Harvard Volleyball Coach Accepts Post in Bay Area

Maybe Mark Zalin had seen one too many traffic jams or choked for the last time on San Fernando Valley smog.

Whatever it was, Zalin reached the breaking point this week when he resigned his job as the Harvard-Westlake High volleyball coach to take a position with a school district in Marin County, just north of San Francisco.

Zalin, 35, announced his resignation Monday and will assume his new post as director of physical education for the Kentfield School District on Aug. 29. No replacement has been named at Harvard, but Zalin has recommended Jess Quiroz, his assistant for the past six years, as his successor.

In nine seasons as the Harvard volleyball coach, Zalin transformed a moribund program into a Southern Section power, capping his tenure with a 3-A Division championship last spring.

Harvard won 68 consecutive league matches and six consecutive league titles in Zalin’s final six seasons as coach. Harvard posted a 116-28 record under Zalin.

Despite that success, the chance to leave Los Angeles proved too tempting for Zalin to resist.

“We have two small children and it’s getting hard to raise them in L.A.,” he said. “The smog, the heat, and the traffic . . . L.A. is the survival of the fittest. We’re really fit, but it’s not fair to the youngsters. Harvard has been a wonderful experience and I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.”

Zalin, who grew up in the area and attended Birmingham High, accepted a job at Harvard in 1980 as the varsity baseball coach. Unbeknown to him, the school already had a varsity baseball coach--Jim Brink, the school’s current coach.

“Our headmaster at the time didn’t follow sports very well,” Zalin explained.

After two seasons as an assistant baseball coach, Zalin was given the volleyball job, largely by default. He had played volleyball in college at UC Santa Barbara and had coached a girls’ team at a private school in Santa Barbara.

“Volleyball was the outcast sport,” he said. “The program wasn’t doing well and only the surfer beach kids were playing. The school figured that I was one of them. I guess I was the only one who could relate to them, so they fed me to the lions.”

Zalin has made volleyball a popular sport on campus. He also has shown the school that participation on the team has its rewards--10 Harvard graduates currently are playing at NCAA Division I colleges, including four at Stanford.

The union of good volleyball players with high academic standards is Zalin’s proudest achievement at the school.

“You have to have the grades to get into Harvard,” he said. “Nobody cuts any corners. I really wanted that championship, but I’m most proud of the fact that we did it without cheating. There’s no recruiting. We won with the kids who were in the school.”