Learning to Hit the Books, Too : Volleyball Player Realizes Success in Academics, Not Just Athletics, Is Ticket Out

Kurt Blanton remembers well the day he met the other side of reality.

He reports no blare of trumpets at the moment of his discovery. Just a dull pain at the realization he had wronged himself.

In 1985, he was an All-Sea View League and All-CIF selection as a senior on the Laguna Beach High School volleyball team. Blanton figured volleyball was his ticket to college and out of Laguna Beach.

Not a bad bet, considering athletics had always been enough to get Blanton by.

Quiet and introverted, sports allowed him to meet people and make friends. They made him popular on campus, though he put little effort into school.

“I pretty much took it easy in class, did what I wanted to do when I was in school,” Blanton said. “My grades suffered.”

But who needs grades when you have a 38-inch vertical jump? UCLA, USC, Stanford and UC Santa Barbara all were interested in Blanton. They liked his 6-foot 3-inch, 180-pound frame and the fact that he had taken up the game just five years before and only figured to get better.

What they didn’t like, and what put Blanton at Saddleback College instead of UCSB, were his academic transcripts.

“Those schools told me they wanted me, but they couldn’t do anything with my grades. It didn’t hit me right away, but pretty soon I realized I wasn’t going to college to play volleyball.”

There was an 11th-hour attempt by UCSB volleyball Coach Ken Preston--who hopes to get Blanton next school year--but that failed too.

“That was the worst,” Blanton said. “He was still trying to get me in right up until the first day of school. I kept hoping every day. I really wanted to go there, and then to find out you can’t--it was horrible.”

Blanton enrolled at Saddleback to improve his grades to a point of acceptability for Santa Barbara. Saddleback doesn’t field a a men’s volleyball team, which was fine with Blanton, who wants to keep all four years of his athletic eligibility alive.

But Blanton didn’t get to work on the books from the start at Saddleback. His schoolwork began to slide and with it his chances of getting to UCSB.

“I had this feeling I didn’t belong there, that I was better than other people,” he said. “I finally said ‘I can’t mess up this time. There’s just no way around it. I have to get the grades this time or I’m done.’ ”

His grades have steadily improved since then. Preston has told Blanton that if he keeps on his present academic pace, there should be no problem getting into Santa Barbara.

It’s all left Blanton a little older and a little wiser.

“The biggest advice I can give a kid is to do well in school,” he said. “After what I’ve gone through, I wish I had.”

Until last year, Blanton and Life--when it came to athletics--had been on the friendliest of terms. Seemed all he had to do was ask, and Life was more than happy to do Blanton a good turn.

You say you want to be a basketball player, Kurt?

Well, why don’t we make you 6-3 and 180 , quick , with enough spring in your legs to do structural damage to gymnasium ceilings.

By his sophomore year at Laguna Beach, Blanton was getting plenty of playing time on the varsity basketball team.

What’s that ? Track?

Hey, let’s not just make you fast, let’s make you so fast that people compare you to Orange County greats.

“I saw him run a leg of the 440 relay and I couldn’t believe it. He just didn’t win the race, he took it over,” said Bill Ashen, Laguna Beach volleyball coach. “I went to Santa Ana High School, and I remember watching Isaac Curtis (later a star wide receiver for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals). People would just come out to see him run. He was phenomenal. It was the same with Kurt. He’s just such a wonderful and natural athlete to watch.”

Ashen watched Blanton quickly develop into a top-flight volleyball player, especially as a a blocker.

“He is one of the best I’ve seen,” said Ashen, who has won three CIF Southern Section titles at Laguna Beach. “He’s very good at reading a hitter. Instead of watching the ball, like most people do, he watches the hitter. Once he knows where the hitter is going, it’s usually all over because he can outjump just about anyone.”

Blanton took up the game in eighth grade--relatively late for competitive volleyball.

Two years later--as a sophomore at Laguna Beach--he started on the varsity and helped the Artists to the 1983 Southern Section championship. Laguna Beach has won five titles in the 12 years the Southern Section has held finals for boys’ volleyball.

His junior season, he developed into one of the Artists’ top players, and Laguna Beach made it to the Southern Section semifinals.

By his senior season, volleyball had so consumed him that he quit the basketball team.

“It was pretty amazing how quickly he picked up the game,” said Mike Stafford, a Laguna Beach teammate of Blanton’s who now plays at UCLA. “Starting in the eighth grade is really late if you want to play competitive volleyball. Most players start around the fourth or fifth grade. I started in the third grade.”

Said Blanton: “You might say that things almost went too good for me, for a long time. I was never really challenged.”

Blanton thought a new life waited for him outside the Laguna Beach city limits, and volleyball was his ticket out.

It might be hard to understand why anyone would want to leave Laguna Beach. Palookaville it isn’t. People arrive here. They’re not supposed to want to leave.

“I think Orange County, in general, shelters people from what’s going on in the real world,” Ashen said. “I think Kurt got tired of that. I mean Laguna Beach may be the most sheltered of it all.”

Said Stafford: “Everything came so easy for Kurt in sports. He might have transfered that over into school. But that can happen to you in Laguna. You’re surrounded by so much leisure.”

It’s Laguna Beach’s leisurely pace that Blanton wants to get away from.

“Nothing seems to change here,” he said. “Everyone is the same and do the same things. I’m just tired of it. I want to get out. I need a change. Need to get out on my own and see what I can do.”

Blanton keeps in shape by running every day, lifting weights on occasion and playing beach volleyball on the weekends.

“It will be a transition for him from beach to courts again, but he’ll make it,” Stafford said. “He might not be an immediate starter, but considering all his talent, he’ll help someone out soon enough.”

Soon enough, after helping himself.