Ron Tomsic was born in Oakland, attended Fremont High School, and then earned an athletic scholarship to Stanford University to play basketball. While at Stanford, from 1951-1955, he was twice named team MVP, All Pacific Coast, and an All-American collegiate honorable mention. He still holds three spots on the top ten list of Most Points Scored in a Single Game for Stanford; his 40 point game against USC in 1955 is remembered as one of the best games in campus history.
Following his graduation in 1955, NBA’s Syracuse Nationals drafted Tomsic, but he chose instead to continue living in the Bay Area and play AAU ball. OC Basketball Coach Carl Minetti was working to pull together a champion team and found a high scorer in Tomsic. As part of The Olympic Club team he was named an AAU All-American in 1955 (an accolade he would eventually earn three times). Tomsic played for both the OC and the US Air Force All-Stars in his AAU career; he served as a Lieutenant in the US Air Force.
In 1956, as part of the Air Force All-Stars, Tomsic participated in the Olympic Trials in Kansas City. The Olympic Basketball Committee was tasked to select 12 players for the team: five players from the team that won the Trial tournament and the rest from the tournament at large. On the first night of the tournament, Tomsic led the All-Stars to a win with 28 points, upsetting the eventual champion team. He was named as one of the at-large players, as were Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, fellow Bay Area youngsters who had long competed against each other.
The Olympic Games proved to be no challenge for the US team; they won a gold medal for the United States after an undefeated tournament. Tomsic was the third highest scorer with 89 points.
After the Olympics, Tomsic went back to AAU basketball, playing in the 1957 AAU National Championships for the Air Force All-Stars. In the championship final, he faced his teammates from The Olympic Club, which included fellow OC Hall of Famer Tom Meschery. The Air Force All-Stars won the tournament.
The following year, he was again playing for the Club and remained one of the team’s leading scorers. He played a few more years before relocating to Southern California for business when Grub and Ellis, the real estate company he founded and directed, expanded beyond San Francisco. He was named to the Helms Amateur Basketball Hall of Fame in 1962 and honored at the Fathers and Sons Breakfast at the Club that year. Tomsic currently resides in Newport Coast with his wife Susie; he has three children (Mark, Todd, and Jill) and seven grandchildren.
