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Alumni News
The 1975 state champion Valley College football team, which is having its 30-year reunion this weekend, included assistant Pat Hill (front row, fourth from left), now the head coach at Fresno State, and offensive lineman Mark Weber (third row, center, No. 51), Hill's line coach with the Bulldogs, who play No. 1 USC tonight.This team wasn't small potatoes It's hard to say now, all these years later, why any of them came to a struggling junior college football program on the banks of a concrete urban river. Maybe it's because they were young and didn't know any better than to stake their futures on a program that hadn't had a winning season in six years. Or maybe they couldn't find anywhere else that would take them. They all needed a chance, for one reason or another. Some were too small, others too slow. Some were running out of chances. They weren't together long. Two years, maybe three. Junior college football can be like that. Most players blow through, leaving little more than a name in a few game-day programs behind. For some reason, though, the group that passed through Valley College in 1975 was different. The Monarchs went 9-1 and won the Potato Bowl, the California state championship, that year. A great accomplishment, of course, but frankly not any more remarkable than the other teams that win state championships every year. But how many JC football teams have cared enough about their time together to plan 30-year reunions? And if there are any, how many teams can plan a reunion around a college football game in which two of their most accomplished members - Fresno State head coach Pat Hill and offensive line coach Mark Weber - will coach in the biggest game of their careers against USC, the No. 1 team in the country? "The timing's pretty incredible, huh?," said Nolan Day, a defensive end on the 1975 team who helped organize the reunion. "But that was a special team. Some of these guys are like brothers to me, still." Now those brothers are reuniting to support two of their own on one of the biggest days of their lives, and another in his darkest hour. Jay Fisher, a star receiver on the 1975 team, was diagnosed with colon cancer in August. His prognosis is good, but when Day heard of his condition, he decided something had to be done to help lift Fisher's spirits. The timing of tonight's Fresno State-USC game couldn't have been better, or more appropriate. "It was a fleeting moment, but when I look back on those years,I realize that it was kind of the foundation for the rest of my life," said Fisher, who works as a real estate appraiser in Moorpark. "We had a bunch of guys from all over - Idaho, New Mexico, Chicago, L.A. - who all managed to find their way to Valley College to play football. "And that year, 1975, it turned into something special because a bunch of guys made a commitment to a coaching staff that didn't settle for anything less than excellence." That coaching staff was made up of a group of young guys who met at Crespi High in Encino, and were looking for a way to make a name for themselves. Head coach John Becker, who later coached at Oregon and is now the coordinator of player personnel with the Indianapolis Colts, was just 31 when he took over at Valley College in 1974. The program was pathetic, having not had a winning season since 1969. But Becker had a vision and was smart enough to hire hard-working young assistants who believed they could turn things around. First, Becker hired Steve Butler, a defensive tackle on UCLA's 1966 Rose Bowl team whom Becker knew from coaching at Crespi High. Then, he hired Lenny Ciufo, an All-American linebacker at Colorado. Hill was just a 23-year-old assistant coach on that team who was paid so little, he had to sleep in his van and work odd jobs as a bouncer at Big Daddy's nightclub and as a short-order cook at a bowling alley. "That was just my second year of coaching," Hill said Friday afternoon before Fresno State's practice at the Coliseum. "And it was a lot of fun. I have a lot of good memories from that year." Even then, as Hill walked around campus with a red Afro and his trademark fu-manchu mustache, you could sense he had a big future ahead of him. "He was our guy and we'd do anything for him," said Weber, an undersized offensive lineman on the 1975 team who coaches that position on Hill's staff at Fresno State. "It's funny, because he's a little more mature now, but the guys here feel the same way about him." Then there was Harry Welch, who coached running backs and receivers at Valley, and has gone on to become one of the most successful high school football coaches in state history at Canyon High of Canyon Country. "The staff John Becker brought in to that team was probably the strongest coaching staff I've ever heard of at any level I've coached," Welch said. "We were all so young, I think we all learned from each other." All of the coaches were tough. "You just did not drop a ball or fumble a ball in practice," Fisher said. Day recalled a time when he missed practice to go on a game show and won $8,000, but he ended up paying for it afterward. "Harry Welch ran me so hard for missing practice, I almost wished I could've given the money back," Day said. But the players loved every minute of it. Fisher and Day went on to play for Cal State Northridge, under Jack Elway. "It was nowhere as intense as playing at Valley," Fisher said. "Our 1975 team at Valley would've beat CSUN and a lot of Division II schools." Most of the players from that team went on to careers in the private sector. Others went on to successful coaching or playing careers. "You know, we were all just living in the moment back then," said Fisher when asked whether he could've imagined how close that 1975 Valley College team would remain back when he played. "Who knew it would turn out like this? But I'm glad it has. I just like being around the guys." Ramona Shelburne covers high schools for the Daily News. She can be reached at (818) 713-3617 or ramona.shelburne@dailynews.com |