That Championship Day

The week before Cal Lutheran’s NAIA Division II championship game with Westminster College, rain turned the brush-covered hills surrounding the school from brown to green. The sky was blue, the air crisp.

The game was played in front of NBC cameras--Tommy Hawkins and Ross Porter did the broadcast on a tape delay--and nearly 10,000 spectators at Mt. Clef field.

“A perfect day to play for a national championship,” CLC Coach Bob Shoup recalled. His team won, 30-14.

The Times’ Jim Murray, whose daughter Pam was a CLC student in 1971, captured the small college flavor of the event in a column the following week:

“The traffic began to build as early as 10 minutes before the game. . . . The marching band looked more like a combo. . . . No writers flew in from the East to cover it, but several little girls on horseback watched from the end zone. The campus was hardly in a ferment. Guitar music sailed down from the dormitory after kickoff.”

Thousand Oaks in 1971 was not the bustling suburb of more than 100,000 people it is today. A rough-and-tumble cowboy flavor permeated the community of 40,000 long before the image was fashionable.

CLC, in the northwest corner of town, was virtually isolated by hills. Folks rode by the campus on horseback on their way to the Santa Rosa Valley or stopped under a shady oak for a quiet picnic.

“You could stand on the football field and not see one house,” recalls Gene Uebelhart.

Several of the players formed a rugby team during the spring. “We loved the physical contact,” Sam Cvijanovich says.

Forming a traveling kazoo band was another was to pass the time and the 110-member group had an appearance on the Steve Allen Show.

“Few of us had cars,” recalls Jim Bauer. “We were stuck in T. O. together and tried to make the best of it. Redneck cowboys played beside blacks, Vietnam veterans played next to draft card burners.

“There was a social and political awareness you don’t see anymore. The kids today, I love ‘em, but the biggest topic of discussion is what they’re going to wear to the Halloween dance. Compared to the way we were, they’re vanilla pudding.”