We all have had that one special day in our lives. I’ve been fortunate to have many. For the Chinese nation it was Li Ning running around the top of The Bird’s Nest to light the Olympic Cauldron and start the Olympic Games in China. For me, of course, the day that my daughter Danielle was born was the best. I was in the delivery room moments after she took her first breath and I fell to my knees thanking God for this great and wondrous blessing that came in to my life.
I wish you all could meet her one day.
I have also pondered while thinking on how I would tell you of my story here in China, on the so many people who have entered my life, many who have left and some who have stayed on to accompany me along this journey. Do I start the story at the Beijing Olympics and move backward. I think that would be a bit anticlimactic, don’t you?
So … let’s start our journey together this way.
As I write to you today, I live in Guangzhou in Southern China. You may have heard of Guangzhou and its previous name of Canton, being the start of the Silk Road; but Guangzhou was and continues to be my personal entry point into China and the start of my journey of what has been more than 12 years now here in the marvelously mysterious and mystical land of China.
***
Try this allegory: Imagine you’re a Mormon pioneer crossing the American wilderness in the mid 1800’s heading for the safe and secure land the Native Americans you have met call Utah. The wagon train you have been leading has been obliterated in a sudden October winter blizzard. You are tired. Hungry. Alone. You carry your now-dead horse on your back as you cross over into the great Salt Lake Valley. You reach what you think will be a safe encampment; suddenly finding yourself buck naked, building a log cabin with your bare hands; surrounded by wolves.
That does not come close to what my Olympic experience in China has been like.
And to tell you how amazing my experiences have been here in China, I suppose that I should begin this story at the beginning.
No, not Mom screaming for me to finally arrive in the hospital maternity ward and in the case of brevity for reporters at the Associated Press, Reuters and Agency France Press gnawing on their pencils as they read this, please let me condense my professional acumen.
***
I am the youngest of four children, born to Louis and Toni Ruffolo and having grown up in the San Fernando Valley in a beautiful home on Nomar Street in Woodland Hills, I started my sportswriter and sports marketing career at Brigham Young University Hawaii Campus on the North Shore of Oahu in 1979. Actually I fell into it happenstance as I worked in the campus Sewage Treatment factory each morning, was a full time student during the day and at night, I’d put on my “Jimmy Olsen – Cub Reporter” hat and follow the BYU Hawaii Seasider sports teams all around Oahu and call in the results to the local Honolulu media.
One thing lead the preverbal another and suddenly within two weeks, I became the Sports Information Director for BYU Hawaii. Now just how does that happen? With no professional training, I was doing the sports marketing and publicity for this NAIA school, getting front page sports articles in the Honolulu newspapers and making the BYU Hawaii Administration VERY happy.
After doing this for about six months, I set my goals a bit higher and transferred to BYU’s main campus in Provo, Utah and before I graduated college four years later:
•I wrote and had published more than 2,000 newspaper and magazine sports, fashion, culinary, historic and political articles in publications all over the Western USA;
•Served as the Assistant Marketing Director for a major ski resort;
•Opened and was President of my own PR company;
•Served as Press Secretary for two US Congressional campaigns, and
•Was a member of the White House Advance Staff
I am sure I did a lot more, but I did promise this to be a “cliff note” version; and since this is a sports-themed book, lets pick up my personal narrative in the Year 1990, back again on the campus of Brigham Young University.
Chapter 2
Radio Days
So … the question is … should be it a song from YELLO or The Pet Shop Boys?
Actually, I’m somewhat partial to Billy Joel.
Forgive me for taking this moment to reminisce.
I am speaking about one very special evening in January 1990 and the choice music used to introduce the BYU Cougars during the home teams’ opening night of NCAA Men’s Volleyball.
A decade after graduating from Brigham Young, I reconnected with BYU’s exceptional Volleyball coach Carl McGown who was still at the helm of the BYU Cougars when the school’s athletic administration finally agreed to move the team into NCAA Division I status. McGown, now the official head coach of the BYU Cougars called me from his office within Smith Fieldhouse one day in early December 1989 and told me he needed a uniform sponsor for his new NCAA team.
This is what happened.
***
McGown said that if I could persuade an athletic manufacturer to sponsor his team; and that I would come back to Provo, Utah to market and promote the first three home BYU NCAA Volleyball matches against Pepperdine, USC and UCLA then he would pay me $5,000.
After graduating from BYU in the mid-1980’s, I moved to Orange County in Southern California and re-opened my own Public Relations company. Business was pretty good and my firm was focused on clients in the home furnishings industries that manufactured decorative accessory manufacturers. Going to trade shows in High Point, North Carolina was as about as far away from sports marketing that you can possible get. But who can turn away from an easy five grand? It wasn't about the money … I just had the “Volleyball bug” again and wanted to see if I could capture lightening in a bottle just as I did back in 1980 during my college days when I worked with McGown in promoting his club Volleyball team. He and I worked well together, packing in the on-campus Smith Fieldhouse arena to the rafters for McGown’s exhibition matches against the UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans.
So I said yes to McGown and immediately started working the phones with the local Southern California sales representatives who managed the sports marketing for manufacturers such as PUMA, NIKE and ADIDAS. None of them panned out. Then I called an old friend, Barbara Boskovich, who was doing the Western USA marketing for ASICS. One thing led to another and within a few days, Barbara committed ASICS to a multi-year clothing sponsorship contract for BYU Volleyball worth $145,000. Certainly not a fortune but it furnished McGown with the very best on and off court clothes for his players; as well as four pairs of new shoes per player during each season.
And I got a check!
So, after years of operating my own successful public relations company in Southern California, there I was.
Back in Provo again.
After arriving on campus, I sat down with McGown, he quickly set the parameters, “Ruffie, I can give you a $500 promotional budget and we want to pack the house for our first match against Pepperdine University.” It was to be a reunion of Marv Dunphy who coached Pepperdine (and had previously the United States men’s Olympic Volleyball Team to a
