On-the-Court Training : College volleyball: Stanley launches coaching careers, builds power at Pierce.

It seems only appropriate that a coach known as “Big Daddy” would run a volleyball program that has served as a cradle for coaches.

Ken (Big Daddy) Stanley has nurtured the Pierce College men’s volleyball program from its infancy into one of the most powerful in the state, and along the way he has helped produce a nest full of top-flight coaches.

His proteges include: John Price, who coaches the third-ranked Cal State Northridge men’s team; Dave Rubio, who led the Cal State Bakersfield women to the 1989 NCAA Division II national championship; and Blase Czerniakowski, who might become the Australian national team coach.

When his former players talk about Stanley, 52, they don’t economize their encomiums.

“A lot of (his teaching) is not volleyball at all,” said Rubio, a member of Stanley’s Pierce teams in the late ‘70s. “Through the vehicle of volleyball, he teaches you about life.”

If Pierce is the cradle of coaches, Cal State Northridge is the nursery because several of Stanley’s future coaches went on to play at Northridge under Walt Ker, who coached the Matadors from 1977 until Price took over in 1986. “The kids who came over to me were really good people,” said Ker, now the Northridge women’s coach. “I think that’s a reflection on the kind of guy he is. Some of my favorite players of all time came from his program.”

Pepperdine’s Marv Dunphy, one of the top coaches in the nation, never played for Stanley but attended Pierce in the early ‘70s and considers Stanley, a close friend and former teacher, a role model.

“He was someone I really looked up to,” said Dunphy, who coached the 1988 Olympic team to the gold medal and Pepperdine to two national championships. “I’ll find myself in certain situations coaching my team or dealing with a kid, and I’ll ask myself, ‘What would Ken Stanley do?’ ”

Not a bad measure of respect for a guy like Stanley, who never played competitive volleyball and began coaching the sport after he tired of coaching basketball.

Stanley brings a 15-4 team into a 1 p.m. Southern California regional match today against Palomar at Orange Coast College. At 7 tonight, the victor will play the winner of an earlier match between Orange Coast and El Camino for a berth in the state tournament, which will be held at Pierce on May 3-4.

In 1964, Stanley, a three-year basketball letterman and two-time captain at USC, came to Pierce as an assistant to then-basketball Coach Denny Crum, now the coach at Louisville. Stanley succeeded Crum and coached the basketball team for six seasons before going on a sabbatical to Mexico. Stanley then left basketball, having grown tired of the pressure.

Ken Stanley’s story could have ended there--as the answer to the basketball trivia question: Who is the only man to succeed Denny Crum as a head coach?--but Stanley’s desire to coach took him in another direction.

When some students wanted to form a volleyball team in 1976, Stanley launched the Pierce program. “He really has an idea and knows how to teach,” Rubio said. “He personifies what coaching is all about. He teaches people, not a sport.”

Stanley had to teach people because he took the job, in his words, “knowing zero” about the sport.

Bob Clarke, then Stanley’s assistant, would brief him before practice on what drills to run, and Stanley described himself as a “complete novice.”

Playing powerful Santa Monica teams, “They’d just pin our ears back for the first three or four years. It was frustrating. I accepted the fact that, hey, I’ve got a lot to learn. You can’t feel bad about it.”

Stanley, more of a straight shooter than Robin Hood, gained a reputation as a demanding coach, one who applied basketball-type conditioning drills to volleyball.

“I don’t feel tough,” Stanley said. “Honestly, when you don’t know exactly what to do, you can always rely on conditioning. I was going to make sure they were mentally and physically ready to play.”

Stanley became a regular at volleyball coaching clinics. “I’m one that’s not afraid to ask a question,” he said. “Probably most people would ask one time. I’d ask three times.”

Even in those early years, though, Pierce was competitive. Stanley was having fun and churning out players who would later become coaching stars. Then, the effects of Proposition 13 hit, leaving budgets denuded and the status of many programs uncertain.

“I was possibly a little burned out,” said Stanley, who took a hiatus from coaching in 1982. “It was a combination of things where I felt I needed a rest. We were in a budget crunch at the time, but I’m not blaming it on that.”

Stanley remained on the Pierce physical education faculty, but the volleyball program lay dormant during the 1983 and 1984 seasons while Stanley pursued outside business opportunities and took education classes at Cal Lutheran. He coached a club team on Saturdays but was drawn back to his former job.

“I came back and said I really miss coaching. I really miss the kids,” Stanley said. “I’ve just always felt real, real comfortable at Pierce.”

In the first era, Pierce volleyball was good; in the second, it has been great.

Pierce finished second in the state when Stanley returned in 1985 and won the state championship in 1986. Pierce added another state championship in 1988, finished second in 1989 and fourth in 1990. Stanley has a 121-28 record since 1985, and five of his former players are currently playing at four-year schools.

The quantum jump the Pierce volleyball program has taken is probably attributable to two factors: better players and better coaching. “He’s a much better volleyball coach today than he was when I played for him. He’s worked very hard to learn the game,” Northridge’s Price said. “Now he’s added knowledge and understanding of the game to getting the most out of his players.”

Stanley has gained national recognition. He will assist USC Coach Jim McLaughlin this summer with the U. S. Pan Am Games team and has also been a head coach in the Olympic Festival and head coach at the national elite camp.

“I spend a lot of time trying to be a better coach,” Stanley said of his program’s upsurge. “I think it’s a combination of that and us getting some good players and good kids who will do what I ask them to do.”

The local talent base broadened in the ‘80s as more high schools fielded boys’ volleyball teams, and Stanley had a particularly talented player waiting for him when he returned to coaching in 1985. At the time, Bob Samuelson was a relatively inexperienced player from Westchester High, but he went on to lead Pierce to the 1986 state championship and join the U.S. national team in 1989.

With increased talent have come higher expectations. Stanley does not measure success in terms of wins and losses--”I would rate being honest, being trustworthy, doing my very best, caring about my teammates above winning”--but Pierce regularly shoots for the state championship. In light of recent success, Stanley concedes, “I’m a little less tolerant of when the kids aren’t doing their best.”

Stanley’s record and the success of his proteges are ample evidence of his influence on the sport, but he also points with pride to his players who did not stay in volleyball.

“I can look at other guys who are not in coaching and doing well,” said Stanley, who counts teachers as well as a variety of other professionals among his alums. “All these kids came here with not much direction, and I feel that by being here, they were able to get their feet on the ground.”