Ron Tomsic, Millennium Hall of Fame

It was war trying to make the U.S. Olympic basketball team in 1956,

but Ron Tomsic didn’t mind his military duty.

After establishing the career and single-season scoring records at

Stanford in 1955, Tomsic went into the Air Force, where the hangars he

visited came equipped with backboards and hardwood floors.

Tomsic’s two-year military obligation was a result of enrolling in the

ROTC program at Stanford, but it also paved the way for the 5-foot-11

guard to try out for the Olympic team. At the time, only U.S. servicemen,

college all-stars (like Bill Russell and K.C. Jones) or members of the

two Amateur Athletic Union teams could vie for spots on the Olympic

squad.

Tomsic, who grew up playing against Russell in the Oakland area and

was once taller than the future 6-10 superstar who led the Boston

Celtics’ NBA dynasty, later celebrated a gold-medal winning performance

with Russell and Jones at the 1956 Melbourne Games.

Though Tomsic was the U.S. team’s second-leading scorer during the

Olympic trials and third-leading scorer during the Olympics (behind

Russell and Bob Jean-gerard), it was no easy task making the team. It was

a time when the U.S. was dominating the game it invented and amateurs,

not NBA stars, were hungry for opportunities.

First, Tomsic secured his place on the Air Force team, then competed

against all branches of the military in a national round-robin

tournament. Tomsic then made the All-Armed Forces team and every game he

played had must-win implications.

“I played like 35 games in order to qualify for the Olympics, and you

had to be on every game. If you had a bad game, you were out,” he said.

“They kept picking an all-star team every time. You went from your own

region, then to a larger region, then it became all-world.

“But it was not a bad way to get through the service, playing

basketball. I played a lot of basketball.

“(The joy of making the Olympic team) was only exceeded by stepping on

the victory stand and getting a gold medal. It doesn’t get any better

than that.”

Tomsic and the rest of the hopefuls from the All-Armed Forces

round-robin tournament in Kansas City, which concluded late one night in

April 1956, had to wait until about 4 a.m. before learning their fate.

Members of the selection committee convened in a hotel room and the

players waited anxiously in the lobby.

“I remember calling my mom and dad and waking them up in the middle of

the night to tell them I’d made the team,” said Tomsic, who was the

shortest member of the U.S. Olympic team in ‘56, which also became the

first basketball team in Olympic history to score 100 points in a game, a

101-29 win over Thailand.

“I was taller than (Thailand’s) center,” added Tomsic, who scored 15

points that night, then later dropped in 18 against Uruguay, a 101-38

semifinal victory for the U.S.

It was a balanced team, believed to be the best U.S. Olympic amateur

basketball team ever, according to some.

“We had an outstanding team, no question about it, but it’s tough to

compare different eras,” said Tomsic, who was drafted by the Syracuse

Nationals, but turned down the chance to play pro ball -- instead,

starting a business.

Tomsic, a Corona del Mar resident and businessman since 1975, was one

of four founders of Grubb & Ellis in 1959, a large real estate brokerage

firm.

“If I was playing professional basketball, I wouldn’t have been in

that position (to help launch the company),” said Tomsic, who left Grubb

& Ellis after 27 years to start his own real estate development and

investment company.

“I think athletics certainly helps one in a business career,” he

added. “After all, whether you’re in athletics or business, what you’re

doing is competing with people. Athletics teaches you a great deal about

life. You have to learn how to win graciously and you have to learn how

to lose. You’re not going to make every deal.”

Tomsic, a star Fremont High in East Oakland, achieved a career-high 40

points in college one night against USC, long before the game’s shot

clock and three-point line. But beating the Russians in the 1956

gold-medal game was his most memorable game.

A three-time All-American at Stanford, the sharpshooting guard had

another Olympic experience in 1984, when he served as an escort for

former Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who was on tour in Southern

California as a goodwill ambassador.

A commissioner-at-large for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing

Committee, Tomsic was at Comaneci’s side almost non-stop during the ’84

Olympics.

Tomsic has three grown children, Mark, Jill and Todd, and seven

grandchildren. The Big Canyon Country Club member is the latest honoree

in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame, celebrating the millennium.