Memories of a Lifetime

Alex Leon

The story goes like this: a girl with no volleyball experience rarely

gets off the bench to play on the junior varsity as a sophomore at

Glendale High in 1971. But by her junior year in 1972, Leslie Knudsen

becomes one of the best volleyball players in Southern California and

later becomes an All-American at UCLA.

For every player like Knudsen, there were hundreds of other girls

coached by Ninja Jorgensen over the past four decades who didn’t reach

those lofty heights of athletic success. All they did was show up on

time, play as hard as they could every time they took the floor, and take

their place in her scrapbook of coaching and teaching memories.

Those memories could fill more than a few volumes of hardbound books

but Jorgensen keeps them closer at hand than that. They are safely tucked

away in her personal memory bank where she is likely to pull out a name

from her first team at Glendale as from her last at any time.

Those recollections are even more precious now that Jorgensen retired

from teaching in February at the Glendale school where she spent her

entire career. She retired as the Nitros girls’ volleyball coach in 1998

after 36 years.

Retirement as a coach and teacher is not something that Jorgensen is

willing to talk much about. Instead she prefers to reflect on the

hundreds, maybe thousands of girls, who came in eager and raw and left

better for the experience under her tutelage.

“The girls made the experience special for me,” Jorgensen said. ‘From

the first season to the last, they played hard, committed themselves to

what I was trying to teach them and were a pleasure to be around.”

***bullet***

In 1960 and 1961, two landmark events changed Jorgensen’s life. The

first occurred in 1960 when she discovered volleyball as a student at

Occidental College. The second took place a year later when she started

teaching physical education at Glendale High.

She never dreamed, however, that those first tentative steps as a

volleyball player would lead her to national prominence and ultimately, a

place on the 1968 Olympic Team that competed in Mexico City.

“At the outset of my volleyball career, I was playing on high level

teams with low level skills,” she said. “It took me a while to find my

bearings but playing at that level of competition really accelerated my

development.”

So much so that Jorgensen was named a National Amateur Athletic Player

of the Year in 1963 as well as a U.S. Volleyball Assn. All-American that

same year.

But beyond her own career as a player, Jorgensen’s most important

contribution to girls’ athletics and helping further their opportunities

in sports may have been her role in organizing athletic teams at Glendale

and leagues for them to play in.

A brief lesson in history shows the CIF Southern Section did not

recognize girls’ sports until 1973, when playoff competition became

available to them. Before, girls’ sport teams would compete in local

leagues when and where they could find them.

Jorgensen didn’t waste much team getting Glendale girls involved in

sports. She organized the school’s first volleyball, swim and basketball

teams in 1962, 1963 and 1964 and coached them all into their infancy as

CIF sports. She also coached badminton in her lengthy tenure at Glendale.

While it took 13 years until after she arrived to be recognized by

CIF, Jorgensen said she and the girls who competed for her and the school

always took themselves seriously.

“We practiced, played and competed hard even if almost nobody paid

attention,” she said. “I credit those teams and those athletes for making

it possible for girls at Glendale over the past 25 years to wear uniforms

and have opportunities at playing in college and beyond.”

***bullet***

Coaches and teachers don’t just retire and fade into the sunset. They

just find new and sometimes old arenas to conquer and rejuvenate

themselves.

Jorgensen said she will go anywhere at almost anytime for a

competitive tennis match. Since she began taking it more seriously and

keeping score eight years ago, she looks forward to each new day and an

opportunity to have fun on the court.

Last weekend in Palm Springs she even competed in a master’s

volleyball tournament. The body was willing but the aches and pains to

her 6-foot-1 frame told her to take it easy for a few days when she got

back.

But there are always the stories and the memories. How about the time

in 1968 when the USA National Team was playing in Peru when she ran into

Rosario “Choco” Vivanco, possibly the best- known swimmer in Peru, who

had swum for Jorgensen as a senior in 1967? Vivanco was selected to swim

in the Olympics for Peru in 1968.

Or maybe the best memory of all, when the coach and that special

player, Leslie Knudsen, played as teammates in 1973. Not for fun in

practice but as teammates on the Women’s Volleyball World Cup Games in

Uraguay?

Those kinds of experiences and memories are what the story of Ninja

Jorgensen is all about.

The Jorgensen File

High School: Graduated from Los Angeles High in 1957

Pre-Volleyball Athletics: Jorgensen, who is Danish, was a swimmer.

How she discovered volleyball: Some of the members of the Amateuer

Athletic Union basketball team she played on while at Occidental College

also played volleyball and she was asked to join in.

Did you know?: Jorgensen was named the California Coach of the Year in

a vote of high school coaches.