Coaching Keeps Ciarellis on the Sidelines

The Ciarellis of Huntington Beach are a family tailor-made to conduct a coaching clinic. Just tell them when and where, and they’ll sign up.

In fact, they’d probably race each other to the registration table, encouraging and coaching each other along the way.

The Ciarellis--parents Frank and Sue, son Tony and his wife, Stephanie, son Rocky and his wife, Cammy--are a competitive bunch to be sure.

Sports, friends say, have been key to the Ciarellis’ bond. Frank and Sue met through sports, as did Tony and Stephanie, and Rocky and Cammy.

In Huntington Beach, the Ciarellis are something of a high school sports institution. Frank and Sue Ciarelli say they have probably attended more Oiler sporting events than anyone.

Frank Ciarelli, now an engineer for the city of Huntington Beach, coached some of the nation’s top women’s softball teams from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. He coached the Orange Lionettes to a world softball championship in 1965, and then became one of chief organizers of the Huntington Beach recreation department.

His sons followed suit.

Last spring, Tony, a former football and track star at Huntington Beach, coached Edison High’s track and field team to a Sunset League championship. Rocky, a former Oiler basketball and volleyball star, coached his Huntington Beach High boys’ volleyball team to a Sunset League championship.

Sue, a national-class softball player in the early 1950s, instigated and coached some of the first recreational sports programs for girls in Huntington Beach. Cammy, a former All-American volleyball player at UCLA, is the assistant women’s volleyball coach at UC Irvine.

Only Stephanie, a one-time world-record holder in women’s weightlifting, has yet to coach, though she plans to start this fall with youth soccer.

The Ciarellis say the family’s interest in coaching simply is an extention of their overall love for sports. But friends say it’s more of a reflection of the kind of people they are: nurturing, supportive and genuinely concerned with helping others.

“That is the basis of the Ciarelli family,” said Liz Wilson, a longtime family friend. “They’re very, very close themselves, and they know how to instill that special quality in others.

“It’s been that way since the beginning.”

When Frank and Sue met in the mid-1940s, Huntington Beach was a sleepy, surfside community of about 3,000. Oil wells dotted the city, and a crowded day at the beach came only once a year, on the Fourth of July.

“Huntington Beach was just downtown, the pier and a lot of open space,” Sue Ciarelli said. “Everybody knew everybody, it was a neat time.”

In 1946, Frank Ciarelli was a star football player at Huntington Beach High School. As a receiver and a kicker, Ciarelli contributed heavily to the Oilers’ 1946 Sunset League championship, the third of only five league football titles the school has won.

“Frank won a few games for us,” said quarterback Harlo LeBard, who retired last year after 31 years of teaching at Huntington Beach.

“Frank caught quite a few of my passes he probably shouldn’t have caught. He had good athletic sense, being in the right place at the right time.”

Although Sue Ciarelli, then Sue Smith, was three years younger than Frank, they started dating when she was a sophomore.

Unlike most girls at the time, Sue, daughter of a Texas rodeo rider, was athletic and extremely competitive, playing sandlot baseball with the boys before school because athletic options for girls, she said, were dreary.

“In those days, they let us play basketball, but it was half-court, and you were only allowed to dribble once then shoot or pass,” she said. “And there wasn’t any trap, that was too hard on a woman. They let us play field hockey, which was kind of amazing because they wouldn’t let us do track or play full-court basketball, but they’d let us run on a 100-yard long field with sticks in our hands.

“Mostly, though, girls’ sports were limited to play days. We’d all play then go and have punch and cookies.”

Wanting more, Sue signed up for the Buena Park Lynx, a triple-A level women’s softball team. Playing first base, she made their double-A affiliate, the Kittens, and played with eventual Orange County Hall of Fame member, Carol Spanks.

When the Kittens’ coach quit a year later, Sue asked Frank to coach. The team won a Southern California championship the next year, then Frank moved up to coach the Lynx.

Said Sue: “After that, my softball career was put on hold. I started having kids.”

Paula, now 37, came first. Like her mother, she was a talented athlete who, aside from being the No. 1 singles player on the Oilers’ tennis team, mostly had to settle for play days and punch.

Tony, now 35, became a Times’ All-County defensive back at Huntington Beach, and placed fourth in the state shotput in 1972 at Oroville.

It was there Tony met Stephanie, who was cheerleading for Santa Ana. Three years later, they married and moved to Hawaii.

Tony competed on Hawaii’s track team, throwing the javelin, and Stephanie competed in weightlifting, setting a world record in 1976 for the 114-pound division, with a 225-pound squat.

Rocky, who played volleyball at Cal State Long Beach, and Cammy, who after UCLA played professionally in Italy for two years, competed in the United States Volleyball Assn. national championships in Dayton, Ohio, two weeks ago.

Rocky, playing in the men’s 30-and-over division, led his team to the title, and was named most valuable player. Cammy, playing on the club level, also helped her team win a national title.

Rocky and Cammy aren’t the only Ciarellis competing on a national level, though.

Saturday, Allison Ciarelli, 10, and Maryn Ciarelli, 8, daughters of Tony and Stephanie, competed in The Athletics Congress age-group track and field national championships at Berkeley. Allison won the national championship in the high jump.

This makes all the Ciarellis happy, of course, but grandmother Ciarelli most of all.

“With all the girls in high school competing in full-court basketball, track and everything, it’s so great to see,” Sue Ciarelli said. “And though my granddaughters may not choose to do sports when they get older, at least they’ll have the opportunities.”