ate in the cafeteria. Everything was taken care of but I don’t think the Pan Ams were. We were kind of on our own.
MK: How many years were you on the national team?
JCS: ’66 through ’72 … In ’71 I was coaching but when we didn’t qualify then I went back as a player. In ’69 and ’70 … Let’s see. It was from ’68, I didn’t play in ’69 or ’70. ’71 I came back as a player and then ’72 we didn’t qualify. Well, we did go to the … I mean, it was a little strange. We were on the U.S. Olympic team. We went to Miami and we got all the (Olympic) stuff. We went to France to play in the preliminary pool play and you had to win that pool to go to the medal rounds. We lost to Poland in five and got eliminated. We ended up in Munich where they held the medal rounds, so it was …
MK: There were some other Outrigger players on that ’72 team. Dodge Parker, Tony Crabb.
JCS: Tony wasn’t on it. Dodge, yeah. I never played with Tony on the national team. He was a little bit younger. I don’t know if he played after I left or maybe ’69/’70 he might’ve been on the team.
MK: After the Pan Am Games you somehow wound up at the University of Hawaii. How did you get to Hawaii?
JCS: Well, I came over in ’67, played with Outrigger for the Pan Ams. Well, what happened was I was at BYU. I got my Masters and then I went for my Doctorate. It was in education so I was here in ’67 at UH and it was a two-year program. I would do a first year education and business and then I would transfer to UCLA and do the education administration degree.
I got drafted. (President Richard) Nixon decided to change the rules. If you weren’t in a classified degree-seeking program you were eligible for the draft. Even though I was full-time and pursuing a degree, UH didn’t have a degree in education so I became eligible. They drafted me while I was in school. The Air Force was aware of that and of course they got hold of me and they said, “Well, we’ll pre-enlist you prior to the draft. Finish your school and then you can come to Lackland (AFB) and do the Air Force, so that was a whole lot better deal.
I did that and then the question was, well this was in ’68. I was going to go to flight school and fly. They said if you do that you won’t be able to go to the Olympics but you can go to basic training, enlist, we’ll send you to the Olympics and then when you come back you can apply for Officer’s Candidate School in flight school. I said, “Okay, that’s a deal.”
That’s what happened and when I got back in September I applied through the Air Force to go to officer’s school, but due to some mix-ups in applications and quotas I wouldn’t have been able to get into the flight school. I would’ve been in two years already so I decided I’d just as soon just do two more years enlisted and go back to school. I was at March Air Force Base and they sent me back to Hickam, so I spent the rest of my Air Force time in Hickam, and Wheeler.
MK: What was your assignment at Hickam?
JCS: I was in Special Services. I was controlled by Lackland headquarters Air Force and released from duty to participate in basketball and volleyball leagues with the Air Force team, and inter-service team. That’s what I was doing.
MK: Now, Randy Shaw told me that he did basically the same thing. Was he there at the same time as you?
JCS: Yeah, he came in, he was all part of the same group of guys that we had come in, that got drafted. He and I-
MK: Dave Shoji?
JCS: Well, Dave was in the Army already in 1969. In fact, we picked him up from the Army team for our Armed Forces team. He doesn’t remember that but I was his coach. He was just the one year and then he got out.
MK: The Board of Directors gave you an athletic membership to the Club in December of 1967. How did you find out about the Outrigger or how did you become interested in joining?
JCS: Well, it wasn’t an athletic membership. They didn’t have those. What I got was a military … Since I was in the Air Force. It was a $600 membership but it was a regular membership. Yeah, it’s interesting. I was at BYU. My girlfriend was from here so I came over in the summer to visit her and of course the first thing I did was try to go down to the beach and find some volleyball. I ended up at Ala Moana, you know, down at the other end of the beach park. I started walking towards Waikiki and I walked all the way to Waikiki and I didn’t see one volleyball, period. I thought all these kids, all the Polynesia kids we had at BYU all played volleyball.
Anyway, the word I got was you have to go down to the Outrigger Canoe Club so I walked down, came in here, and there everybody was. I come in and sat down on the bench and watched for a while, and pretty soon somebody would say, “Why don’t you come play.” Someone knew me. I had played but I was kind of shy, so I didn’t want to butt in. I got to play a few games and then I get on the list, and then I got picked, and then I got to play regularly. I came down every day, played beach. That was in ’67. Then I went back to school.
When I got done with the military, well, I was at Hickam. In fact, Randy and I played in a lot of these tournaments together, indoor and outdoor. I noticed we didn’t get credits but I guess it was because Randy and I won the state beach doubles here. We beat Tommy and Paul MacLaughlin but because it wasn’t a club tournament I guess we didn’t get it on the record book, but we played together a lot.
MK: The Board hired John Lowell to be the coach of the Outrigger volleyball team. Was he already at Church College (now BYU Hawaii) or how did he get here?
JCS: Church College, yeah.
MK: He was their coach.
JCS: Right, he coached and he had his PhD in physical education. In ’66 he was selected as USVBA representative to the world championships so he was in Czechoslovakia with us. Then the next year, Pan Ams, he was an assistant coach, so he was assistant Pan Am Coach and he was Head Coach at Church College, and coaching Outrigger. We had to drive out to Church College to practice two, three times a week.
MK: Well, you had a quite a team that year.
JCS: Yeah. It was a good team.
MK: You guys won nationals, national AAU.
JCS: AAUs, yeah.
MK: How did John Alstrom get here? He came from …
JCS: Fresno, too. So did George Sarantos, our setter. We had us three from Fresno and John Lowell, and then the rest of the Outrigger guys. It was a good team, yeah.
MK: Peter Velasco, and Tommy Haine, and …
JCS: Dodge Parker. Carl McGowan.
MK: You had a great team back then. Outrigger won, let’s see, in ’68, won the national AAU. Then ’68 was an Olympic year. How did you guys get from the Outrigger team onto the national team and the Olympic team?
JCS: The All-Americans, you get an automatic tryout. There was a selection … Eighteen players were selected, and those eighteen players showed up in Lake Tahoe. No they didn’t. Showed up in Northridge to practice … I’m just trying to think whether or not they had the tryouts prior to going to Tahoe. I think they did. Then they just took twelve players up to Tahoe to train for the Olympics.
MK: Did you have to go on your own dime or did they …
JCS: No, from where we trained in LA they flew us up to Tahoe.
MK: What about from Hawaii to …
JCS: I think because the preliminary camp was a tryout to see who could go to the training camp, I think everybody had to get there on their own. Most of them were from California.
MK: Well, it’s pretty amazing that four volleyball players from Hawaii, in the middle of the ocean, made the Olympic team.
JCS: Yeah, and the women’s team too. We had good representation.
MK: We had two or three women. Let’s see. Miki (McFadden), Barbara-
JCS: Perry. Fanny Hoopeau. I mean, that was it.
MK: Good year for Hawaii in the 1968 Olympics. How did it go in the Olympics?
JCS: It started off great. We should’ve quit after the first day. We played Russia, and-
MK: In the very first game?
JCS: The opening match which was probably good for us and not good for Russia because they took us pretty lightly, I think. We had been practicing for a month to get ready for them so we were pretty much on our game that first game. It was close but we had some guys play real well and beat ’em like fifteen to nine or something. Something like that. I know that they called time out at about … I don’t know, it was thirteen or fourteen to eight or nine. We came over in the huddle and started talking. Guys are like, “Okay, we’ve got to score a point.” Mike Bright said, “Let’s tease ’em a little bit. Let’s keep ’em on the court.” Everybody kind of was shocked like, “What?”
MK: Trash talk or …
JCS: It was just, his humor. He was that way. Of course he was kidding but that was one of the, I think it’s in the top 50 volleyball events in the history of volleyball, was that (U.S.) victory (over Russia in the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City).
MK: Because Russia was the world champion at that point. Defending-
JCS: World defending champion. They were good. I mean, nobody else beat ’em.
MK: They went on to eventually win.
JCS: Won the gold, yeah.
MK: You were the only loss they had, I understand.
JCS: Yeah.
MK: That’s pretty good. How did the team do overall?
JCS: Well, we were five and seven. I think we lost in five to Bulgaria, which could’ve been a win. The rest, Poland, East Germany, Japan, Russia, they were pretty solid. I mean, we were big underdogs against any of those teams, so overall we did okay. We had our best outside hitter, Larry Rundle, sprained his ankle in the second match. Velasco was still coming off a sprained ankle. I missed five games due to Montezuma’s revenge. I lost 25 pounds. Sick as a dog.
MK: They didn’t tell you not to drink the water?
JCS: Well, it wasn’t from drinking, it was brushing my teeth. They didn’t specify don’t touch the water, it was like don’t drink the water. Okay, so …
MK: What was most memorable about the Olympic Games?
JCS: Well, of course you can’t beat beating the top team in the world. Then the rest was kind of a struggle. You know, you’re playing every day almost and so it’s quite intense. You’re trying to get ready to play and sometimes you think you’d rather go out and run one event and be done instead of for ten days we were out there competing against the best teams. It was a lot of pressure and we didn’t have a lot of time off to get out and enjoy all the sites.
MK: Did you participate in the opening ceremony?
JCS: I was sitting up in the stands next to a toilet. That was my-
MK: That was your introduction. The rest of the team marched in with the-
JCS: They were all down there, yeah.
MK: What’d it feel like to see the Americans coming and know you’re part of it?
JCS: Well, you know, it’s that way even when you don’t play. You’re just watching and in future Olympics. For us as players, I don’t know, for myself it was … everything I was doing was to get ready to play and it wasn’t like fun and games. You know, you’re out there, you see ’em all, yay and celebrating. We were already playing. We were already doing stuff so we had to get ready to play the next day. It was quite intense and not a fun thing.
MK: Did you live in the Olympic Village?
JCS: Yeah, there in the Village.
MK: What’s that like with so many players from so many countries?
JCS: Well, that’s kind of, you know, that was about all we could do, would be go down and wander around in the pavilion there or the cafeteria and check people out, see all these great athletes that were wandering around. That in itself was great. Of course, I say we had from getting up in the morning and doing pre-game stuff, and eating, and taking naps, and getting ready to go play, and then come back, and ready to eat, and get to bed. It was pretty busy.
MK: Not much free time … After the Olympics were over what did you do?
JCS: Came back and signed in at Hickam. Finished my, actually … I’m jumping ahead to ’72 already. In ’68 I had to report back to March Air Force Base so I went directly back to the military service and was at March for about six months until they transferred me back here to Hickam. I didn’t get a big break there but then right into the basketball season with the Air Force.
MK: You continued to play basketball.
JCS: Yeah.
MK: What’s different about volleyball from basketball that has kept you playing volleyball for so long?
JCS: The difference? In playing basketball and volleyball. You know, I think if I had a choice, what sport I’d rather play, I’d probably pick basketball. The game is just easier, you know, more fun, in a sense. More one-on-one. Stuff that I like to do. Volleyball, it’s a team. It’s more of a team thing. You gotta depend on passing, setting, and … Game-wise maybe about even but I always enjoyed basketball so I kept playing and of course being in the Air Force I ended up playing on the Air Force team and the Armed Forces team. I would go right from basketball, come back, check in, check out, and meet the volleyball team in Japan.
MK: You got to play both, it was …
JCS: I got to play both.
MK: I read somewhere that volleyball was founded for people who didn’t want to exert as much energy as those who played basketball. It was for the lazier people.
JCS: Well, it was more of a businessman’s noontime game, you know. Yeah, they played on like a six-foot net, rubber ball, and maybe twelve, fifteen people on a side. They would just keep the ball in play, get it back and forth over the net.
MK: Where did you start coaching?
JCS: That was in the Armed Forces. As soon as I got back to March we put together the volleyball team. I was … I don’t know, I wasn’t chosen or elected. I guess it was just assumed that I would be the coach so I coached our Base team, and then I coached the Air Force team, and then I coached the Armed Forces team … Four years.
MK: You coached here also at Outrigger.
JCS: Well, after I got out and came here, John Lowell was the coach and then when he left … All through ’72 I was in the Armed Forces. ’74 and ’75 and then the IVA started so I got hired to coach the LA Stars and then Denver Comets. That was pretty intense coaching and-
MK: Player/coach?
JCS: Playing too. It worked out well. I mean, I enjoyed doing it. It was a great league and fun to play. Unfortunately it didn’t last any longer.
MK: It was a co-ed league?
JCS: We had two ladies played the sides and the setter middle, and then we had the three big guys at the net. We didn’t rotate. We would serve and run up to the net when it was our turn, so that worked out fine. There was no problem doing that. The girls did what they could do very well. They were the top, they were national team players. We got the best players in the world to come and play for the various teams in the leagues.
MK: How many teams were in the league?
JCS: I think maybe the highest number was twelve. Two six-team divisions.
MK: Now that started in ’75?
JCS: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
MK: How long did the league last?
JCS: Half way through the ’81 season.
MK: From lack of money or …
JCS: Yeah. You know-
MK: Fans?
JCS: The original owners were people like David Gerber and David Wolper. They were movie producers, TV producers. Michael O’Hara, who had started the pro track and other pro leagues. Barry Gordy from San Diego. We had good money behind the teams. One combination that they didn’t get to TV, they did some specials, and sports spectaculars, and this, and that, but didn’t get the money coming in and then slowly some of the big guys dropped out. Some with medical. I think David Wolper had a heart attack. Less money and then more expensive players. Everybody, you know, they want this guy, want that guy and they gotta pay him a little more. Pretty soon the payrolls went up and so eventually they just said this is not going to work and-
MK: That was that.
JCS: Couple of teams quit playing.
MK: There were a number of Outrigger players who were playing in that league. Dodge started out, I guess with you.
JCS: He was with us in LA and he went to Orange County … Who else? I’m not sure. Tony may have played some-
MK: Did Chris (Crabb) play?
JCS: It’d be a very short period of time if he did. I’m trying to think. Mike Cote played for a San Diego team. I think that’s about it. Randy never played. Some of these guys were still playing on a national team. You couldn’t play IVA and play with the national team, so Randy was playing with USC, I think, at the time. Donnie Maze wasn’t an Outrigger member. I think that’s about it.
MK: Were you still living in Hawaii when you were playing the pro league?
JCS: Yeah. It was going to be the Hawaii Hurricanes or something. Rainbows. We were going to be Rainbows but then UH kind of said, “No, you can’t be the Rainbows,” but then they switched us to LA and we were the LA Stars.
MK: You continued to live here and-
JCS: I was here.
MK: Just traveled for the season.
JCS: Yeah.
MK: Was coaching a full-time job for you at that point or were you doing something else?
JCS: It was set up to be part-time. They didn’t pay enough to make it really a full-time. A lot of the guys were teachers and coaches. At the time I would come back here and I was getting involved in financial business. Real estate and stuff like that. I did that in the off season.
MK: It’s hard when you have to travel like that for …
JCS: It was okay for a while because I wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, but second, third year in Denver … How’d that work? Didn’t have any children and my wife was what we call backup, was a third girl. She acted as a backup for our girls. She was a good player. She played for a Canadian national team. Sandy, you know.
MK: Right, and that’s where you met her?
JCS: No. I met her at a volleyball camp in Winfield, Canada. A Winfield volleyball camp. I knew some of the Canadian volleyball players and they introduced me to her. I got her to come over here, play for Dave (Shoji at UH). Actually she played for … It was before Dave. I don’t think she played for Dave but whoever coached, Kang. Maybe Alan Kang.
MK: Yeah, long time ago since Dave just retired after forty-some years at UH. The league was over, and you came back to Hawaii, and you started playing for Outrigger again. This was now on our Masters teams.
JCS: Actually it’s not in the papers but I coached them one year when I was still with the IVA. I coached the Masters guys. Then the next year after we folded up IVA I played with Outrigger.
MK: Twenty-seven straight years. That’s a long time.
JCS: Who’s counting?
MK: You made it, you were a big part of those teams and especially to the success that they enjoyed. It seems like there was a nucleus of players back in those days that kind of moved up from the open teams to the Masters. You started at the thirty-fives and then it just kind of went up to the fifties, fifty-fives. What holds a team together like that for so many years?
JCS: Well, I think opportunity for one. We had a sponsor, we had a place to play, we had the players, and then we had success so it was something that I think everybody made part of their lives and prepared every year for it. A lot of the teams we played would get together a few weeks before the nationals and that was it. They were good players, good teams but we always had that little extra in the offense, and the defense, and the playing together for so long. It’s a big part of volleyball.
MK: You guys won eighteen national titles and you were selected for All-American honors twenty-three times while you were playing for Outrigger. You were Most Valuable Player six times in the nationals. That’s an amazing accomplishment and your teammates received similar honors during that period of time as well. Why did Outrigger have such good players?
JCS: Well, one of the things, when you win, most of your starting players get selected to the All-Tournament team, so winning was important. Then being a good player, too, but that’s why you win, because you have good players. I think Randy, and Chris, Scott Rigg, Mike Cote, when he was there. If we win pretty much we’d make the All-Tournament team. Then usually somebody off the winning team would get the MVP, so that’s …
MK: You shared that honor among all of you. It kind of seemed to rotate. One of you was always the one selected. When Randy did his oral history he talked about how you guys took turns coaching the team. How did that work with all of you being experienced players and coaches?
JCS: Well, I think we just didn’t designate who was going to coach so whoever wanted to step up and coach did the coaching.
MK: For the day or for the whole season?
JCS: For the day. We didn’t really designate a coach. I think Randy and Tom Madison, Chris Crabb, they would kind of make decisions on starting lineups. As far as the other part, I mean even practices we had no structured practice. It was kind of routine what we did and so anybody could kind of step up and make comments or suggestions or do stuff on their own. Yeah, you can’t really coach that kind of experience in that kind of a setting. It was just everybody kind of had to just buy in to what we were doing.
MK: You all knew what needed to be done and you just did it.
JCS: Yeah, I think Charlie Jenkins was a big part of that, the setter, because he could kind of control who was doing what by who he’d set the ball to and what offense he was running. Defensively I think we just had guys that tried real hard and played defense. Can’t beat that.
MK: Well, most of our players retired in 2006 (from national play). That was after they’d been playing thirty or forty years, but you didn’t. You went on to win twelve more national titles, and All-American honors, and Most Valuable Player titles in the men’s sixties and sixty-fives with Just Volleyball and the Quiksilver Legends. What kept you going all those years?
JCS: Well, it was like, it wasn’t if I was going to play, it was who’s going to show up. I got to know a lot of the guys from other teams and the first other than Outrigger, was Just Volleyball. I think you know I added it. I knew some of the guys there and Legends were the team that we’d battled with for first and second all the years. Just Volleyball was kind of coming up and so that was the first opening. I thought well why go to the Legends? I’ll go help some other team.
The first year I played with Just Volleyball we beat the Legends for the championship and then … some of it was changing age groups and stuff. I went with the Legends the next year. I kind of jumped around a little bit. I’m not sure exactly but I think I played for Just Volleyball two years. We won both years and then I went and played the Legends the rest of the time and we won when I was with the Legends. Just Volleyball kind of broke up at some point so I just stayed with the Legends.
MK: Where were they located?
JCS: They’re in south of Oakland. Some of the guys were from different areas, Orange County and that, but the guy Dave Hirose, who was the team organizer, sponsor, has a Just Volleyball store. He still has an online store and still calls me every year. Wants to know if I want to play. They don’t have a team anymore but he actually played for the Legends a couple of years ago. He had nowhere to go so he jumped on with us.
MK: It’s in the blood. You gotta play.
JCS: For me, I didn’t play the last two years. Some of it was because most of the guys that I play with have quit playing and, the other, they went from a four-day tournament to a three-day tournament. If you’re going to play one division, play three days, it was kind of like not really worth going, especially if you’re not with the guys you’re used to playing with. They call me and they want me to play with the sixty or sixty-fives but then I get so busy at home here with the high school, and club, and clinics. It just didn’t make sense to try to train for me to do what I want to do and then go back for three days. They’re still after me but we might play in the seventy-five World Masters in Japan.
MK: You are?
JCS: That’s the plan, yeah.
MK: When is that? Next year? Two years?
JCS: No, it’ll be the year after the Olympics, so ’21.
MK: 2021.
JCS: I gotta let them catch up to me so they can play seventy-five.
MK: Well, coaching seems like it’s something very dear to your heart and you’ve coached high school teams, and college teams, the pro teams, club teams. What high schools have you coached?
JCS: I started at Kalani in ’69. When I went to Europe in ’72 after the Olympics, Dave Shoji took over my Kalani team. I coached the girls and the boys, and a great group of kids. That was really a good experience. I would do the girls after school and then the boys would come after them. Then the girls would come back and double up and practice another session. That’s just the way the kids were then. They wanted to do it. It wasn’t about winning or anything, it was just being together, and working hard, and trying.
Then I went to Europe and came back, and then I couldn’t … I applied back. I don’t know if you know Joey Miyashiro. Her daughters all played for Kalani and played college. One at UH for one year and then the younger one was libero for the national team. She was coaching there so I ended up going to Kaiser. I’ve been there twenty-some years. Coached the girls and then coached the boys and the girls. That was too tough so I gave up the girls. I liked the boy’s game better but I had more fun coaching the girls.
MK: Are you still coaching there?
JCS: Yeah. Just the boys, though. I end up there for practices anyway because my son Jon, he likes to go help the practices with the girls.
MK: That’s cool.
JCS: I take him up there.
MK: You also coached at the college level.
JCS: Yeah, a little bit. I volunteered when Clay (son Clay Stanley) was at UH and that was all right. Mike Wilton wasn’t the easiest guy to work with. Wilton, the coach, he was in control of everything and you couldn’t really do much because you’d disrupt his practice, you know. I was mainly just to help out and do whatever I could. It was okay but it was tough having to work that into the rest of my schedule. Then Chaminade. I was there one year. assistant one year, Head Coach one year, and then they changed ADs (Athletic Directors) and they wanted a woman coach so that didn’t work. Nothing else opened up.
Sharon Peterson was at Hilo for forty years, and Dave at UH, and Wilfred Navalta, Church College forever. He wasn’t going anywhere. I applied at HPU. Actually got hired and then displaced all in one year. I was told I had the job and Mike Wilton’s daughter, was going to be my assistant. I’m ready to go and I read in the paper that … She’s an Athletic Director of Punahou now, that she was the Head Coach at HPU. What had happened was she had applied for it and they’d … something to do with she wanted to go to school and coach, and they said no so they hired me. Then she came back and said, okay, she’ll do it just for the coaching so they said okay. They never told me. I heard about it in the paper. Anyway, there wasn’t much opportunity and I didn’t want to leave Hawaii.
MK: Did get your PhD?
JCS: No, I completed the courses but I was told don’t get the degree. I came back and got hired as a PE teacher at St. Louis. They said, “If you get a PhD you probably won’t get the job because the pay scale’s too high,” so that was part of it. That other was I was running around doing volleyball stuff and doing the dissertation thing would’ve been a lot tougher to do. Everything worked out fine with that.
MK: In 1990 you founded the Hawaii Junior Volleyball Club and you’re the Director and the Head Coach. Can you tell us about that?
JCS: Well, when I was semi-retired from the financial, I was with American Express company, I was just looking for something that I wanted to do and one of them was coaching. There was one (volleyball) club and that was Kamali’i. Longy Okamoto was the Coach/Director of that and I was kind of helping him, assisting him and coaching for a few years. I said, well, I’ll start my own club.
This was in the mid Eighties and so I started up Hawaii Juniors and started up a volleyball business, sports equipment business, which still exists today. Don’t do much business with it but I have accounts with mainland volleyball equipment people. Then the teams, we’d run twelve to fifteen boys and girls teams. Take them to the nationals or the (Volleyball) Festival in California. It was great. I got to coach a bunch of teams, and the coaches I had were good coaches, and got to do this trip with them in the summer. It was really neat. That worked out fine.
Over the years, it’ll only be fifteen years, now there was thirty (volleyball) clubs and a lot of my coaches had broken off and formed their own clubs. My group kind of evolved, since I never cut anybody. If we needed another team we’d make another team. We didn’t have tryouts. You just join and come play, and we put you on a team and you get to play. What happened was is that these other coaches were now being aggressive, they went out and recruited. They would recruit the top players they could get because they wanted to show that their teams were better. It was better to be on their club than this other club because they’re better. It got real competitive.
Eventually, because we didn’t have tryouts, the kids would go to tryouts, because you gotta try out and see if you can make it. If they didn’t make it then they would come back to Hawaii Juniors. We got to be kind of known as the developmental club or the junk club, if you say that. The top players, then, would go to these others teams and we were still competitive locally. We still take teams (to the Mainland) but we have less of the top kids and less interest in traveling. As you start to drop off on your travel teams players won’t come out because you’re not going to the nationals. Things got to be a little bit tough. We weren’t taking many teams to the mainland and the numbers dropped off, but we had a good boy’s groups so we kind of focused on boys. Then eventually we just did boys for a while.
There was about an eight year period where the boys all got to be seniors and then moved on, and we didn’t have the younger ones coming out so we didn’t do team play. We just started up the clinics for the four, five, six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds and we ended up with seventy to eighty kids coming out every week of all different ages and doing that.
MK: How do you get five and six-year-olds playing volleyball?
JCS: Well, it’s called mini volleyball and you come up with a lot of different things. We do trampoline jumps. We teach them jumping off of trampolines so we get them up in the air and then we toss a ball and they’d spike it. We’d throw tennis balls so they learned it overhead and then we’d do all the other stuff that the college players did. Diving, do all that-
MK: They’d love that part of it, I’m sure.
JCS: They love it, yeah. Playing defense. The little kids like it and we use a light ball. We even use a super light ball and then we use balloons, beach balls, so they can play and keep the ball in the air. The young ones are great. Now we got ’em up to about fourteen and we have three different courts going all the time. It’s been good. Oddly enough we run into the same problem. We charge $20 a month and the next clinic up is East Oahu. They charge $70 a month and they have one court, a mix of older, younger kids. Then there’s Spike and Serve and they charge $80 an hour.
All of a sudden our numbers are dropping off. What’s the deal? Well, if they have a choice to go to the $80 an hour or $10 an hour or $5 an hour or whatever, they pick the more expensive one because they think that’s better. We raised our monthly, we’re at $40 but we’re getting more and more people from these other clinics. How strange, why people are that way. They think if it’s more expensive it’s got to be better.
MK: I read something recently that said that ask just about any American and almost every single person has played volleyball in their lifetime, and that’s the only sport that you could really say that of. Not everybody will ever have played football, or basketball, or baseball but just about everybody has played volleyball. Do you agree with that?
JCS: Well, probably to some degree. Like soccer too. You can throw the ball out, and kick it, and kick it through the thing. Anybody can do that. Volleyball, played as it should be played, isn’t kind of that way. You need to have some instruction, you need to have some basic fundamentals. Otherwise the game’s … You know, you can say you play it but it’s just toss a ball over the net and beat it back and forth, so it’s not really volleyball, but it is.
MK: It’s social.
JCS: Yeah. It’s not an easy game if you don’t have the basic fundamentals and you can’t get rallies, and you can’t dig a ball, you can’t serve. Even high school, the game, pass and serve still.
MK: You’re married, and you were first married to Sandra Buhr and had two children, Clay and Taeya. Did they follow in your shoes and play volleyball?
JCS: Clay … didn’t. He was a … We didn’t push him into it. Say, “You have to do this or do that,” but, “Why don’t you try it?” He tried it but it didn’t work and I have my own little theory, because I was his coach, that because I was his coach he kind of felt bad that he wasn’t better than everybody else and so he’d goof off. Say, “No, I could do it anyway.” Of course then I’m going, “Well, you’ve got to do it this way, you got to do,” …
I could see it wasn’t working so I kind of left him alone and he went his own way and did surfing, and skateboarding, and boogie boarding. That’s what he did through high school. He did play with Tony Crabb on a twelve under or something (at OCC) but he didn’t really play. He’d come in, they’d put him in for a few times and then they’d take him out. I think it wasn’t until his senior year, one of his surfing buddies was also a basketball player and got him to come out for basketball. He did pretty well. Because he was 6’9″. I thought he could’ve gone on and played but he said, “No, I’m going to play volleyball.”
Okay, this is late senior year. He joined the Outrigger 18s, and went to the nationals with them, and got recruited by everybody. In June nobody has money for the next season so BYU offered him $500 and said, “Next year we’ll give him a scholarship.” That was Carl McGowan. UH had seen him play here and practice and stuff, so they saved a scholarship for him. It worked out fine. He didn’t mind staying home and so he went to UH. Al Scates (UCLA Coach) calls in July and says, “We’ll give him a full ride to UCLA,” because he lost one of his middles to grades in summer school so he wanted to get Clay, but Clay was committed already and so he didn’t go. Which, in the long run, probably was best. He probably’d done better at UCLA but who knows where he would’ve ended up.
My daughter … left here with her mom after we split up, went to Washington. It was her sophomore year, I guess. Got in with a bad crowd. She played for a school team, played for Seattle Juniors, played for me one year here before she left, was very good. Better than Clay ever was in high school. 6’2, rotor arm, ballet, you know, movements. Anyway, got in with the wrong guy, and got into drugs, and got dropped from her teams and dropped from high school. Went right into a college-equivalent course at a junior college and got her AA degree. Went to the University of British Columbia. Got her Masters in Nutrition and now she’s an RN at Straub. In fact, she’s head of the Infectious Disease Unit. Doing really well but never got to play volleyball. Well, she played and she was very good, but never got to take it as far as she could.
MK: Well, Clay has made you very proud, I’m sure. He went on to play on three Olympic volleyball teams and earned a gold medal. What’s it like watching your son win a gold medal?
JCS: Stressful. I’m not jumping up and down waving flags. I’m over there just going like, okay, next play, next play. End result was terrific.
MK: Did you hit every ball with him?
JCS: Every play, everything, and that’s kind of the way that team was. They play every point and they had to. I mean, those teams were very good that they beat. Of course it couldn’t have ended any better, getting the last hit, and ending the game, and being MVP. That’s too bad about his knees. We would’ve liked to have gone to Rio, watched one more time.
MK: Did you go to the Games when he was playing?
JCS: We went to Greece, and then we went to Beijing and London. We were there.
MK: What was it like compared to the Olympics that you played in in ’68?
JCS: Well, for me it was the same thing. Stress. Playing every match, every game. A lot tougher. The teams are a lot more even, top to bottom, and the tops teams were a lot closer. A lot of that’s just the year to year playing in the pro leagues and the guys all knowing each other. You know, you don’t have the dominant teams so every game’s a battle. It’s just a lot tougher.
The Olympic experience is bigger. The U.S. team is year-around, really. I mean, part of the year-around training is their pro experience. They take time off to go play in international tournaments and back to finish the pros, and then they have the world league. I mean they’re constantly playing. All that, it just makes it a little tougher to win, but more opportunity to get better.
MK: What’s Clay doing now?
JCS: Well, he’s got a real job now but he’s developing his own business in floor products, carpeting, wood products for flooring. He’s kind of working with Marc Haine and eventually he’ll take over a Pacific area wholesale business in the flooring products, so right now he’s just learning.
MK: Is he still playing volleyball?
JCS: No, he probably hasn’t touched a volleyball since he retired. Probably won’t.
MK: Do you have grandchildren from either of them?
JCS: Two from Clay’s and two from Taeya’s, yeah.
MK: Oh my goodness.
JCS: Taeya’s been bringing her daughter out to our clinic. She’s going on six. She also has a little boy, the little guy’s going on three. Then Clay has one who is two and the other is about eight months.
MK: Wonderful. Now, you are married again and your wife is Tamie Jones. You have two more sons with her. Wil and Jon Junior. They both played on Outrigger volleyball teams so are they going to be volleyball players too?
JCS: Well they are. Wil’s a sophomore at BYU. He played regularly as a freshman, as a backup setter, serving sub and came in and set several games and won against number one Long Beach. Brought them back from a one-game deficit to win, so he’s doing real well. He had an injury to an elbow so he’s not sure he’s going to redshirt and rehab the elbow or go for one more year and see if he can play through it.
MK: How tall is he?
JCS: 6’4, setter. He’s a very good setter. He helped coach Outrigger to their 17s title this year.
MK: He’s going to be a coach too, he’s learned from you.
JCS: I don’t know. He’s going to major in psychology, maybe sports psychology. It might be good for coaching, I don’t know.
MK: What about Jon?
JCS: Jon’s at Kaiser with me. He’s a senior this year. He’s been first team All State as a player his junior year. He made MVP on the gold medal team (Outrigger Boys 17s in 2017) at nationals and he just got back from the high performance competition in Florida. He’s getting a lot of emails from college coaches, so we’ll see how that plays out. He’s got this next year to finalize stuff so he’ll be a player.
MK: How tall is he now?
JCS: He’s 6’2.
MK: He’s what, seventeen?
JCS: Seventeen. We don’t know if he’s-
MK: He’s got a ways to go.
JCS: Well, yeah, we tell him he’s either got to grow a few more inches or he’s gotta increase his vertical by two inches for every inch he doesn’t grow. Well, if Taylor Crabb can do it, Jon can do it.
MK: We’ve talked a lot about six-man indoor volleyball. What about sand volleyball? You got your start playing that. You’ve played some at Outrigger.
JCS: Well, played a lot at Outrigger. I mean, you know, first came here-
MK: Played all the tournaments.
JCS: Played everything, yeah. I was gone most of the summers in the early Seventies and late Sixties because I was playing with the national team and then playing in the IVA up through the Eighties. I would come back here late September and most of the tournaments had already been played so I didn’t get to do a lot of tournament play during the summer.
MK: You played in the Daddy Haine.
JCS: Yeah, did that.
MK: Are you still playing in that?
JCS: Three years ago I played in it but they won’t let me play B, play back court, so I have to always play the net. You know, my jump has kind of declined.
MK: What was your best vertical jump?
JCS: I never really got tested for it but in basketball I know I’d have to duck, to not hit my head on the rim, so that was over forty inches. I was better at a run than I was at a two-foot takeoff. Who knows what it was. It was good enough. It was always better in a match than it was in practice.
MK: Well, you’ve had an amazing career in volleyball and you’ve received a number of honors for it. In 1985 you were named an All-Time Great Volleyball Player by USA Volleyball and in ’92 you were inducted into the International Volleyball Hall of Fame. Outrigger awarded you its Winged “O” for outstanding volleyball athlete, and in 2000 you were inducted into the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame. Did you think any of this was possible when you were a boy graduating from high school and dreaming of what life would bring?
JCS: Well, none of that existed at the time so, yeah, there’s no way of even thinking about something like that. I’m sure like Clay, you know, he’ll get in (the Volleyball Hall of Fame) in the next few years so it might be on his mind that that might happen, but no. Even now it’s like … that was a long time ago. To get in now would be a lot tougher.
MK: Do you think it means more now than it did back then?
JCS: I don’t know. I mean, it’s like people trying to say who was the best ever in basketball? Michael Jordan or some of these other guys that are doing well now? Or you can go back in our time when there was Elgin Baylor, and Bob Cousy, and (Bill) Russell. Who was better? Well, as a basketball player and an athlete they probably weren’t as strong, as big, but does that make a difference?
MK: Apples and oranges, yeah.
JCS: Yeah.
MK: What life lessons has volleyball taught you?
JCS: I think for me, because volleyball kind of turned my life around, so it’s not that it was volleyball, it was just my involvement in it and progressing the way I did. Getting the opportunities to go to college and I attribute that to volleyball not basketball. Volleyball helped my basketball. I think volleyball, just taking advantage of … you know, not letting it go. Just sticking with it. Not flying. I didn’t do flying, I did volleyball, did basketball.
Where would I have been if I hadn’t done that? I’d have probably been a retired pilot like my uncle was, fishing somewhere. I’m thinking, look at what I’m doing now? I’d much rather be doing what I’m doing now than be retired somewhere. I think it’s just you gotta do what’s in your heart, you know? What you want to do, what you enjoy, and then stick with it. Do the best you can.
MK: What’s your proudest moment in volleyball?
JCS: Proudest. As a player … there’ve been several. It’s hard to pick one but I mentioned the World Masters, and beating the Russians in the Olympics.
MK: Let’s go back. We didn’t talk about the World Masters. After you’ve been winning all of these Masters titles you went with Outrigger and then with the Legends to the World Masters.
JCS: Right. Every four years they hold the World Masters in all events, and volleyball’s one of them. We started in ’95, was it, with Brisbane. We went with an Outrigger team and we won the forty-fives division and we got a silver in the forties division against the Russian team, pretty good team. Then it was every four years. I’m not sure why Outrigger didn’t continue to go. Might’ve been timing or finances or something, but … Legends picked it up and most of us went with the Legends.
MK: You were successful at the World Games?
JCS: Yeah, we either finished first or second. I think the worst we did was the last one in Turin, Italy. We finished third. A lot of the guys that we originally started with weren’t playing anymore and we didn’t have quite the same team, but still it was always real competitive. We were playing in a younger age group too, but we did win, probably one of the … There’s two events or competitions and other than the Russian win, we played a Russian team in the finals in … Where was it? Sydney. 2000, I’m not sure what it was. 2002 or something. They’re a really strong team. They had no problem beating us in the pool play, in the preliminaries and it’s double elimination so we come back and played them in the final. We won the first game. I guess they just didn’t think we were going to put up a fight. Then second game they came back and won. We were playing a final game to fifteen and we were down 12-9. Actually it was 13-9. We … scored some points, and blocked them, and a couple of side outs, and eventually winning 15-13. They were crushed. They couldn’t believe it. We had a good team and playing with that group against that competition and winning was something that I’ll remember. More so than the Russian match, which I don’t remember a whole lot of. Or the Fresno victory where I was a rookie. John Alstrom and I were opposite each other and I don’t remember a whole lot of that either, other than that we won.
MK: Who do you think was the best player you’ve ever played with or against?
JCS: There was a bunch of them. I knew that question would come up. Some of the foreign players, the best setter was Stan Gosciniak from Poland. He was on the Polish gold medal team, and their middle blocker, Ed Skorek. They both played in our IVA and they both played on my team with me the last year. For overall ability they were by far the best.
A player that was a super athlete for his size was Garth Pischke from Canada. Played with us with the Denver team. Just total skill-wise and he had a probably close to fifty-inch vertical jump. He would just come to the camp and never practice or anything. He was just a super player. I think he still, his daughter plays in the AVP and he coached the University of Manitoba for, he might still be the coach. I’m not sure.
There’s a bunch of guys. Even Outrigger guys. Charlie Jenkins, Dodge Parker, (Pete) Velasco. Those guys were all super players … Some of the guys on the national team, but older guys, were really good players. Larry Rundle for his size was one of the best players ever and he’s the one that got hurt.
MK: Is John Alstrom still playing?
JCS: Up to about four years ago, yeah. He’s had two knee replacements. Just had lunch with him a few weeks ago. He’s doing fine but he’s not playing anymore. Yeah, we could join the titanium Olympic team or something.
MK: Well, Jon, thank you for all of the contributions you’ve made to the sport of volleyball, on the national level as well as at Outrigger. You’ve shared your passion and love for the sport with all of us. It’s been a pleasure talking to you today. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
JCS: No, just thank you for doing this. This is going to be in the years to come a tremendous resource. I hope I’m around to watch it.
MK: I have one final question for you. What has membership in the Outrigger Canoe Club meant to you?
JCS: Well, you could probably answer that now yourself. It started here. The walk from Ala Moana to Outrigger. You never know what you do, how it’s going to change your life. Any little thing. Like for me, whether I was going to be a pilot, or an athlete, or a volleyball player. Any little thing. Of course the Club has been the focal point of everything I’ve done and have been and probably gonna be, so it’s tremendous, yeah.
MK: Thank you so much.
JCS: Thank you.
Jon C. Stanley – Athletic Accomplishments
Brigham Young University
1963-1964 Basketball Scholarship – Varsity letter
1964-1965 Basketball Scholarship – Varsity letter
1965 Academic All-American — Basketball
1964 All American 1st Team Volleyball
1965 All American 2nd Team Volleyball
1966 All American 1st Team Volleyball
1974 Player/Coach All American 2nd Team
U.S. National Team
1966 Player, 11th World Championships
1967 Player, Captain
1968 Player
1969-1971 Assistant Coach Women’s Team
1972 Player
Pan American Games
1967 Gold Medal, Most Valuable Player
1971 Assistant Coach for Women’s Volleyball Team
U.S. Olympic Volleyball Team
1968 7th Place
1972 Team USA didn’t qualify for medal round
James E. Sullivan Award for Outstanding U.S. Amateur Athlete
1968 Nominated
U.S. Air Force Volleyball
1969 Player/Coach, Armed Forces All Star Team, AAU National Champions
1970 Player/Coach, Armed Forces All Star Team
1971 Player/Coach, Armed Forces All Star Team
1972 Player/Coach, Armed Forces All Star Team
2001 Coach, Armed Forces All Star Team in Military Olympics, 4th Place
University of Hawaii
1967 Graduate Student
AAU National Championships
1968 Outrigger Canoe Club, Gold Medal, Men’s Open, All American 1st Team
1969 Player/Coach, Armed Forces All Star Team
International Volleyball Association
1975 Player/Coach, Los Angeles Stars, Won League Championship, Most Valuable Player,
Coach of the Year
1976 Player/Coach, Los Angeles Stars, 2nd Place, All-Star 1st team
1977 Player Coach, Denver Comets, Won Division Title, All Star 1st Team
1978 Player/Coach Denver Comets, All Star 1st Team
1979 Player/Coach, Denver Comets, All-Star 1st Team
Hawaii Coaching
1970-1972 Coach for Kalani High School Volleyball Team
1981 Hawaii Semi-Pro League, Coach Hawaii Crush
1990-2017 Hawaii Junior Volleyball Club, Coach/Director
1991 Chaminade Head Women’s Coach
1994 Hawaii Waves Professional Volleyball Team
1997-1998 Volunteer Assistant Coach University of Hawaii Men’s Team
2001-Present Coach, Kaiser High School Boys Volleyball Team
Outrigger Canoe Club Teams at USAVB National Championships
1968 2nd Place, Men Open, All American 1st Team
1980 1st, Place, Men Open, Coach/Player
1981 2nd, Place, Men 30, Coach/Player
1982 1st, Place, Men 35, Coach/Player, All American 1st Team
1982 1st Place, Men 45, Player of Year, All American 1st Team
1983 1st Place, Men 35, Most Valuable Player, All American 1st Team
1984 1st Place, Men 35, Co-Coach, Most Valuable Player, All American 1st Team
1985 2nd Place, Men 35, All American 1st Team
1986 1st Place, Men 35, Player/Coach, All American 1st Team
1987 4th Place, Men 35, All American 1st Team
1988 1st Place, Men 35, All American 1st Team
1989 2nd Place, Men 35
1990 2nd Place, Men 35, All American 2nd Team
1991 1st Place, Men 35, All American 1st Team
1991 1st Place, Men 40, Most Valuable Player, All American 1st Team
1992 1st Place, Men 35, All American 1st Team
1992 1st Place, Men 40, Most Valuable Player, All American 1st Team
1993 1st Place, Men 35, All American 2nd Team
1994 1st Place, Men 40, All American 2nd Team
1995 2nd Place, Men 35, Coach/Player, All American, 2nd Team
1995 3rd Place, Men 40, All American 1st Team
1996 2nd Place, Men 40, All American 1st Team
1997 5th Place, Men 40
1997 3rd Place, Men 45, All American 2nd Team
1998 4th Place, Men 35
1998 2nd Place, Men 40/Player/Coach
1999 1st Place, Men 35, All American 1st Team
1999 1st Place Men 50, Most Valuable Player, All American 1st team
2000 1st Place, Men 50, All American 1st Team
2001 4th Place, Men 50
2002 1st, Place, Men 50
2005 2nd Place, Men 45
2006 2nd Place, Men 45
Other USAVB National Championships
1967 1st Men Open, Fresno Volleyball Club, All American 1st Team
1971 1st, Armed Forces All-Star Team, Men Open, All-American 1st Team
1973 Player, Balboa Bay Club, Men’s Open, All American 2nd Team
1974 5th, Place, Player, BYU Club team, Men’s Open, All America 2nd Team
2003 1st, Men 60, Just Volleyball
2005 1st, Men 60, Quiksilver Legends
2006 1st, Men 60, Quiksilver Legends
2007 1st, Men 60, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st team
2007 1st, Men 65, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st Team, Most Valuable Player
2008 1st, Men 65, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st Team, Most Valuable Player
2009 1st, Men 65, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st Team
2010 1st, Men 65, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st Team
2011 1st, Men 65, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st Team
2012 1st, Men 65, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st Team, Most Valuable Player
2013 1st, Men 65, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st Team
2014 1st, Men 65, Quiksilver Legends, All American 1st Team
World Masters Volleyball Championships
1994 1st, Men 45, Quiksilver Legends
1994 1st, Men 50, Quiksilver Legends
1998 1st, Men 45, Quiksilver Legends
1998 2nd, Men 50, Quiksilver Legends
2002 1st, Men 50, Quiksilver Legends
2006 2nd, Men 50, Quiksilver Legends
2006 1st, Men 55, Quiksilver Legends
2009 1st, Men 55, Quiksilver Legends
2013 3rd, Men 60, Quiksilver Legends
Outrigger Canoe Club Sand Volleyball Championships
1974 Club Doubles Championship with Tom Haine
1974 4-Man Calcutta with Bill Heilbron, Marty Wilson, Kevin Cross
1997 Tom “Daddy” Haine Championship with Alan Lau, Kaione Scott, Alika Williams
State Sand Volleyball Championships
1978 Jon Stanley-Randy Shaw
Honors
1985 USVBA All Time Great Volleyball Player
1992 International Volleyball Hall of Fame
1992 U.S. Volleyball Hall of Fame
1998 Winged “O”, Outrigger Canoe Club
2000 Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame