Popko: Father of High School Volleyball : Mentor: He has influenced many athletes who went on to lucrative professional careers.

By his own admission, Gene Popko was never a great volleyball player or coach.

He never won an Olympic gold medal, as Karch Kiraly did with the U.S. volleyball team in 1984 and ’88. He never won an NCAA title, as Tim Hovland did with USC in 1980. And he was never named most valuable player of the professional beach tour, as Randy Stoklos was in 1988 and ’89.

But through his behind-the-scenes work, Popko helped make it possible for each of those players and countless others to develop their skills and cash in on volleyball’s meteoric rise in popularity.

“He’s a legend in his own time,” said Pete Field, Popko’s old beach buddy and coaching partner at Inglewood High.

Twenty years ago, Popko and Field came up with the idea to organize the first league for high school boys’ volleyball in Southern California, taking the first step toward CIF sanctioning of the sport.

Two years prior to that, in 1969, Popko promoted and held the first novice beach volleyball tournament, which provided a training ground for many young and inexperienced players.

Kiraly, Hovland and Stoklos all played in Popko’s novice tournaments in Playa del Rey as teen-agers. Kiraly, considered among the best players in the world, has fond memories of coming down from Santa Barbara with his father to play in the novices.

“Gene’s tournaments were some of the first beach tournaments my dad and I played in,” Kiraly said last weekend at the Manhattan Beach Open, which he won with partner Kent Steffes. “They were always fun events where you just played your brains out. It was a great experience. Tournaments like that really helped me become a better player.”

Stoklos, the second-leading open winner in beach volleyball history, also credits Popko’s tournaments for advancing his career.

“That’s where I started playing beach volleyball when I was a kid,” said Stoklos, a native of Pacific Palisades. “It was a great learning experience. Gene’s tournaments were always a class act. I remember I was only 15, 16 years old and Gene treated me like I was a great player. He always respected all the players. He’s one of the people I’d bring up as an influence in my volleyball career.”

Needless to say, Popko has touched many lives through his involvement in volleyball, both as a coach and tournament director. He has been treasurer of the California Beach Volleyball Assn. for 15 years.

At 51, he lives comfortably with his wife of six years, Karen, and their two children--son T. K., 4, and daughter Kerry Jean, 18 months. The family resides in a stylish house in Playa del Rey, the product, Popko says, of real estate investments he has made through his connections in volleyball.

“I couldn’t afford this on a teacher’s salary,” he said.

However, it was as a physical education teacher and coach at Inglewood High where Popko first applied the administrative abilities that made him a driving force in exposing many young Southern Californians to volleyball.

Today, about 180 CIF-Southern Section schools field teams in boys’ volleyball, according to a section spokesman, and scores of wanna-be Kiralys and Stokloses are learning the ropes of the beach game in novice tournaments.

There was no such thing as interscholastic volleyball when Popko started the Inglewood volleyball club in 1969. A few high schools, most notably the powerful Palisades team coached by Howard Enstedt, competed in United States Volleyball Assn. tournaments, but there was no organized competition between high schools. Of course, not many schools had volleyball teams at the time.

Popko, who will begin his 28th year at Inglewood this fall, knew there was interest in volleyball because of the great success of the school’s intramural program, which he directed with his customary enthusiasm.

“Everything started with the intramural sports program,” he said. “We had this nice program going and the kids wanted to play other schools. That’s how we formed our own club.”

With Field, a rated beach player and tournament director, serving as the primary coach, Inglewood competed on a club level for four years (1970-73). Field didn’t teach at Inglewood and was recruited off the beach by Popko to coach the team.

“It was a good situation,” Field said. “Gene recruited these kids to come out for the team, and I ran the program.”

Now a teacher at Leuzinger and the boys’ volleyball coach at Chadwick, Field, 50, was one of the first to coach the quick-setting offensive system employed by teams from the Orient. Field learned the techniques from Moo Park, a one-time coach of the Korean national team who assisted in establishing the volleyball program at Pepperdine University.

Inglewood’s practices averaged three hours a night, and it wasn’t long before other coaches recognized the success of Field’s methods. A volleyball clinic conducted by Field and Popko at Inglewood in 1970 drew 50 coaches and more than 200 players.

Still, it took time for Inglewood to catch up with the more experienced programs at beach schools.

The 1971 club season was highlighted by Palisades sending two teams to the inaugural Inglewood Invitational tournament, billed by Popko as the “national championship” of high school volleyball. Palisades took first and second.

After the 1970-71 school year, Field and Popko decided the time was right to try and organize a league. The way Popko remembers it, the idea was first tossed around while he and Field were playing volleyball at Manhattan Beach.

“We were having a beer down at the beach at Rosecrans (Avenue), and Pete basically said to me, ‘Let’s form this thing. I like your kids, I like working with them. Let’s get some competition for them.’ ”

Popko sent letters to other schools, and the response was more than he had hoped for.

“All I wanted was to get a league of six teams,” he said. “When the replies came back, I couldn’t believe it. The big thing was that people in Orange County started to show interest. What that did was open everything up. We didn’t expect to have it that far down. We just expected to have a little neighborhood thing.”

The first Southern California High School Volleyball Assn. was composed of 12 schools encompassing an area that stretched from Palisades in the north to Laguna Beach in the south. Competition began in the spring of 1972. The other original members were Santa Monica, University of West L.A., Loyola, Aviation, Serra, Mira Costa, Torrance, Corona del Mar, Newport Harbor and Inglewood.

Mike Cook, who has coached the powerful Mira Costa boys’ volleyball program since 1980, was a teacher at Serra when he was contacted by Popko. Cook’s main involvement in volleyball at the time was as a director of beach tournaments at Marine Street in Manhattan Beach.

“I got a call from Gene Popko, and that’s the way we got the whole thing off the ground,” Cook said. “He got a hold of me and a few other teachers in the area that knew about volleyball. The first meeting was at Gene’s house on the beach in Playa del Rey.”

Other coaches who headed fledgling South Bay programs were Mike Maurry at Aviation, Duane Williamson at Mira Costa and Bob Williams at Torrance.

The association’s first season ended with Mira Costa defeating Palisades in the second annual Inglewood Invitational. Mira Costa’s Ted Dodd, the older brother of beach volleyball standout Mike Dodd, and Inglewood’s Steve Barrett were named tournament co-MVPs. Both later played for Pepperdine.

“The first volleyball scholarships came out of our association,” Popko said. “That’s something I’m really proud of.”

With the interest in volleyball growing by leaps and bounds, the association expanded to 40 teams and five leagues in 1973. At that point, it was apparent the next logical step for boys’ volleyball would be to obtain sanctioning from the CIF-Southern Section.

“There were so many teams that wanted to play,” said Cook, who coached Serra from 1972 to ’79 and guided the Cavaliers to four consecutive league titles from 1974 to ’77. “It got too big for Gene to run out of Inglewood High.”

After the association’s second season ended in 1973, Popko, who had been corresponding with Southern Section Commissioner Ken Fagans, met with the CIF executive committee to discuss the possibility of boys’ volleyball becoming a sanctioned sport.

Accompanied by Cook, Popko was nervous as he began to address a room full of high school administrators.

“I was shaking,” he said. “I came in there with piles of paper and handed them out to the principals. I started talking and some guy got up and said, ‘Why do we have to listen to this? We have more important business to do than listen to this young guy talk about volleyball.’ ”

At that point, Popko thought he had been shot down.

“Then the guy says, ‘Let’s have a vote now and get this thing over with.’ Without me saying a word, he goes, ‘Who doesn’t like volleyball, raise your hand. OK, who wants volleyball?’ Everybody raised their hands. Just like that, it was a sport.”

Now competing under the auspices of the Southern Section, boys’ volleyball grew to 75 teams competing in 13 leagues in 1974.

And, appropriately enough, Inglewood enjoyed its best season that year. Led by Brent Peterson and Wally Transowski, the Sentinels won their own tournament for the first and only time--beating Palisades in the final--and were runners-up to Santa Monica for the first Southern Section title.

Just as quickly as it had started, however, the golden era of volleyball at Inglewood High ended. The mid-70s were a time of racial upheaval for the city, as whites moved out and were replaced by a black majority. One of the biggest casualties of “white flight” was Popko’s volleyball program. It nearly wiped out his team in 1975.

“We had a great team coming back of all sophomores and juniors,” Popko recalled. “The (junior varsity players) were league champs and they were all big. It was the biggest team I ever had. Out of 16 guys, I only had one kid come back.”

Inglewood suffered through a dismal season that year, but it wasn’t long before Popko had the Sentinels in contention again. Field had since moved on, becoming the men’s and women’s volleyball coach at Loyola Marymount.

Although Inglewood never again experienced the success it did in the early 1970s, the Sentinels were competitive with an ethnically diverse unit.

“The team used to call themselves the mixed nuts,” Popko said. “We had blacks, whites, Latinos, everything. I used to call us the best black team in the nation, and we were. We might have one white kid or one Samoan, but mostly the teams were black.”

Inglewood won its last league volleyball title in 1977. Popko, as he had with Field, usually got a walk-on coach with a strong background in volleyball to work directly with the team, such as former Westchester High standout Phil Stutzel.

Through it all, though, Popko continued to run the Inglewood Invitational Tournament, which annually drew many of the top teams and players in Southern California. Some of the more well-known players who won the tournament’s MVP award were Mike Dodd of Mira Costa in 1975, Westchester star Hovland in 1976, Palisades’ Stoklos in 1978 and Rudy Dvorak of Laguna Beach in 1982.

The tournament was renamed the Gene Popko Inglewood Invitational in 1984, but survived only one more season. After a series of conflicts with former Inglewood Principal Lawrence Freeman, Popko resigned as coach after the 1985 season and turned his tournament over to Mira Costa and Redondo the following school year.

“I called (Mira Costa Coach) Mike Cook and said, ‘It’s yours,’ ” Popko said. “Then I went in my office and cried.”

A Los Angeles native, Popko grew up a few blocks from Morningside High in Inglewood. But because his family had an L.A. address, he attended Washington High, where he was a two-year varsity letterman in cross-country, basketball and track.

His first exposure to volleyball came as a freshman at El Camino College.

Cut from the basketball team by former Coach George Stanich, the 5-foot-9 Popko planned to run track in the spring. That is, until he grew interested in the informal volleyball matches played on El Camino’s outdoor courts.

“I used to go out there and watch them pump the volleyball around while I ate my lunch,” Popko said. “I’d go out there every day.”

One day, one of the players invited him to join in. That was all it took.

“After that, volleyball became my whole life,” Popko said. “I just liked it.”

By his last year at El Camino, he had improved enough as a player to place second in a two-man intramural tournament.

Ankle injuries forced Popko to give up his dream of playing basketball for UC Santa Barbara, but again volleyball was there to fill the void. Through his involvement in the school’s intramural program, he opened the UC Santa Barbara gym two nights a week for volleyball.

“I was known as the coach at Santa Barbara, which didn’t have a team back then,” Popko said. “I helped people out. There were plenty of people better than me, but I tried to teach the ones who didn’t know how to play.”

One of the players Popko took under his wing was Henry Bergman, a student at Santa Barbara High who used to ride his bicycle to the university to play volleyball.

Years later, Popko was watching a match in the Manhattan Beach Open when he thought he recognized one of the players.

“I knew I had seen him before,” Popko said. “But before I got a word out to ask who he was, he saw me and said, ‘Popko! Where have you been? You started me out in this stuff.’ He recognized me and he hugged me.”

The player was Bergman, one of the leading beach players of his era. He won the Manhattan Beach Open in 1968 with Larry Rundle and again in 1970 with the legendary Ron Von Hagan.

After graduating from Santa Barbara in 1963, Popko moved back to the South Bay and settled in Manhattan Beach. He began his teaching and coaching career at Inglewood--he coached the Sentinel track team in 1965-66--and spent much of his free time playing volleyball.

After moving to Playa del Rey in 1969, Popko got the idea to start his own beach tournaments in a new classification, novice. Before then, all beach tournaments were contested with players who had AAA, AA, A or B ratings.

“I needed money,” he said. “I put flyers out and nailed them up and down the beach. I charged $5 a team, which was a dollar more than most of the other tournaments.

“My idea was to give people who weren’t accomplished players a chance to enter a tournament without getting blown out. My whole thing was you couldn’t be rated and play in this tournament. We got 64 teams the first year. The next year, (Playa del Rey) let me have three tournaments. I packed them all and it really started to pick up.”

Popko said one of the attractions of his tournaments was that he solicited prizes from local businesses to give to the winners of his tournaments. Often times, he said, his prizes exceeded those given winners of prestigious beach tournaments.

As an example, Popko brought up John Menges, who won one of the first novice tournaments. Menges’ younger brother, Jim, was one of great beach players and a five-time winner of the Manhattan Beach Open.

“John, an unrated player, won four dinners at leading restaurants in town and other stuff,” Popko said. “Jim won the Manhattan Beach Open and all he got was a trophy and a handshake.”

Popko’s tournaments were popular years ago with older players for another reason--the beer flowed from sunup to sundown.

“They could go out there and play, drink all day and throw up on the court,” Field said. “Then they’d come back the next day and do it all over again.”

Popko still runs beach tournaments in Playa del Rey, where last year he expanded the number of permanent volleyball courts to 21, one more than in Manhattan Beach.

“I wanted to have the most permanent beach courts in one location,” he said. “Manhattan used to have the most.”

The number of courts, though, pale in comparison to the number of players Popko has come in contact with over the years. It was something he had taken for granted until he watched the U.S. men’s volleyball team, led by Kiraly and featuring several other Southern Californians, win the gold medal at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea.

“It was my greatest joy,” he said.