San Clemente salutes three on Sports Wall of Fame

The 18th, 19th and 20th honorees on San Clemente’s Sports Wall of Fame have more in common than you might think for a motorcycle champion, an Olympic volleyball champion and a surfer acclaimed for his airbrush art.

Off-road motorcycle champion Johnny Campbell grew up near San Clemente’s T-Street Beach, surfed as a kid and has sometimes wondered why he didn’t become a pro surfer.

Volleyball Olympian Gabe Gardner grew up in San Clemente near the beach and didn’t take up surfing but did spend lots of time dirt biking in a wild section of Marblehead known then as the Tomato Fields, where Campbell had first taken up dirt biking.

Surfer Bill Stewart wanted to take up dirt biking as a boy in Florida, but his parents wouldn’t let him.

“All I wanted to do is draw and paint and surf,” Stewart said during his May 20 induction speech onto the Wall of Fame at San Clemente Aquatics Center. “And guess what? All I do is draw and surf and paint. The difference is, I

get paid to do it. I lucked out.”

All three honorees, saluted by the Friends of San Clemente Foundation, painted a similar picture of how they turned a childhood passion into a remarkable career.

“Growing up in San Clemente has been a really incredible journey, and also being able to do the thing I love on two wheels,” said Campbell, the 11-time SCORE Baja 1000 off-road racing champion.

While his career path took a different direction than his surf buddies’ at the beach, Campbell said San Clemente actually already had a deep off-road racing culture – “guys like Fred Stier, Jerry McDonald, Paul Huffman, Jeff Lewis and those guys,” Campbell said. He nurtured that off-road tradition while working at Stier’s and Huffman’s Shadetree Automotive after school.

“I just followed those guys’ path,” Campbell said, and his father’s work ethic inspired him to reach the pinnacle of his sport.

“I’m still riding dirt bikes a lot,” he said. “I get to test dirt bikes. I’m not racing all the time now, but I have a team that races for me and I’m working on product that you guys will see in the near future. I’m just super stoked to be recognized in my hometown.”

His advice to the next generation? “I really want the kids here to just follow their passions,” Campbell said.

Gardner, who said his family’s 1969 Volkswagen bus spent a lot of time at Shadetree Automotive, said he personally spent lots of time in Stewart’s surf shop, dreaming of someday being able to afford a $900 airbrushed longboard. “Bill, I can buy one of those now,” he told Stewart.

Because the United States doesn’t have professional indoor volleyball leagues, Gardner played professionally for 12 years in leagues all over the world, in countries where the sport was huge. “I played in Argentina, Brazil, Turkey three times, Japan, Russia, Italy three times, Spain, Portugal, Greece,” he said. “I actually lived in those countries all over the world for probably seven or eight months at a time.”

Everywhere, fans would ask where he was from and he’d say San Clemente. “I was proud to say that,” Gardner said. “And I’d usually have to follow that with, ‘It’s halfway between L.A. and San Diego.’ You guys have done that before, right?”

Gardner’s message to kids was that while it may seem easy for a 6-foot-9 volleyball player with talent to make it to the top of his sport, “it’s more about getting up when you’re down … more about bouncing back like a prize fighter that got knocked out and got back up to fight again,” Gardner said. “Look at some of these Olympians. They’ve all overcome some serious, serious hurdles that you don’t hear about in the news or when you see them on the podium.”

Stewart recalled when he moved from Florida to San Clemente, he had to sleep the first couple of weeks in his van because no one would rent him an apartment. “My hair was too long,” he said.

He cleaned apartments for quite a while, he said, then went to work for surfboard manufacturers Rick James and Hobie Alter and eventually started his own surfboard brand, with wife Chris handling the business end.

“When you get something that you absolutely love, don’t let anyone talk you out of it because it does happen,” Stewart said. “People get steered in directions.”

He said that when he was a boy, his parents thought surfing was “hippies avoiding jobs and smoking weed. Back then, surfing wasn’t really a sport,” he said. “It wasn’t considered a valid sport. Now here I stand here getting an award for this goofing off that I did, which is pretty good. I got to make a living with a passion. I hope all your kids do.”

John Dorey, master of ceremonies, recognized prior years’ honorees in the audience and invited attendees to sign up for the organization’s June 23 golf tournament, an annual fundraiser to help the foundation’s endeavors. They include beach concerts, movies in the park, a fall carnival, a skateboard contest, youth recreation scholarships and youth swim lessons for families that can’t afford them. Call 949-370-1224 for golf entries or information.