THUNDER AND LIGHTNING : Former Chatsworth Teammates Tulino, Coffman Took a Smash Course in Volleyball and Now Hope a National Title Will Come to Pass at Northridge

They played soccer together as youngsters and basketball against each other in junior high school.

At Chatsworth High they became best buddies, so inseparable that their mothers sometimes had difficulty making a distinction between them at a distance.

They both earned volleyball scholarships to UC Santa Barbara, then left, almost a year apart. And now Neil Coffman and Raphael Tulino, for the third consecutive year, are together again on the Cal State Northridge men’s volleyball team--roommates no less, who share a common goal: that of winning a national championship in their senior seasons.

Others might say that winning a title is more of a dream. Northridge has not so much as advanced to the Final Four, let alone win it. Of course, the fourth-ranked Matadors (14-4) had not defeated UCLA, either, in 19 regular-season tries before last Saturday’s four-game victory.

Coffman says a national title is “achievable,” even though undefeated and top-ranked USC stands in the way, as does second-ranked Cal State Long Beach, the team Northridge will play tonight at 7:30 at the Long Beach gym.

“I don’t think before we could ever say that and truly believe it could happen,” Coffman added. “But with this group of players, I think it can.”

Coffman and Tulino have faced longer odds. As high school seniors, their Chatsworth team met a Palisades squad that was undefeated in 32 matches and had lost only one game all season going into the City Section 4-A Division final.

“We didn’t compare to them whatsoever,” Tulino said of the team that beat the Chancellors, 15-10, 15-13, 15-4, in the title match. “We were just rooting to get a game off them. That’s what our goal was. What we’re up against now is a lot different. Player for player, we’re just as talented as anyone else. There’s no gap in terms of that. We just have to get over a few things mentally.”

Which shouldn’t be any more difficult to conquer than the personal problems each player has faced since he was at Chatsworth.

Neither Coffman nor Tulino played volleyball until the 10th grade, and even then it wasn’t really by choice. They both went out for baseball but left the team for different reasons.

Coffman tried out for the baseball team even though he had a broken thumb and a fractured ankle--battle scars from basketball season. One day, while playing catch with another prospective player, a throw got by him.

“I turned and started hobbling over to the ball and the coach says, ‘Hey, you’ve got to run after that!’ ” Coffman recalled. “I had a cast and everything. So I walked over, grabbed the ball, walked over to him, handed it to him and said, ‘Thanks, I won’t be coming out anymore.’ ”

The transition from baseball diamond to volleyball diamond-in-the-rough was quick.

Coffman walked into the Chatsworth gym, where he saw Jeff Campbell, a senior who went on to play at Northridge and is now a Matador assistant. Campbell, who led Chatsworth to a City championship that season, showed Coffman how to hit a volleyball and found his protege a fast study.

Coffman spent the rest of the afternoon in the gym.

Similarly, Tulino went out for baseball, but he was cut. “I was kind of bummed, but I knew I wasn’t that good,” Tulino said. “I didn’t play very well.”

However, one coach’s extra baggage turned out to be another’s treasured cargo. Steve Berk, then Chatsworth’s boys’ volleyball coach, encouraged Tulino to try a new sport.

Tulino talked it over with his father Lou and they decided there would be other chances to play baseball. “My dad said, ‘Go ahead. You’ve got two more years to make the baseball team,’ ” Tulino recalled.

Instead, volleyball became a spring replacement.

“The other day we were home watching television and, I forget who he was, but some guy who hit like .240 and had 12 home runs and 60 RBIs, a mediocre player at best, signed for like $600,000,” Tulino said. “My dad turned and punched me in the arm and said, ‘Damn you, you played the wrong sport.’ ”

He was kidding, of course. And even if he wasn’t, there are plenty of people who would disagree.

Tulino, a 6-foot, 5-inch middle blocker, is perhaps Northridge’s most improved player. He is among the nation’s hitting leaders with a 44.7 percentage this season, and along with steady blocking on the front row, he provides the Matadors with quick-strike potential from the service line.

In 40 games, Tulino has 24 service aces, more than any other player in the nation. His jump serves provide Northridge’s thunder. Coffman, who spikes from the outside and back row, provides the lightning. A third-team All-American last season, the 6-3 outside hitter is second in the nation in kill average (6.84 a game).

Had their careers gone as planned, UC Santa Barbara, not Northridge, would have been the beneficiary.

When they played for Chatsworth, Coffman and Tulino twice traveled to Santa Barbara to take part in tournaments, and they liked what they saw. When UCSB Coach Ken Preston started recruiting them, he had an easy sell. But for the wrong reasons.

“Each time, when we drove up and stayed the night before the tournament, I just went out and enjoyed the Isle Vista atmosphere,” Coffman said.

Added Tulino: “I wanted to go up to Santa Barbara and party. That was the cool atmosphere. You party, drink a lot of beer, see all these chicks, then you go out there (to stay) and it’s like. . . . reality. Whoa, there’s more to college than this.”

Tulino lasted exactly one quarter of the 1986-87 school year. There is, he found, such a thing as too much fun. “I knew if I stayed there I wasn’t going to concentrate on anything,” Tulino said. “I think my (grade-point average) was something like 2.12.”

So he packed and left, advising Coffman of his decision a few days beforehand.

“I thought he was a little homesick and would go home for the weekend and come back,” Coffman said. “Little did I know that later I would do the same thing.”

Well, not quite the same thing.

Actually, Coffman was carted off by his father Paul.

“It was funny. . . . Well, actually it’s funny now. . . . but, basically, my dad showed up at the door and said, ‘Throw your stuff in the car, you’re coming home.’ ”

Coffman had spent five quarters in class at Santa Barbara, and although he planned to redshirt as a freshman anyway, never had the grades to be academically eligible for competition.

“Basically my parents were sick and tired of giving me money just to go buy beer, have fun, do whatever and not take school or life seriously,” Coffman said.

“I was lost. I had no idea what I was studying and no idea what I wanted to do.”

The situation seemed mildly familiar to Paul Coffman, a former tennis player who says he flunked out of UCLA before pulling his academic career back together in junior college and later graduating with a degree from USC.

“I wanted him to grow up, that’s basically what I had in mind,” Paul Coffman said. “It was time for all of us to recognize we made a mistake.”

Neil was given three choices:

Stay home, get a job and pay rent.

Stay in Santa Barbara, get a job, and start sending money home.

Stay home, go to school and make grades.

He chose the latter.

A short time later--at a party of all places--Coffman saw Tulino, who advised him how to enroll at Northridge and regain his eligibility.

Northridge Coach John Price, who unsuccessfully recruited both players at Chatsworth, had the players recruit him the second time around.

“They came to me,” Price said. “They were gifts. Nice gifts.”

And while the pair have helped Northridge join the nation’s elite volleyball programs, the benefits have been mutual.

“Who knows what happens if they stay at Santa Barbara,” Price said. “Tulino, I don’t know if he ever would have got a chance. He’s started for us for four years. In starting, you develop a lot faster than you would sitting the bench for two years and starting as a junior.”

As for Coffman, he says his grade-point average has not been below 3.0 since he enrolled at CSUN.

“I’m delighted for Neil, seeing the success he’s had,” Paul Coffman said. “I’ve always believed he was the one-in-a-thousand athlete who could accomplish whatever he set his mind to, but I think it is also clear that he was not the one-in-a-million athlete who could do it without commitment.”

For now, Coffman and Tulino are committed to winning a national championship. Currently, Northridge is a match in front of UCLA in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn.’s DeGroot Division.

The winner of the WIVA’s Wilson and DeGroot divisions will meet in a one-match playoff to determine the West’s automatic qualifier to the NCAA Final Four, May 3-4, in Hawaii.

“That would be the culmination of everything, for both of us, wouldn’t it?” Coffman said. “To come home from Hawaii with rings on our fingers.”