Crescenta Valley High grad, former NFL player pays a visit to campus

One of Crescenta Valley High School’s first graduates, who became a professional football player, returned to his alma mater Friday morning where he encouraged the students to never give up.

Michael Hull, who graduated from Crescenta Valley in 1963 , went on to play football for USC and then on to the Chicago Bears in 1968 and later, the Washington Redskins, with whom he played in Super Bowl VII.

He returned to Crescenta Valley High School on Friday to deliver a golden football.

The NFL earlier this year launched a campaign in advance of the 50th Super Bowl, giving a golden football to each high school that has an alum who played in a Super Bowl game.

After seven years in the National Football League, Hull went on to earn a law degree, become a federal prosecutor and raise two children with his wife, Connie.

In the school’s auditorium on Friday, he said La Crescenta has always held significance for him, particularly Crescenta Valley High School, where he warmed the bench at age 14 before playing football.

“I am a Falcon to the core,” he told the students, adding that it was his classmates who decided on the mascot for the school.

“The falcon itself is an example of a soaring, wonderful, insightful keen-eyed, enduring creature. That was one of the reasons we picked it. This was the beginning. This is why this homecoming is so wonderful.”

Hull, now a San Clemente resident, spoke of many times in his athletic career where his limbs were battered, but he’d keep playing, and he urged the students to rely on hard work and not talent, for their success.

“It has been a huge struggle. It has been a fight. Persistence is the key,” he said, adding later that much of his advice for navigating life is not about football.

“You don’t have to be an athlete. But you need to be good at something. You need to elevate yourself. You need to elevate those around you,” he said.

For Crescenta Valley junior Teny Shahjahanian, Hull’s words set her into motion.

“I learned a lot of good stuff from him like to progress on my learning and to never give up and to never stop improving and if life gets hard, just persevere and get through it.”

After his speech, she asked him for his autograph, posed for a photo with him, and told him about her own academic goals.

Last summer, she had been accepted to a summer school program at Harvard University but ultimately didn’t attend.

She said Hull encouraged her to go this summer.

“Now, from his speech, I feel like I have to go, and I want to go. This summer, I will go, because of him,” she said.