That '60s Show Continues to Grow Legacy of UCLA Volleyball

LOS ANGELES -- The first thing UCLA women's volleyball coach Andy Banachowski did after informing his players that he was retiring after 43 seasons was seek out his former college coach. Luckily, that man's office is only three doors down.

"I was totally surprised," says UCLA men's volleyball coach Al Scates, pictured above right (Andy is above left). "Andy still has hair. I always thought I'd be the one to go first."

On any other campus Banachowski, 64, would be the dean of the athletics department. The first and only women's volleyball coach in Bruins history, Banachowski has coached the Bruins to six national championships while mentoring such legends as Natalie Williams and Holly McPeak. In Westwood, however, Banachowski is not only not the longest-tenured coach on staff; he's the junior head coach among the school's respective volleyball programs.

Scates, 70, is in the midst of his 48th season with the Bruins' men's volleyball team. No other Division I coach comes close in terms of tenure (that whippersnapper at Penn State, Joe Paterno, has only been the head football coach 45 years). Only Anson Dorrance, the women's soccer coach at North Carolina, has won more national titles than Scates' 19. And to judge from his robust health and his zeal for the job, Scates isn't going anywhere.

"I'd like to win 20 [national championships]," says Scates, whose last came in 2006, "but we're not off to a great start this season."

"I was an assistant coach for Al and I was thinking of going to law school," says Denny Cline, who was also an All-American under Scates. "He said, 'Denny, can't you just hang on another three or four years? I'll retire and you can replace me.' That was in 1984."

Cline went to law school.

Eight football coaches and the same number of basketball coaches have led the Bruins since Scates was hired in 1963. Nine U.S. presidents have held office. The Beach Boys, who provided the soundtrack for the southern California beach culture where scores of Scates' and Banachowski's future players would develop, had just released their first album. Volleyball was barely an intercollegiate sport for men -- it did not exist for women.

"I wasn't paid anything in the beginning," recalls Scates, who had played two seasons for the Bruins and continued to play for them as a graduate student head coach. "My budget for the year was $100."

Two years later in 1965, Banachowski, a member of the Bruin volleyball team who worked in the school's intramurals department, was asked to assist in the formation of a fledgling woman's program. "I said, 'Sure'," says Banachowski. "I was shocked when I reported to the first practice and discovered that I was the only man. I walked back to the intramurals office and said, 'OK, so who's in charge of this?' "

Never mind UCLA athletics. Scates and Banachowski are two of the longest-tenured employees of the state of California (UCLA is a state school, after all). It almost never was.


The first time Scates tried out for a volleyball team, as a student at Santa Monica City College, he was cut within 15 minutes. "I played football," says Scates, who was 6-2 and a terrific all-around athlete, "and our coach told the football players to try out."

Scates, who grew up in nearby Torrance, did enjoy volleyball, though. "There was no high school volleyball at the time," says Scates. "I found out that everyone learned how to play at the beach at State Beach in Santa Monica State Park (you'd know it as the setting for Baywatch). So that's where I spent my summer."

There are worse places to serve an apprenticeship.

Scates played a few seasons at UCLA before earning a Bachelor's degree in physical education in 1961 and a Master's in '62. The following year, at the age of 22 and with a new bride -- Al and Sue Scates celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary this week (the man is all about tenure) -- Scates accepted the position at his alma mater. He pulled over to the side of the road and used a pay phone to call his athletic director.

"I was coaching football -- I'd brought [then UCLA coach] Red Sanders' single-wing offense to our high school but I had designs on playing volleyball on the national team," says Scates. "I definitely took a pay cut."

In fact it would be decades before Scates earned more income as the greatest volleyball coach in America than he did as a P.E. teacher for the Beverly Hills school district, where he worked for 32 years. "I taught eight classes a day in Beverly Hills," says Scates, "before heading over to UCLA for practice. Luckily, I could always get by on four hours' sleep."

In Scates' second season with the Bruins, a sophomore who had been tearing up the court at his Tau Delta Tau fraternity house tried out. "I barely made the team," says Banachowski, who had grown up in the Bay Area. "Al was young. He was still playing with us on the squad at the same time."

Non-revenue varsity athletics were still in the dark ages. "There was barely any money for basketball and we were winning national championships," recalls Keith Erickson, who played both basketball and volleyball for the Bruins. "Al had to find volleyballs, scrounge for uniforms. You name it."

In those early years Scates' squads outfitted themselves with the hand-me-down basketball uniforms of the previous season's Bruin hoops squad. Mind you, this is UCLA in the mid-1960s. Jerseys worn by Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard that likely should have been hanging at the Basketball Hall of Fame, were instead hanging off the shoulders of Banachowski, Scates and others.

"Coach Wooden was very good to us," says Scates of the Wizard of Westwood. John Wooden, by the way, coached 27 seasons and won 10 national titles with the Bruins. And yet Scates is referred to as "the other Wizard of Westwood."

"Al Scates!" the legendary Jim Murray once wrote. "The man who is to volleyball what Wooden was to basketball ... Napoleon to artillery. All you can do in any sport is win. Nobody does that any better in his sport than Al Scates."

All you can do is win. Al Scates' all-time record is 1,186-257 (.822). Banachowski, who has coached his final match (women's volleyball is a fall sport), will retire in June with a 1,106-301 (.786) mark. Few coaches in any sport ever win more than 75 percent of their games.

"I bought John Wooden's first book from the student store," says Scates as he swivels in his office chair to locate the first edition copy of Practical Modern Basketball within arm's reach. "In the first chapter of his book you will learn everything you need to know about coaching."

Whereas Wooden is renowned for his Pyramid of Success, Scates is notorious for his blue curtain (yes, this Wizard lurks behind a curtain). It is behind the blue curtain that the first and second teams practice under Scates' watchful eye. Beyond the curtain the rest of the players practice, striving to gain the notice of an assistant who will recommend them to Scates. Players can spend an entire college career without gaining access behind the blue curtain. Others can lose that favor -- never to be regained -- after one lackadaisical practice.

It is Darwinian.

"It's all about intrinsic motivation," says Scates, who initiated the blue curtain as a practical matter when other sports such as gymnastics and wrestling shared the gym for practice. Those days are gone but the curtain remains. "One of the best players I ever had, I cut as a freshman."

Denny Cline. Although not as well-known to casual sports fans as Karch Kiraly, Sinjin Smith or Kent Steffes (all former Bruins), Cline helped lead the Bruins to three NCAA titles in the mid-1970s. But only after, like Scates, he was cut from the first college volleyball team for which he tried out.

"I was a 'browner', one of the guys who practiced outside the blue curtain, my freshman year," recalls Cline. "One day coach Scates approached me and said, 'Denny, you don't have to come to practice anymore.' "

"But Coach," replied Cline, "I like to practice."

Shrewdly, Cline remained involved by keeping statistics. Scates has always been ahead of the curve in his sport (he wrote his own coaching book, Winning Volleyball, in the early '70s), using three statisticians per match and reviewing film as ardently as any Bill Parcells disciple.

"When I played with the national team," recalls Cline, who was an assistant under Scates for seven years, "it didn't take long for me to realize that, having played for Al, I knew more volleyball than the men who were coaching me. Our UCLA team was better. Don't get me wrong: the U.S. team had more talent, but our UCLA team had Al."

Scates is a guru but he is also a drill sergeant. When he was a boy his father, a World War II veteran, would pay the local bullies a nickel to spar with his son. That toughness extends to his signature players who, Scates says, "are the kind of guys you wouldn't want to talk to if they lost."

As gentle as Scates has been with the generations of elementary school students he has taught, he can be downright scary to a college athlete. Cline recalls running into a former Bruin when he and Scates were at a tournament. "I asked him if he'd gone over and said 'Hi' to Al," says Cline. "He was like, 'I wasn't sure if I could.' "

And yet beyond the rectangular borders of a volleyball court, Scates is not Wooden, which is to say that he is not wooden in governing his players. "I had one rule in 1967 about long hair," he kids, "and one of my best players transferred to Cal. After that, no more rules."

Contrast that with Banachowski, who before each season hands out a rule book to his players that is meticulous in its attention to detail. "Stuff like the length of our socks, no visible tattoos, or even that tags can't be showing," junior Dicey McGraw says. "At first, it seems a little strange, but now when we see a girl on an opposing team with a tag hanging out we're like, 'Oh, that's tacky.' "


"Keith Erickson was a better volleyball player than he was a basketball player," says Scates, and that is saying something considering that Erickson started on a pair of Bruin national championship teams and played 13 seasons in the NBA. Then again, Erickson was a member of the 1964 U.S. Olympic volleyball team, not the basketball team.

"Al's right," says Erickson, who grew up in El Segundo, Calif., and lives in Santa Monica. "That was my sport."

The year was 1964. UCLA had just finished 30-0 to win the NCAA basketball championship. Coach Wooden had explicitly ordered Erickson, who would be his team captain the following season, not to play volleyball. Scates, however, was about to take his team to play the dominant volleyball program, Santa Monica City College -- the same school that had cut Scates -- and, well, Keith Erickson was the best volleyball player on campus. Besides, it was Erickson who approached Scates begging to play.

"Keith approached me," recalls Scates. "He had his uniform from the previous year (which, of course, was also his basketball uniform). 'Coach, can I play?' "

"Al and I were friends from down at the beach," Erickson says. "I didn't want to miss that opportunity. It was a fun deal. Besides, Al was our age and we were better players than he was. He couldn't tell us what to do."

Scates, young, ambitious and a bit reckless, took Erickson with him without informing Wooden. "In fact, the guy that they dropped from the squad in order that I could go was Andy Banachowski," Erickson says. "And he was the team captain."

UCLA won the match. Scates persuaded the student newspaper reporter who had covered the event to keep mum about Erickson. The following week, however, a guilt-racked Scates walked into the office of Bruins athletic director J.D. Morgan and confessed.

"Does Coach Wooden know about this?" Morgan, thoroughly agitated, asked.

"No," said Scates.

"Well, he isn't going to like it when he finds out."

Right there, on the spot, Al Scates, age 25, wrote his letter of resignation. Morgan accepted it.

"It was no great financial loss," he recalls. "I was making $600 a year. Put that in perspective, I'd been making $1,000 as an assistant high school football coach."

A day or two later Morgan phoned Scates. Told him that he'd had a change of heart. Invited him back to UCLA.

"For years I thought it was about J.D. changing his mind," says Scates. "One day, years later, I had breakfast with Coach Wooden. He said, 'Oh, no. When J.D. showed me the letter, I tore it up.' "


Andy Banachowski graduated in 1968 and, as he puts it, "spent two years back home in San Mateo moping around." He returned to Westwood in 1970, coaching the women, serving as Scates' assistant for six seasons, and working at the student rec center, the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center. "I was a lifeguard among other duties at the rec center," recalls Scates. "For 10 years I showed up to work each day in a bathing suit. How can you beat that?"

While not as dominant as Scates, Banachowski has won six national championships (three NCAA and another three before the NCAA oversaw women's athletics). He was the first women's volleyball coach to be inducted into the sport's Hall of Fame (he skipped the induction ceremonies in favor of a match he was coaching). One measure of his longevity is the Zartman family: he coached Charleen "Sharkie" Zartman in the early 1970s and her daughter, Chrissie Zartman, earlier this decade.

"It was so long ago," says Sharkie, whose jersey No. 23 was retired (and then unretired so that Chrissie could don it). "We were called 'the Dolls' We had one uniform that was a turtleneck. And since Andy was young I'm sure a lot of us probably had a crush on him from time to time."

Whereas now Banachowski who, like Scates, is a grandfather, is viewed much differently by his players. Although every bit as adored. A couple of weeks ago he pulled his team out of a weightlifting session and corralled them in the locker room. Quickly, he informed them that he was retiring effective June 30.

"Is there any way that I can convince you to stay?" begged McGraw, tears streaming down her face.

"No," Banachowski said, who then went to seek out his mentor and colleague.

"I just thought Andy would be there forever," Zartman says.

There is Shangri-La and then there is UCLA, which is basically that timeless paradise except with more restricted parking. Andy Banachowski is retiring because, as he explains, "With 40 years in I earn 'X' if I work and I earn 'X' if I don't work."

The same rule holds for Scates. But he already has his Beverly Hills school district pension. Most mornings he is either on the golf course or the tennis court. He spends his afternoons on what may be the most sublime campus in America, enveloped by idyllic weather and coaching a sport where it never rains, equipment malfunctions are minimal, and where the volleyball athletes, men and women, are all more attractive than the cast of Gossip Girl or Melrose Place.

"There's no reason to leave," says Erickson. "It's a great job in a great place with great people. It's fabulous."

Besides, 20 national championships has a much nicer ring to it than 19. Then the "Other Wizard of Westwood" could retire with exactly double the number of those won by the man who saved his job all those years ago.