John Vallely didn’t know what to expect when Corona del Mar High opened its doors for the first time in the fall of 1962.
There were no seniors for the Sea Kings in the 1962-63 school calendar year, and there was nothing close to the campus that resembled suburban life. Ford Aerospace Company was nearby, but the immediate area was known more for a buffalo ranch and a landfill, where residents of Santa Ana and other nearby cities would drop off rubbish in Newport Beach. It’s hard to believe that now.
When Sea Kings basketball coach Bob Leslie lined up his players for the first practice, Vallely was a scrawny, 5-foot-7 freshman, and “it was kind of unnerving,” Vallely said last week.
“I remember starting on the B team, because nobody knew who had anything that was going to be valuable,” he said. “Nobody knew me. So I started out on the lower-level teams, then they kept pushing me up, because I could make a basket and I could play hard, and (playing hard) is what was expected. They loved me, and they ended up having a position for me on the varsity.”
Part of the school’s first graduating class, in 1966, in which students attended four years at Corona del Mar, Vallely earned four basketball letters in Leslie’s program, finishing as the school’s career leader in several scoring categories and helping to launch one of the most successful basketball programs in Orange County.
Vallely twice earned All-Crestview League honors and was voted All-CIF Southern Section as a senior, when the Sea Kings posted a 15-9 record, including a memorable 71-69 win in double overtime over Back Bay rival Newport Harbor.
“I could shoot from distance, and Bob Leslie thought I had some talent and that I’d go on. We had a great relationship,” said Vallely, who followed his career at CdM with two years at Orange Coast College, where the 6-2 sharpshooter averaged 26 points per game and broke 18 scoring records, meriting JC All-American and OCC Athlete of the Year laurels.
Vallely, who primarily dribbled with his left hand and shot with his right, was highly recruited by four-year colleges coming out of Orange Coast, but he wanted to go to UCLA and play for legendary coach John Wooden.
“How will I ever know if I can play at UCLA unless I try?” Vallely said. “It was a big step to go from Orange Coast College to UCLA, where maybe I would never play again. But what if it worked out? Before our first game against Purdue, Coach Wooden pulled me aside and said he’d like me to start, and he said, ‘What do you think about that?’”
An elated Vallely didn’t disappoint.
“I literally busted my butt for months,” Vallely said. “I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me? I’m starting for John Wooden at UCLA?’”
Known as the “Money Man” for his clutch performances, Vallely helped UCLA win two NCAA national championships. In 1970, he was named All-American and drafted in the first round by the Atlanta Hawks. Vallely played in the NBA for Atlanta and the Houston Rockets.
“The first thing Coach Wooden told us is that it isn’t about winning,” Vallely said. “He said everybody wants to win. It’s about learning the fundamentals and winning will follow. I learned so many things from Coach Wooden. He was instrumental in pushing me forward. I used to visit him when (our 12-year-old daughter) Erin was battling cancer and later when I was fighting my own cancer. His principles have been very effective in our lives, and Karen and I have both benefited from them during our 56-year marriage.”
Wooden spent decades identifying the characteristics and traits that help define a successful person and narrowed the list to 25 common behaviors, creating an iconic triangular diagram and named it the “Pyramid of Success.”
In his book, “The Pyramid Principle: A Battle-Tested Hall-of-Famer Discovers UCLA Coach John Wooden’s True Meaning of Success,” Vallely speaks deeply about Wooden, the loss of his daughter in 1991 and his years-long battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
John and Karen Vallely have been heavily invested in the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation.
Richard Dunn, a longtime sportswriter, writes the Dunn Deal column regularly for The Orange County Register’s weekly, The Coastal Current North.