Son of Serbia - King of Santa Clara

By Pete Orozco

The athletic successes that we achieved during that time at Santa Clara pale when compared to the life lessons we learned from Coach Cvijanovich.

Coaches and teachers are paid for doing their job. It's never equal to the amount of work that they put into their jobs but having former students and players say so many wonderful things in recalling the past helps make it worthwhile.

"Why was Coach Lou Cvijanovich so successful?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796048575

Pete Orozco

Pete Orozco. Class of 1966. Football, Basketball and Baseball. When the time came for me to choose a career, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. After thirty years as a teacher and twenty years coaching sports, I feel proud of myself.

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COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY PETE OROZCO.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:               2019911594

                 ISBN:                      HARDCOVER               978-1-7960-4855-1

               SOFTCOVER                978-1-7960-4856-8

                                 EBOOK                           978-1-7960-4857-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/07/2019

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Contents

Foreword

PART 1

My Years at SCHS

Freshman Year

I Need a Hero

Sophmore Year

Junior Year

Senior Year

PART II

Former Student-Athletes’ Thoughts

PART III

Endnotes

Foreword

This book is a work of the heart from a former disciple. It is also a bit of a treasure box in that it captures a time in our past, in America, in our families when sport was king: not just one sport as in today’s era of specialization but all three of the major sports that were played in southern California at the time. A time when the seasons could be identified not by sun and rain, how much daylight we had or the temperature but what uniform the boys were wearing.

There were typically three seasons, not four, in our family. During football season, we wore coats and sat on blankets as we watched the Friday or Saturday night game in the heavy fog or chill night air of coastal Oxnard or neighboring towns. Basketball season meant squeezing into the steamy, tiny gym at Santa Clara with its cacophony of sounds and reverberation of the bleacher seats as the crowd stamped its feet to the cheers. I can still feel that ear-popping sensation as the whole gym felt as though we were inside a large kettle drum. Baseball season brought dusty, hard bleachers and the limited selections at the geedunk stand for our dinner as we watched as many as three games in one day. I was the little sister who cheered for her talented brothers no matter what they were playing. Our parents were part of the little league coaches, snack stand volunteers, and booster members who made it all seem effortless.

The story Pete tells is part memoir and part tribute, identifying a point when the right talent, circumstance and leader came together to create what seemed to be unbridled success. These were heady days for the boys who grew up in it. Santa Clara High School in Oxnard, California was a peculiarity in that it was a small, accessible, parochial school with a legendary sports program that made many larger, well-known academies envious.

Yet the larger images that come out of this telling are the life-long lessons that stayed with these athletes and the reason for which their love of Coach Cvijanovich is most evident. Our societal interest in youth sports is because we want to teach our children coordination, fortitude and endurance. But we also hope that they achieve less obvious things: self-confidence, teamwork and problem-solving that playing a sports brings. This is the best that sports can offer (and the realization that the lack of girl’s sports and women’s concomitant absence in the boardroom during that time is only now being addressed)

Coach C gifted these young men with skills that they would employ for the rest of their lives. In most, he created a loyalty military commanders would covet and a sense of commitment that coworkers and life partners reaped. In some sense, this is not all that uncommon; many coaches bring these offerings to their players. But like Dr. Seuss’ Horton the elephant, Lou Cvijanovich meant what he said and said what he meant. He kept loyal to his players one hundred percent. He never abandoned his boys even long after they left his court, field or diamond. He persisted in being their role model, their Chiron, their mentor until the day he died. How many of us today can say we have someone like that in our lives?

Connie Orozco-Morgan

Part 1

My Years at SCHS

The date was June 4, 1966. My Santa Clara High School baseball team was playing in the C.I.F. Championship game against Salton Sea High School. When I came to bat in the third inning, the first pitch the Salton Sea pitcher threw me was a curve ball that didn’t break, it was just hanging there about shoulder high. Even though it was a little above the strike zone, I just couldn’t resist, I took a full swing accompanied by a loud grunt and connected with