THE FRONT ROW WITH BRUCE BOURQUIN: Friday, November 20, 2015

One of the more consistent faces in the crowd during high school volleyball matches and basketball games, as well as quite a few baseball and soccer games in the area over the past three years has not been a Coeur d’Alene parent, a Lake City booster or even a friend or neighbor of a relative of a Post Falls student-athlete.

She is Terri O’Rourke of Manhattan Beach, Calif., and caught the sports bug while attending Mira Costa High in that city. She said she has likely been to more than 150 games between all the combined sports.

“Whoever’s got a game, I’ll follow them,” O’Rourke said. “Their families might talk to me, tell me about their kids who are playing and I’ll get attached to them. I follow games in Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Rathdrum.”

O’Rourke has a son who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., and a daughter who lives in the Los Angeles area and she divorced her husband in 1970. Neither child played varsity sports and her three granddaughters also did not play any varsity sports. She has never had any local kid or relative from this area play here, but still enjoys the games.

“In our school growing up, I’d play beach volleyball, swim, even do some archery. I never played a varsity sport, I played it just for enjoyment. But it was in our blood. I love to see teams that work together and suceed together. I also like to watch kids doing patriotic things, like singing the national anthem. It gives me hope for the future of our country. They are our future.”

TERRI DOES have one pretty significant tie to sports. She is the younger sister of Gail O’Rourke, an outside hitter who back in 1964 at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, was a 20-year-old outside hitter on the first U.S. Olympic women’s volleyball team. The U.S. finished fifth out of six teams, going 1-4 after defeating sixth-place South Korea on Oct. 20, 1964, 15-7, 15-13, 15-13, the only games the U.S. won. Japan, which won the gold medal, beat the U.S. along the way, 15-1, 15-5, 15-2.

To show how far the program has come, the U.S. won silver medals in 1984, 2008 and 2012, and is still chasing that first elusive gold medal. The U.S. was able to win the FIVB world championship last year in Milan, Italy. The next Summer Olympic Games are Aug. 5-21 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“My sister loved the whole experience,” Terri said. “She was 5-foot-9 and she had calves like a sumo wrestler. She just said how much better they (Japan) were. She said they did gymnastics, they tumbled back and forth. They got to nearly every ball they hit and were amazing. She thought the Olympics should only be for the amateurs. After the Olympics, Japan’s team stayed in our house. They won and regained their honor, this was almost 20 years after World War II ended (in 1945). They traveled the world, showed people they weren’t so bad. They were a generation after the ones who served in the war.”

Although Gail had friends like setter Sharon Peterson go on to play in the 1968 Summer Olympics, Gail chose not to return for another run at a medal. Peterson, who knew Gail since grammar school, played with her at El Camino College. Peterson retired in 2002 at the age of 60, after 25 years as the head coach at Division II University of Hawaii-Hilo, where she won seven national championships. Gail was a standout player at Marymount High at Los Angeles.

Terri did not really wish to play against her sister — in fact, she only practiced against her once.

“After she hit it, the ball went round, then almost square, then round again,” Terri said. “I said to myself I don’t want that to hit my face.”

Gail had a son, Adam Wong, who played as a walk-on special teams player for the UCLA football team in the mid-1990s. To Terri’s knowledge, Gail never visited North Idaho.

ON APRIL 1, 2000, Gail died at age 57 of ovarian cancer in Honolulu, Hawaii.

“Gail told no one she was dying,” Terri said.

Starting in the early- to mid-1980s, Gail also formed a long-lasting relationship with a certain up-and-coming television actor named Tom Selleck, who became a superstar celebrity thanks to the hit TV detective show, “Magnum P.I.” He is currently a lead actor in the CBS TV show “Blue Bloods.”

“She knew Tom Selleck, she designed custom shorts for him,” Terri said. “In 1985, the Master’s-age guys had a club (volleyball) team and they went to Las Vegas in 1985. “We watched his team play and he (Selleck) was really good. We met the team and their wives or girlfriends. We got up there and we met Jillie, who was his girlfriend, not his wife yet. I met him and his bodyguard opened up the door to the penthouse in Caesar’s Palace. And I told him, ‘You know what? You’re better at volleyball than in acting.’ And we both cracked up. He’s very good now, but back then he was like a kid. But when she was dying in early April of 2000, I called and got to his manager and I told him, ‘Gail O’Rourke is dying. Can he (Selleck) just call her?’ A few days later she got mad at me and said ‘Don’t tell anyone my information.’ So I knew that he (Selleck) called her.”

TERRI O’ROURKE served as a registered nurse from 1972 to 1993, including a few years working at the Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance, Calif. Then at the age of 47, she signed up for the Air Force Reserves and reached the rank of Captain after serving for six years at March Air Force Base.

“I signed up and asked them, ‘Do you really need a 47-year-old woman?’ They said, ‘If you can pass the physical, we’ll sign you up.’ I taught medical tech training, surgical for orthopedics, hospice nursing. I also worked for 10 years in OB/GYN and later on in urgent care.”

After the Olympics, Gail moved to Honolulu and she worked for Surf Line Hawaii, a surfboard store that started the Jams line of surfwear, working for founder David Rochlen.

“She designed for him starting in 1964,” Terri said. “She designed custom shorts and shirts that looked like they were inside out. She was the only other person allowed to show the new designs three or four times a year. She worked for him for 25 years and then she went off on her own to work as a sales rep for Oshkosh. When you’re an Olympian in Hawaii, you’re somebody. She knew a lot of Olympians who also lived there.”

Gail continued to play volleyball until the 1988 Master’s tournament, when she was 44. In 1964 before the Olympics, O’Rourke played with the Triumph club team and it finished third at the 1964 U.S. Volleyball Association’s national tournament and Rourke was named the MVP. During the Olympics, O’Rourke and Peterson brought one of the original skateboards to Japan and Terri has a picture of them guiding a young girl on it.

“She was upset they were promoting healthy living through volleyball and you turn around and there’s this big beer sign,” Terri said of the sponsors.

WHEN IT came to locating a right place for her to retire in 2012, Terri was looking for a few specific physical requirements.

“I was looking for someplace to go where there were there were lakes, rivers and beaches nearby,” O’Rourke said. “We used to go to Lake Arrowhead (80 miles east of Los Angeles) and we knew we were lucky. I love Coeur d’Alene. It’s beautiful, it has a lot of lakes and trees.”

Terri showed up in Phoenix at a 50-year reunion of the 1964 team in 2014.

“I saw all of these 70-year-old women,” Terri said. “One of them is still playing.”

In their memories, these women’s volleyball players are always playing. Gail O’Rourke was a pioneer and her sister is carrying the torch, into these days and beyond.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com or via Twitter @bourq25