FORTY isn't old. Not when you think of yourself as still being 19. Ruffulo goes to the net
for radio audienceThat is Jeff Ruffulo's mindset. The radio broadcaster for University of Hawaii volleyball road games knows exactly when he his profession called.
"I was lying on a beach on the North Shore in 1978, with a transistor radio, listening to a Rainbow basketball game from the mainland," Ruffulo said. "It was a 'Gee whiz, someday I want to do that' kind of moment. Inside, I'm still that 19-year-old kid on the beach.
"After 20 years, what keeps me excited about the job is knowing that, on Thursday, there's going to be some other 19-year-olds on a beach in Hawaii, listening to the Rainbows on the radio and feeling the same way I did. And it's going to get them to thinking the same things I did: 'I want to do that.' "
Ruffulo recommends the job, just not the route. His journalism career began while he was a student at Church College of Hawaii (now BYU-Hawaii), where he worked in the campus sewage treatment plant in the morning, went to class during the day and worked nights calling in scores, writing game stories and taking photos of Seasider athletic teams for local newspapers.
He traveled with the CCH rugby team on its Pacific Rim Tour. In the days before fax machines and laptop computers, Ruffulo said his biggest challenge was not getting through on an international telephone line, but convincing the Star-Bulletin's Bill Kwon to accept a collect call from Tonga.
IT'S been a wild adventure since then for the would-be anthropologist. Studying humans in athletic environments has taken him around the world, with stops from Spain to Stockton and everywhere in between.
"Think about the one season that began with my driving from St. Louis to Normal, Ill., for the NACWAA Women's Volleyball Invitational," Ruffulo said of the 1996 season opener for the Wahine volleyball team. "It ended in Cleveland at the final four.
"What I love about this job is I consider myself a Patriot missile. Give me a ticket and I'm gone. I thrive on this. When I do radio, put on the headphones, Clark Kent goes to sleep and Super Radioman wakes up."
To be sure, Hawaii's radio audience is never lulled to sleep when Ruffulo is behind the mike for a Rainbow Sports Network broadcast. He is loud. He is opinionated. He is loud. He is personable.
"What the audience wants to hear is excitement, not statistics," said Ruffulo, who began his RSN affiliation in 1992. "You want to yank your listeners by the neck, pull them 3,000 miles away and sit them down next to you.
"The bulk of what I do has no TV coverage so I have to provide that word picture. I get excitable, but that's what people want."
Ruffulo gave volleyball what it didn't know it wanted: a voice. He helped pioneer the sport on the airwaves, convincing Westwood One that there was a market during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
HIS broadcasts of indoor and beach volleyball were carried on 300 domestic stations and internationally on Armed Forces Network. The international volleyball association, FIVB, will honor him later this year for outstanding service to the sport.
The Ruffulo family (wife Tami and 3-year-old daughter Danielle) moved from Southern California to Mesa, Ariz., in January. It didn't slow Jeff Ruffulo, who makes the 300-mile round trip commute by car to games in California.
He's taking a plane to Los Angeles for Thursday's playoff match between Hawaii and Pepperdine. He hopes listeners will join him.
"The only drawback to the job is I'm just a voice to all the people back home in Hawaii," Ruffulo said. "I would really like to broadcast a Hawaii home game, be part of those great crowds.
"The best compliment anyone could give me Thursday is, 'Just listen, baby' because we're going to bring them home. The 'Bows haven't lost on the mainland this year. I'm undefeated, too."
Cindy Luis is a Star-Bulletin sportswriter.
Her column appears weekly.