SANTA ANA – Defense is overrated.
Otherwise, how could the worst defensive basketball player in the history of his hometown get into his hometown’s hall of fame?
The Santa Ana Public Schools Complex opened Friday. The project includes a football stadium, baseball fields, batting cages and soccer fields.
There was a ceremonial ribbon cutting that occurred just before the ribbon melted in the heat.
Also part of the festivities was the unveiling of the Santa Ana Unified School District Athletics Hall of Fame. I was among the 27 inductees in the inaugural class of this hall of fame for which inductees’ names were permanently placed on a wall of fame.
The inductees all graduated from the city’s public schools, including this Saddleback High School alum, class of 1976.
(Mater Dei is in Santa Ana and it has an illustrious athletics history but this is a public schools hall of fame, so no Monarchs allowed. Since the late 1980s, few of Mater Dei’s best athletes have been Santa Ana residents. It’s interesting that the most-accomplished Santa Ana resident who went to a private school, Blaine Nye, a Dallas Cowboys All-Pro lineman in the ’70s, went to Servite.)
Great athletes and coaches were honored. I was inducted in the category of “benefactor.” I was leery of this, as I thought a “benefactor” was someone who owed someone else a lot of money.
So there I was, on a stage with Olympic medal winner Ed Carruthers and baseball All-Star Garry Templeton, and part of a group that includes NFL great Isaac Curtis. That was definitely a “one of these things is not like the others” situation. I’ve been covering high school sports for a few decades now, and somebody must have thought I’ve done it well enough.
It was an honor to be included, and a relief. A relief because I thought the only way I would get anything named for me, or my name permanently placed on a wall of fame, would be to die in a spectacular and fiery event. So Friday was a good day.
All of the athletes honored had at one point of their lives a coach who challenged them and made them better. Often that coach was a high school coach. I had that kind of coach in high school, Mrs. Carol Hagg.
Mrs. Hagg – and we always think of our high school teachers as “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” and our coaches are always “Coach” – was the teacher of the top-quality journalism program at Saddleback. It really was more of a program than a class, as year after year the school newspaper, The Roadrunner, won huge awards.
We had a crackerjack staff. Two kids on it, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, collaborated on a cartoon strip. They continued their partnership as screenwriters, and you’ve seen their work: the “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Shrek” and “National Treasure” movies.
I learned many things from Mrs. Hagg, the first of which was that her name is pronounced “Haig” and don’t-you-forget-it. She taught me the same things an athlete learns from a coach, like how to inspire yourself to improve, and how to be a good teammate.
Mrs. Hagg was the one who gave me the extra push that convinced me to pursue college and a newspaper journalism career.
So I studied journalism at Cal State Fullerton, and pretty quickly I weasled my way onto the Register’s sports staff. I’ve been at the paper since the late ’70s, and became its high school sports columnist in 1990.
It was a proud moment Friday, representing Saddleback High with my name on the wall of fame. The last time my name was on a wall in Santa Ana it appeared in the post office on Grand Ave. with the other wanted posters.
This career has been like stealing, in a way. So many times I’ve covered a great high school game and thought, “I should have paid to get in to see this, but instead I’m getting paid to be here.”
The biggest games are the best games to cover. The CIF-Southern Section championships, and the big rivalry games. It’s an absolute gas to be in a crowded, hot and sweaty gym where two basketball teams with a long, tense history are trading great shots and the student sections are as entertaining as the game.
Even the not-so-good games have something to offer.
Thursday, I covered a football game that ended: Calvary Chapel 40, Sage Hill 7. What will stay in the memory are the Sage Hill players who kept giving it their all, despite the score, through the final play. I’ve seen that type of courage and resolve many times over many years, and I always leave knowing those young people are on their way to becoming successful in whatever direction their lives go.
I played in the basketball program at Saddleback. A major illness one season, another fierce illness in another season and a serious ankle injury in yet another season were challenges.
Besides, I was lacking these two minor traits: talent and physique. I couldn’t stop the Venus de Milo from scoring 25 points if I guarded her.
Was I really that awful? A few years ago, I played on a men’s league team led by sports department colleague Jeff Miller, who verified that I was and I still am.
So I got into my hometown’s sports hall of fame the only way I could. As a “benefactor.” Whatever that means.
Thanks, hometown, for a special way to start this high school sports year. It’s going to be another fun year with great games and great athletes to cover. This benefactoring thing is good.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
