Rolly Pulaski, locally famous as a football player, award-wining architect and a member of the Newport Harbor High Hall of Fame, is a proud father.
As we enjoyed lunch together, Pulaski, who loves all of his five kids equally, was gushing over the memories of his twin daughters, Kris and Kori, playing volleyball growing up in Newport Beach and at the University of Hawaii, where his fourth and fifth children played on back-to-back national championship teams in 1982 and ’83.
“It was a dream – they were so much fun to watch,” Rolly Pulaski, 90, said. “The women’s volleyball team was the most popular sport at the University of Hawaii, and they had football, too. (The Rainbow Wahine) played in (the former) Klum Gymnasium, a little gymnasium which held 2,000 people.”
Klum Gymnasium was referred to as “The Barn,” a hot, steamy gym packed to capacity for every match, and “when big teams would come in to play, like USC or Stanford, they would move the games to the arena in downtown (Honolulu), which could seat 15,000 fans,” said Pulaski, who loved visiting his twins in college. The arena is now called the Stan Sheriff Center.
In the early 1980s, on the scale of prestige and popularity, playing women’s volleyball at Hawaii was like playing football at Alabama under Nick Saban or men’s basketball at UCLA under John Wooden.
“It was such a great volleyball team because of Dave Shoji, who was an incredible coach,” Pulaski said. “He dominated women’s volleyball.”
Shoji coached the Rainbow Wahine from 1975 to 2017, winning national championships in 1979, ’82, ’83 and ’87.
With volleyball relatively new in the CIF Southern Section, starting in 1972 as a sanctioned sport, Newport Harbor faced Back Bay rival Corona del Mar in two CIF title matches in the decade, 1977 and ’79. The Sailors won their first championship in 1979 under Coach Charlie Brande, led by Kari Rush and the Pulaski twins.
Newport Harbor rallied to defeat Corona del Mar, 13-15, 15-3, 15-11, in the CIF 4-A (Division 1) championship match. Coach Bill Ashen’s Sea Kings were led by Marcie Wurts, Suzie Crone and Sue Corea.
“These girls all played on the same club team, so it was quite an interesting rivalry,” Brande said.
Rolly Pulaski, born in Los Angeles on Sept. 29, 1934, grew up on Balboa Island and swam across the bay as a youth to the Balboa Yacht Club, where his parents, Herman “Burt” and Frances, worked. He was a star quarterback at Newport Harbor High in the early 1950s, earned an athletic scholarship to USC and became one of the most important architects in Orange County history.
Pulaski, who started a multi-discipline architectural firm, won an American Institute of Architecture prize for his design on the corporate office of the Moulton Niguel Water District in Laguna Hills. He also worked on the Newport Beach Parks and Recreation Commission and Costa Mesa’s Special Land Use Task Force. He led the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce, Newport Beach Art Museum and Orange County Historical Society, and served as an instructor at Santa Ana College and guest judge at USC’s School of Architecture.
“I call it archi-torture,” quipped Pulaski, who was one of 150 freshmen in USC’s School of Architecture. The instructor told the freshmen class, “boys, they drop out of here like flies,” and Pulaski was one of 19 students in the class to graduate.
“I discovered right away that architecture and football were not compatible at all,” Pulaski said. “In (football) practice, I would bust my (rear). (The two disciplines) were very stressful.” Pulaski played mostly on USC Coach Jess Hill’s scout team, but suited up all four years.
Richard Dunn, a longtime sportswriter, writes the Dunn Deal column regularly for The Orange County Register’s weekly, The Coastal Current North.
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