Steve Pauly rose to greatness at Beaverton High and then Oregon State, where he played basketball and developed into an Olympic-caliber decathlete.

At Beaverton, Pauly played football, basketball and competed in track, where he experienced considerable success. He won the 120-yard and 180-yard hurdles finals and finished fourth in the shot put in 1958, leading the Beavers to the team title. In 1959, he won the javelin and 120 hurdles, finishing ahead of future NFL Hall of Famer Mel Renfro. He finished second to Renfro of Jefferson in the 180 hurdles.

At OSU, Pauly won the javelin at the Pacific Coast Conference Northern Division meet as a freshman. He competed in the 1960 U.S. Olympic Trials in the decathlon and placed 13th with 6,494 points.

Pauly, who stood 6-foot-4, played alongside Mel Counts and Terry Baker on the 1963 OSU basketball team that reached the NCAA Final Four.

That same year, Pauly, age 22, won the decathlon at the Amateur Athletic Union national championships held in Corvallis, scoring 7,852 points to improve on his third-place showing the previous year. His total was the sixth-best on the international level that year. His win also earned him a spot on the U.S. team that competed in a dual meet with the Soviet Union in Moscow that summer – having competed against the Russians in the annual meet the previous year in Palo Alto, Calif. Pauly scored 7,536 points in that meet and finished third behind two Russians. He did not compete in the Olympic Trials in 1964. He had interest from several NFL teams, but chose to pursue a degree in dentistry and established a practice in Portland, where he played in adult basketball leagues and coached track at Reynolds High for several years.

Pauly was inducted to the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Oregon State University Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.