By Sue Pascoe
Editor
The Los Angeles City Section has announced its fourth class of inductees to its Hall of Fame. It includes four Palisades High School graduates: Steve Kerr, Ricci Luyties, Chris Marlowe, Tauna Vandeweghe and tennis coach Bud Kling. The induction ceremony will take place on April 23 in Culver City.
City Section spokesman Dick Dornan told the News that the Hall of Fame committee consist of six people, who are former or current coaches and athletic directors that that are familiar with the City Section and its history of athletics.
“The committee chooses 40 or so athletes every two years [first class was 2011] who have earned this prestigious honor,” Dornan said. To be nominated, a person must be older than 35 and had a meaningful impact in college, the Olympics, professionally or outside organized sports.
Other factors included in the selection are records, significant achievements and the person’s character. “For non-athletes, consideration was given to contribution to high school athletics, length of career, and impact on high school sports or the Section,” Dornan said.
Bud Kling started coaching boys tennis at Palisades High in 1979 and his record over the past 37 years includes 24 city titles. In 1984 he took over the girls program, coaching until 2008, and then returning in 2015. During those 26 years, his teams captured 17 city titles, including one in 2016.
Kling leads all coaches in the City Section with 41 titles. During his tenure as a coach at Pali, he’s had 1094 wins, 120 losses. The national record is around 1185, according to Kling. “I should go over 1,100 victories soon, and God willing reach the national record in a few years,” he said, noting that his teams combine to win about 44 to 50 matches a year.
“I am very proud to be honored with this award,” Kling said. “This is a confirmation of achievement of coaching at the high school level.”
Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr graduated from PaliHi in 1983. He played basketball at Arizona and helped the Wildcats reach the NCAA Final Four in 1988. He set an NCAA record for 3-point percentage in a season (114-199, 57.3 percent).
Kerr won three NBA championships playing with the Chicago Bulls and two with the San Antonio Spurs. He has the highest career 3-point percentage (45.4 percent) for any player with at least 2,000 shot attempts in NBA history.
Photo: Rich Wilken
After stints as the Phoenix Suns general manager and a television basketball commentator, Kerr coached the Warriors to the 2014-15 NBA championship. On April 13, 2016, the Warriors broke the record for the most wins (73) in an NBA season.
Chris Marlowe graduated in 1969 after starring in two sports: basketball and volleyball. He played both sports at San Diego State University and was the starting setter on SDSU’s NCAA Championship team of 1973.
Marlowe was voted USA Volleyball’s Most Valuable Player in 1976 and 1978, and was team captain of the 1984 gold medal-winning U.S. Volleyball team. He is currently the play-by-play announcer for the Denver Nuggets and has also been the play-by-play announcer for NBC’s coverage of beach volley ball at the Summer Olympics since 2004.
Ricci Luyties played volleyball at Pali from 1976 through 1980, and earned City Section Player of the Year honors. He attended UCLA and led the Bruins to four consecutive national titles.
In 1983 and 1984, Luyties was awarded All-American honors, was named Volleyball Magazine’s Player of the Year, and the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. He was a member of the men’s national volleyball team from 1985 to 1988, helping to win a gold medal in the Seoul Olympics.
He coached at the University of Colora- do and then Southern Mississippi, where he was named Coach of the Year in Conference USA. He has been the head coach at UC San Diego since 2010.
Tauna Vandeweghe, class of 1977, swam backstroke in the 1976 Olympic Games. After graduating from PaliHi, she swam for UCLA, but with the boycott of the 1980 Olympics, switched sports and earned a silver medal with the U.S. Volleyball team at the 1984 Olympics. Vandeweghe worked in broadcasting in the 1980s, with ESPN and the Sports Channel in Los Angeles and New York. Her daughter, Coco, is one of the country’s top tennis players, having reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open last week.
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