Ex-Coach Engen Headed to Volleyball Hall of Fame : Honors: Santa Ana native who played at UCLA will be inducted tonight in Holyoke, Mass.

Rolf Engen, former Laguna Beach High School assistant volleyball coach and founder of the UCLA men’s club team in 1953, will be among four people inducted tonight into the Volleyball Hall of Fame in Holyoke, Mass.

Engen, a winery consultant who lives in Laguna Beach and Park City, Utah, has played and coached more than 40 years in Southern California, including seven seasons coaching at Laguna Beach and two years playing at UCLA. He also was the commissioner of volleyball for the 1984 Olympics.

The U.S. Volleyball Assn. board members elected him to the hall of fame along with 1968 U.S. Olympic team captain Thomas Haine, former UCLA All-American Catalano Ignacio and Dr. George J. Fisher, founder of the USVBA.

“It’s a great honor,” Engen said. “I’m just so surprised that I got in. For our sport, it’s the biggest honor you can receive.”

Engen, who grew up in Santa Ana, learned to play volleyball on the beach in Corona del Mar in the mid-1940s. He played setter for the Santa Ana YMCA team while he attended Santa Ana High School, which didn’t field a boys’ volleyball team.

Engen also played basketball at Santa Ana High, then Santa Ana College, where he averaged 18.8 points and made the all-conference team in 1950. After a year in the Army, he accepted a basketball scholarship to UCLA in 1951.

At UCLA, Engen started teaching volleyball to friends on a sand court behind his fraternity house. Volleyball wasn’t an NCAA sport at the time, so Engen started a club team at UCLA.

Engen played setter and coached the UCLA teams that won the 1953 and ’54 collegiate championships. He twice earned All-American honors.

The club program continued at UCLA until it became an NCAA sport in the 1969-70 season.

Engen, 62, also was an assistant coach at Laguna Beach from 1972 to ‘78, helping the Artists win Southern Section titles in 1975 and ‘77, and coaching future Olympian Dusty Dvorak.

In 1980, Engen turned down an offer to coach the U.S. men’s national team, which had been a doormat in international competition in the late 1970s.

“They were having trouble getting a coach,” Engen said. “It was a 150-day-a-year commitment, so I turned it down.”

The U.S. team went on to win gold medals in 1984 and ’88.

Engen watched the U.S. team win the Olympic gold in 1984, serving as the commissioner of volleyball at the Games in Los Angeles.

“I probably did more for development of volleyball in this country by turning it (the coaching offer) down,” Engen said.