Steve La Rusch - Outstanding Athletic Achievemnet

This is what it takes to jump over seven feet in the high jump. You find some discarded foam padding when you are a teenager at Wilson Junior High in Glendale, build and pound two bar support standards into the ground and find an old cross bar at Glendale High School. Then you mark off your approach near the avocado tree in a friends’ backyard, and then hurl yourself over the bar while trying not to break your neck.

For Steve LaRusch, these were the humble beginnings that helped to make him a two-time state champion in the high jump at Glendale College in 1975 and 1976 and showed a passion for sports that makes him one of the greatest all-around athletes that this area has ever produced. But while he was a great high jumper, one of the best that the Glendale area has ever produced, his athletic prowess also includes playing football and winning a CIF title in the high jump at Glendale High School, competing in 10-event decathlons and playing co-ed volleyball at Glendale College and being a member of the U.S. National Bobsledding Team in the late 1980’s.

"Steve was one of my greatest competitors at Glendale College. Not only did he win the WSC Conference but also won the California State Meet back-to-back and won big points for us to win the State meet in 1975,’’ said former GCC track and field coach John Tansley, a 2006 GCC Athletic Hall of Fame inductee. “Steve was the ultimate competitor. Although I never believed in jumping for high heights in practice, Steve always amazed me in jumping so high in competition that I often felt he willed his way over the bar!. He is a great and worthy addition to the GCC Athletic Hall of Fame."     

Speaking of pushing yourself to the limit in practice, the date Feb. 26, 1976 is significant to La Rusch as it was the first time he ever jumped seven-feet. It was an early season track and field practice for the Vaqueros, just over 30 years ago to the day he is being inducted into the GCC Athletic Hall of Fame for Outstanding Athletic Achievement.

“That Aerosmith song ‘Dream On’ would play over and over in my head and I was getting so close to that seven-foot barrier all the time, 6-10, 6-11 and I just wanted to get the seven-foot jump out of the way,’’ La Rusch said in an interview. “I finally stuck it in practice 30 years ago and that was a big relief because you always have barriers as an athlete and that was a big one to overcome for me.’’

The rest of this story should read about how La Rusch earned an athletic scholarship and a degree from Long Beach State and coached volleyball and is still teaching at Long Beach Poly for over 20 years. Now coaching volleyball at Hope University, his daughter Sabrina played for him the past two years and his son John is considered one of the top outside hitters in the nation as senior playing boys’ volleyball at Long Beach Poly.

Honoring Steve La Rusch as an inductee into the GCC Athletic Hall of Fame for Outstanding Athletic Achievement does not seem enough of an accolade for what a tremendous all-around athletes he was. But ask him and he would say that without the great coaching he received along the way, he would not have gotten much farther then jumping in that foam pit in his friend’s backyard all those years ago.