Dave Mollica, Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame

Richard Dunn

If he ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, then David Mollica would love

to keep barking out signals like an old quarterback.

These days, the former Costa Mesa High football standout, who also played

at Orange Coast College and Southern Utah University and had a tryout

with the Seattle Seahawks, no longer studies playbooks in his spare time.

Instead, he sings Elvis Presley songs during puppet shows, a gig called

“The King on String.”

Mollica travels everywhere with his portable production, which includes a

bass guitarist, drummer and lead guitarist, going from hospitals to

classrooms, serving as a sideshow or main event.

A paramedic/firefighter in West Covina by trade, Mollica has found a new

passion with his marionette stage featuring the king of rock ‘n’ roll. “I

don’t dress up, I just sing the songs,” Mollica said.

In the fall of 1976, Mollica had no rehearsal, but stepped into the

spotlight like a true Elvis impersonator and stole the show.

Mollica, an all-league outside linebacker as a junior under Mesa Coach

Tom French, was moved to quarterback by act of desperation, then became

the South Coast League’s Player of the Year and the team’s Most Valuable

Player Award winner.

“That was really my first year playing quarterback, my senior year,” said

Mollica, who led the Mustangs to an 8-2-1 season, a share of the South

Coast title, a berth in the CIF Southern Section quarterfinals and the

school’s first winning season in history.

An all-purpose quarterback, Mollica passed for 834 yards and completed

51% of his throws (69 of 125), while rushing for a 5.5-yards-per-carry

clip and eight touchdowns.

He turned down offers from West Virginia, Idaho, San Diego State and Air

Force Academy. “For some reason, I had my mind set on going across the

street to Orange Coast,” he said, figuring at the time it was an honor

strapping it on for Coach Dick Tucker’s Pirates.

“The year before (1975) they won the national J.C. championship, and a

lot of my friends from Junior All-American, who played at Corona del Mar

or Estancia, were all going to go there.”

A 6-foot-1, 170-pounder, Mollica had good wheels but hadn’t quite yet

mastered the throwing arm that would eventually get him in training camp

with the Seattle Seahawks in 1981, following a spectacular senior year at

then-NAIA Southern Utah State College in Cedar City, where he finished

No. 2 in the nation in total offense and was named Rocky Mountain

Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Year.

Mollica backed up Gary Guisness his freshman year at OCC, then engineered

a run-oriented offense in 1978 -- highlighted by J.C. All-American

halfback Dan Duddridge -- as Orange Coast went 7-3 and battled for the

conference title.

On Christmas Eve, about six weeks after Mollica’s sophomore campaign, he

suffered a freak accident when he slipped and fell through a glass shower

door, severely cutting his right biceps as he lost half of his body’s

blood, before paramedics came and “saved my life.”

The doctors told Mollica he would never play football again. He was lucky

to be alive, or even have an arm.

But Mollica healed and started a rigorous rehabilitation program that

included weightlifting, and he developed muscles he never realized.

At the same time, Mollica was having a piece of right-knee cartilage

removed, so, in the spring of ‘79, he spent plenty a day in physical

therapy.

Scholarship opportunities weren’t exactly breaking down Mollica’s door

after the shower mishap and subsequent slit right throwing arm, but

Southern Utah’s Thunderbirds were still willing to give him a chance on

defense. Mollica tried to convince the coaches to redshirt him and let

him play quarterback for two years, but they didn’t go for it and he

started in the defensive backfield.

Then, “the same thing happened,” Mollica said, referring to his senior

year at Costa Mesa, when French ran out of quarterbacks and called on

him.

Mollica, who played with a pad over his right biceps during his junior

season at Southern Utah, stepped into the driver’s seat again his senior

year for the T-birds.

“I had worked really hard on my throwing, and that (season) is when it

all clicked in,” said Mollica, who ran the veer at Southern Utah, like he

did at Costa Mesa.

Mollica, who married former Estancia cheerleader and homecoming queen

Dana Ganoung in the summer of ‘79, was signed by Seattle out of a tryout

with 350 players. He was one of only two players who were picked that

day.

But Mollica wound up at defensive back again in training camp, didn’t get

to play in the team’s first two exhibition games, complained about not

getting a shot, was switched to o7 runningf7 back for a week, then

released.

“Being married, I had just about had it and was ready to get on with my

life,” said the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame.

Mollica, who lives in Huntington Beach with his wife and two boys, John,

16, and Jeff, 12, added that his late mother, Caryl, was a great

inspiration. She was involved in everything from Costa Mesa’s booster

club to serving as the football team’s trainer.