Pali High Volleyball Alums Colleen Boyd and Steve Salmons Make City Hall of Fame
By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor
The CIF City Section will hold its next Athletic Hall of Fame ceremony next year and among the inductees will be Palisades High volleyball alums Colleen Boyd Turner (Class of 1969) and Steve Salmons (Class of 1977).
As a teenager in the 1960s, Colleen Boyd was a member of the original Palisades Skateboard Team and she also became a competitive surfer. At the time she went to Pali High girls volleyball was not yet a sanctioned City sport, but she went on to be a superstar at UCLA from 1970-72 and her No. 44 Bruins jersey is now retired. She was a member of UCLA’s Division of Girls and Women’s Sports (the first sanctioning body for the National Women’s Volleyball Tournament) national championship team in 1971-72. The squad steamrolled through the 1971 portion of the season with a 20-1 mark, dropping just six sets along the way. It swept Cal State LA, Cal State Northridge and Long Beach State in the Western Regionals and went on to finish 28-1 under head coach Andy Banachowski, beating Long Beach State again in the DGWS National Finals in Miami, Florida on Feb. 7, 1972 to capture the program’s first national title. Considered one of UCLA’s Top 25 all-time female players, she also played for the U.S. Women’s National Volleyball Team.
Boyd Turner earned a Social Welfare degree at UCLA and went on to get her Ph.D. She became a communications analyst, speaker and consultant and is a retired U.S. Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Colonel who has contributed to international strategic communications. As a counselor and social worker, she trained as a psychotherapist and served as an executive director for a gang and drug abuse prevention program. Her military expertise included developing terrorist defense scenarios, strategic planning for the Space and Missile Systems Center, freefall parachuting and expert marksmanship. She served as an indirect advisor for three cabinet secretaries and supported international strategic communications for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. She eventually moved to Cardiff-by-the-Sea in Encinitas and in 2014 she went to a skateboarding reunion in Santa Monica for the premiere of a documentary film called “Skateboarding’s First Wave,” directed by Palisades Skateboard Team member Don Burgess. She also became a contributor to The Huffington Post.
Boyd Turner will become the third member of the Pali High girls volleyball program to be inducted into the City Athletic Hall of Fame, joining longtime Dolphins coach Gayle Van Meter (a member of the City’s inaugural Hall of Fame class in 2011) and 1977 graduate Tauna Vandeweghe.
Steve Salmons was a cerebral player who led his teams to championships at all levels, including high school when he led Palisades to back-to-back City titles in 1976 and 1977 under his coach and 2015 City Hall of Fame inductee Howard Enstedt.
Salmons was selected the LA City Player of the Year and led the Dolphins to the first-ever Boys Southern California Regional Championship.
The success didn’t stop there.
He was voted NCAA Men’s Volleyball Player of the Year over Sinjin Smith and Karch Kiraly in 1979 when UCLA became the first unbeaten team in collegiate volleyball history, capturing the national championship over USC.
Then, after missing almost his entire senior season in 1981 due to a back injury suffered while playing for the USA at the Pan- American Games, Salmons returned for postseason play to lead the Bruins to another NCAA crown and was named to the NCAA All-Tournament Team for the third time. He was a three-time All American.
He won two USVBA crowns and was selected All-American. Salmon led the USA Junior National team to it first-ever Pacific Rim Tournament Gold Medal where he was chosen Most Valuable Player as a starting middle blocker. From 1978-1986 he was a key member of the USA National Team and went on to help the USA win its first volleyball triple crown with gold medals at the 1984 Olympics (with fellow Pali High alum and 2017 City Hall of Fame inductee Chris Marlowe) in Long Beach, the 1985 World Cup in Japan and the 1986 World Championships in France. He was named to the All-Century team by “Volleyball Magazine” and inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000. His No. 29 jersey was retired the following year.
On the beach circuit, Salmons won professional four-man tournaments and international double events. His daughter Alexis played volleyball for St. Mary’s College and his son Reece played for the UCLA men’s team. Now 62, he currently resides in San Diego where he owns a Commercial Real Estate Brokerage company, Commercial Properties Service.
In 2009, he returned to Pali High to play in the program’s first alumni fundraiser, after which he was named to the school’s Hall of Honor along with Enstedt, Marlowe (Class of 1969), Randy Stoklos (Class of 1978), Dave Saunders (an Olympic gold medalist in 1984 and 1988), Kent Steffes (Class of 1986) and Ricci Luyties (Class of 1980).
Boyd Turner and Salmons will be Palisades’ 12th and 13th City Athletic Hall of Fame inductees. Of the 11 previous Dolphins voted in, seven are volleyball players or coaches: Van Meter, Vandeweghe, Enstedt, Marlowe, Stoklos, Steffes and Luyties.
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