Laurie Sawin-Quinn

Richard Dunn

Laurie Sawin-Quinn’s career as a physical therapist began

innocently enough when she sprained an ankle during club volleyball

practice the night before the Sea View League girls track and field

preliminaries.

“That entire Friday morning was spent in the physical therapist’s

office, trying to rehab my ankle,” she said. “I definitely think

being a dual sports athlete has its pros and cons. That was

definitely a low point in my (athletic) career, but it turned me on

to be a physical therapist -- to help athletes, and also non-athletes

for that matter, get back.”

Sawin-Quinn, a 1989 Corona del Mar High graduate who later starred

in volleyball at Stanford, is enjoying the fruits of her labor as a

physical therapist at a “ritzy athletic club,” where she works 16

hours a week, and as an eighth-grade girls volleyball coach in

Portola Valley, adjacent to Menlo Park, where she lives with her

husband, Willie, and two boys, Patrick, 4, and Jake, 2.

“Mostly, I’m a full-time mom,” said Sawin-Quinn, a human biology

major at Stanford.

While volleyball became Sawin-Quinn’s primary sport -- she helped

Stanford win the 1992 NCAA championship as one of the Cardinal

captains -- track and field provided her greatest prep glory,

highlighted by the Sea Kings’ 1988 CIF Southern Section 3-A team

championship under Coach Steve Kaczynski. Four-event stars

Sawin-Quinn and d’Layne Kerr were the team’s top scorers and it

remains the school’s only CIF title in the sport. Newport Harbor’s

1993 squad is the only other CIF championship girls track and field

team in Newport-Mesa history.

In the CIF 3-A Finals of the 400 meters at Cerritos College, Kerr

and Sawin-Quinn finished one-two, while the latest honoree in the

Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame also scored in the high jump, 400

relay and 1,600 relay.

The Sea Kings’ 1,600 relay placed third at the state meet that

year in an Orange County-record 3:48.24, after winning the 1987 CIF

3-A championship in 3:55.06 when Sawin-Quinn was a sophomore. Later,

Stanford also wanted her for track.

“But no way,” Sawin-Quinn said. “I still don’t know how I did it

with one of the toughest majors at Stanford and playing volleyball.”

Sawin-Quinn, a 5-foot-9 outside hitter who was groomed under Coach

Charlie Brande at the Orange County Volleyball Club, played three

varsity volleyball seasons at CdM, after moving from Texas in January

of her freshman year.

When a club soccer coach, who also coached club volleyball with

Brande, discovered the athletic Sawin-Quinn, he suggested the

California newcomer take up the sport of using hands to hit and no

feet. She struggled in volleyball initially, but, since Brande knew

she’d be playing for his CdM team in the fall of ‘86, she was given a

crash course and “lived, ate and breathed volleyball for about six

months.”

Sawin-Quinn twice earned All-CIF 5-A honors. In her junior year in

the fall of ‘87, CdM reached the CIF 5-A match, losing to Back Bay

rival Newport Harbor, coached by Dan Glenn, in five games, after

winning the first two. It was the third of four times the schools

have met in a CIF title match.

The Sea View League Player of the Year in volleyball, Sawin-Quinn

was voted the Female Athlete of the Year at the school and in the Sea

View League for the 1988-89 calendar year.

A second-team Volleyball Monthly All-American, Sawin-Quinn

considered Stanford, Cal, UCLA, Princeton and UC Santa Barbara,

before selecting the Cardinal, for whom she played from 1989 through

1992. She was a starter for Stanford when the Cardinal defeated UCLA

for the ’92 national championship in Albuquerque.