OCC Hall of Fame induction Friday
Orange Coast College will honor five athletic standouts and one team at the 2016 Athletics Hall of Fame Induction on Friday at 5 p.m. at the David A. Grant Rowing Center in Newport Beach.
This year’s inductees are longtime crew coach David A. Grant, men’s golf state champion Michael Reehl, gymnastics standout Robyn Tomlinson, men’s soccer great Andy Strouse, football star Jack Clark and the 1968 men’s varsity eight crew that won the Western Sprints Championships.
Tickets are $20 at the door. For information, contact Assistant Athletic Director Laura Behr at (714) 432-5112.
Inductee profiles follow:
ROBYN TOMLINSON
She holds several individual OCC gymnastics records and led the program in 1979 and 1980.
In 1979, she helped OCC finish second at the South Coast Conference finals and sixth place in the state.
In her first season with the Pirates, Tomlinson set four new high marks in four individual events. She scored an 8.45 on the vault, an 8.3 on the uneven bars, an 8.1 on the balance beam and notched an all-around score of 32.8. In a duel matchup with Grossmont, Tomlinson helped the Pirates set a team record with 117.05 points.
After earning all-conference honors, Tomlinson finished 10th all-around in the state after qualifying on the uneven bars and floor exercise, an event in which she finished fifth in the state.
As a sophomore, Tomlinson was captain of a team that won the SCC Championships. She again earned all-conference honors, was a state silver medalist in the floor exercise, and won state bronze on the balance beam. She also qualified for the vault and finished fourth and was sixth all-around in the state.
After her career at Coast, Tomlinson earned a degree in sociology and psychology from Cal State Fullerton and has been a longtime employee for the Disneyland Resort. After starting out as a performer, Tomlinson is now the director of entertainment operations at Disneyland Park.
JACK CLARK
Clark came to OCC after lettering in three sports at Edison High, but as a Pirate, he will forever be associated with one of the top football teams in California community college history.
An offensive tackle for two seasons, Clark helped pave the way for a dominant offense. After helping OCC advance to the state championship game in 1974, Clark and the Pirates rolled through the competition in 1975, going 11-0 and winning the national title following a 38-14 win over Rio Hondo in the Avocado Bowl.
He earned a scholarship to UC Berkeley, where he was the starting left tackle in 1976 and 1977.
In addition, Clark competed on Cal’s rugby squad and, following a brief professional football career with the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League, he continued his rugby career.
He was named MVP at the 1979 national team trials and was later named to the World XV team that played at Cardiff in 1980 for the Welsh centennial celebration.
After his playing career, Clark was named assistant rugby coach at Cal in 1982, and became head coach in 1984. During his 33-year tenure as head coach, the Golden Bears have won 27 national collegiate championships. Clark’s coaching record at Cal is 614-80-5 (an .878 winning percentage) in the traditional, 15-a-side version of the sport and a 109-14 (.886) record in the Olympic sevens.
Clark was head coach of the U.S. national team from 1993 to 1999 and helped the Americans to 16 international test matches, the most ever by a U.S. national team coach. In 2014, Clark was inducted into the U.S. Rugby Hall of Fame and in 2016 he was enshrined into the Cal Hall of Fame.
ANDY STROUSE
After a stellar prep career at Edison High, Strouse left his mark in OCC men’s soccer annals. He helped lead the Pirates to the program’s first state title in 1989, when OCC finished 18-4-2. He scored twice in a 3-2 win over Fresno City College in the state title match.
Strouse was named Orange Empire Conference Player of the Year, a collegiate Far-West All-American and was the 1989-1990 OCC Male Athlete of the Year.
As a sophomore, he collected 29 goals and 13 assists to lead Coast to a share of its third straight OEC title. Once again, Strouse was named the OEC Player of the Year as the Pirates finished 15-5-3 and reached the Southern California Regional final.
Strouse then played at SMU, which reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament both of his seasons.
He scored a team-best 12 goals and added seven assists as a senior and SMU was 31-7-4 with him in the lineup.
He played three matches for the U.S. national team in 1992, then played professionally for the Anaheim Splash of the Continental Indoor Soccer League in 1994. In 1995, Strouse played with the Los Angeles Salsa of the USISL before returning to the Splash in 1996.
MICHAEL REEHL
Reehl has been a presence in the local golf scene and beyond for more than six decades. After earning all-league honors for four years and winning a pair of individual league titles at Corona del Mar High, he competed for OCC in 1970.
Reehl finished fourth at the 1970 South Coast Conference Championships to earn a spot at the state tournament, where he claimed the state crown in a playoff after posting a 36-hole total of 76-72—148.
He played three years at Long Beach State, earning all-conference honors in 1972-73 and All-American recognition in 1972, when he won the individual conference championship.
In 1973, Reehl was named team captain and helped the 49ers win the conference championship.
A PGA member since 1982, Reehl became the director of golf in 1984 at Santa Ana Country Club, where he first began working as a bag boy in 1967. He remained the club’s director of golf until 2010.
A former SCPGA Professional of the Year, Reehl is a member of the Daily Pilot Hall of Fame and the Southern California Junior College Golf Hall of Fame.
DAVID GRANT
Grant has been a fixture with the OCC crew and sailing programs for more than five decades and his hard work and leadership permeates throughout the entire campus.
Grant’s tenure on the water began in the fall of 1962 when he took over a struggling crew program, as well as the sailing team. Despite a lack of early experience as a crew coach, Grant quickly helped turn OCC into a national rowing power that took on some of the country’s top four-year programs.
OCC has travelled the country and even the world to row against the best of the best. Coast crew has taken part in such prestigious events as the Dublin Regatta and the Henley Royal Regatta in Great Britain, the world’s premier rowing event.
In 1985, the OCC crew became the first American crew to visit and compete in the People’s Republic of China. During Grant’s tenure, dozens of his former rowers continued in the sport as head coaches at the four-year level, including greats like Wisconsin head coach and OCC Athletics hall of famer Chris Clark and Stanford’s Craig Amerkhanian.
Perennially racing against the top-level colleges and universities, the Pirates won more than 80% of the time during Grant’s coaching tenure.
In 1984, Grant was a member of the coaching staff for the U.S. rowing team that competed in the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
In addition to his coaching success, Grant has been a successful professor, associate dean of students and dean of students for several years before becoming the college’s fifth president on July 1, 1990, a position he held until January of 1996.
Grant has been the president of the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, the Newport Beach Aquatic Center and has been a president of the Friends of the OCC Library.
Now the president of the Coast Community College District Board of Trustees, Grant is a member of the Intercollegiate Sailing Assn. Hall of Fame as well as the Newport Harbor High Hall of Fame.
In 2009, OCC renamed the boathouse and sailing center after Grant for his tireless work and dedication to the school and to the sport.
THE 1968 MEN’S VARSITY EIGHT CREW
It was a slow rise to the top for OCC’s men’s crew in the early 1960s before the arrival of coach David Grant. A few years later, the Pirates began to find success, and a winning tradition developed. After a solid third-place finish at the Western Sprints Championships in 1967, Coast put together the strongest varsity squad in the school’s history and in 1968, dominated the competition.
The 1968 varsity eight was comprised of Jay Amestoy, Ron Lindsey, Phil Peterson, Cary Simonds, John Baie (captain), Dave Halliday, Geof Strand, Jim Jorgensen, and coxswain Al Pierce.
The tone was set for a memorable season when OCC broke the course record against Long Beach State, conquering the 2,000-meter Lido Channel race with a time of six minutes, 15 seconds, eight seconds better than the previous mark.
Coast then took its act on the road and set a course record at the Long Beach Regatta (6:00.3) before heading up to UC Berkeley for the first time in school history. There, the Pirates topped the Golden Bears by more than one boat length.
At the Newport Regatta, OCC cruised to victory against Loyola Marymount, UC Irvine and San Diego State, finishing nine seconds ahead of the runner-up Anteaters.
At the San Diego Regatta, OCC topped UCI by 17 seconds.
Later, OCC bested UCLA by nearly six seconds and broke its own Lido Channel course record with a time of 6:11.5.
At the Western Sprints Championships in Washington, the Pirates topped fellow finalists UCLA, Cal, Washington, Stanford and British Columbia, with a course-record time of 6:07.2.
OCC became the first community college to compete in the Intercollegiate Rowing Assn. Championship in Syracuse, N.Y. In front of more than 70,000 on the shores of Lake Onondaga, the Pirates battled the nation’s top crew, the University of Pennsylvania, and other top Ivy League schools. Falling to fifth place early in the race, Coast fought back to third at the halfway point before edging out Navy and finishing just two boat lengths behind victorious Penn.
— From staff reports
— From staff reports