A Family Legacy : 3 Calcagnos Have Worn No. 16 With Distinction at Santa Clara

Uniform16 in Santa Clara University’s red and white colors will never be worn again after Greg Calcagno doffs it at season’s end.

At least that’s the plan. The number was retired before, but then brought back into circulation.

Special circumstances called for it.

Greg is the third Calcagno to wear No. 16 while playing quarterback for the Bronco football team. His father, Ron, and uncle, Ray, made playing the position a family tradition from 1960 to 1967.

Ron was Santa Clara’s first “Little All-American” in 1963. In his career, he passed for what was then a school-record 4,309 yards.

Four years after turning the position over to his younger brother, Ron dropped to second on the list. Ray, Santa Clara’s fourth “Little All-American,” threw for 4,961 yards.

School officials decided after Ray’s last game that No. 16 would never again be worn by a Santa Clara football player.

But then, in 1983, Greg enrolled at Santa Clara and the late Pat Malley, then the Bronco coach, bowed to sentiment and took the number out of mothballs.

Greg, who had worn No. 6 in high school, was assigned No. 16 without asking for it.

“I never imagined they’d bring it out of retirement for me,” Greg said by telephone from his dormitory room at Santa Clara. “Somebody already had No. 6, so I was just hoping I’d get a decent number.”

And Malley was, perhaps, hoping that lucky 16 would help Greg post some big numbers of his own.

If so, he was right.

Calcagno has surpassed both father and uncle and another capable quarterback named Dan Pastorini to become the Broncos’ all-time leading passer.

Entering tonight’s Western Football Conference game against Cal State Northridge at North Campus Stadium, he has thrown for 6,078 yards and bettered all but one of Santa Clara’s career passing records.

Santa Clara Coach Terry Malley, the son of the former coach, was a Bronco ball boy when Ron and Ray played. He remembers Ron as a drop-back passer and an aggressive blocker.

In those days, Malley said, quarterbacks often pitched the ball to a running back and then led the blocking.

“Ron was probably a better blocker than any of our running backs,” Malley said. “We would cringe if Greg had to go out and do the same thing.”

Ray preferred to sprint out and throw. He was “a Fran Tarkenton type,” Malley said. And just as effective. Ray’s teams lost six games in the four years he played quarterback.

“That’s one of the things they have in common,” Malley said. “They all know how to win.” The Broncos, picked to finish next to last in a preseason poll of WFC coaches, are 6-1, 3-0 in conference games.

Ron, who was San Francisco’s high school athlete of the year in 1959, was quarterback in the first years of Santa Clara’s “modern day” football program.

The Broncos were bowl-game contenders in the 1930s and 1940s, but the university disbanded its program after the 1952 season. The school reinstituted the program in 1960.

Ron played under Pat Malley at St. Ignatius Prep and followed the coach to Santa Clara rather than accept the overtures of Oregon and several other national powers of that era.

Santa Clara didn’t grant football scholarships in those days, so Ron was given a baseball scholarship. In 1962, he was the catcher on a Bronco team that lost, 5-4, in 15 innings to Michigan in the College Baseball World Series.

The football program also flourished. “Ron started out playing against a lot of naval bases, but by the time he was a senior they were beating most of the teams in the Far West Conference,” Terry Malley said.

Ron had a short but well-traveled professional career in which he did stints with the Raiders of the American Football League, Indianapolis of the Continental League and both Saskatchewan and Toronto of the Canadian Football League.

He has been a highly successful football coach at St. Francis High in Mountain View, Calif., since 1975.

Ray spent parts of one season with Denver of the AFL and Seattle of the Continental League. After three years in the service, he became an assistant at Santa Clara for a season before joining his brother’s staff at St. Francis.

After seven years at St. Francis, Ray became the head coach at West Catholic Athletic League rival St. Ignatius.

A family feud was in the making. But one never materialized. Not even after Greg became quarterback at St. Francis and uncle was forced to face both brother and nephew.

In eight tries with Ray as coach, St. Ignatius was unable to defeat St. Francis, which has one of the better programs in the Bay area.

Fortunately, all competitiveness was forgotten at family gatherings.

“Not much was ever said before or after and I was always happy about that because I always came out on the short end,” said Ray, who retired as coach after last season. “Thanksgiving with the family was friendly and warm and it always gave me the opportunity to say, ‘Wait ‘til next year.’ ”

Greg, who as a youngster tagged after his father when he scouted games, was varsity starter at St. Francis his final two years.

Ron Calcagno always had hoped his son would be a quarterback, but let Greg make his own decisions.

He admits that he may have been tougher on Greg than he was on other players. “I probably got on him more than other kids,” Ron said. “I expected more of him.”

The team was 26-2 with Greg at quarterback and was Central Coast Section champion in 1982 with a 14-0 record.

Calcagno chose to attend Santa Clara over Boise State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Since his son signed with the Broncos, Ron has tried to keep his coaching to a minimum.

“I think the coaches he has now take care of that,” Ron said. “I’d rather just be his dad.”

Said Greg: “If I have a bad game he’ll try and pick me up a little bit, but when I have a good game he’ll usually say what he really thought.”

Mostly, Ron plays the role of proud father.

“He should be,” brother Ray said. “He has a boy who grew up under his tutelage, played for him, and he’s a good person, a good student, and also happens to be a pretty good athlete. When you have a person like that as a team member it makes you happy. For that person to be your son I think should make you doubly happy.”

There is a chance that in the future Ray might feel the same about another Santa Clara quarterback.

Ray’s sons, Brian, 7, and Jason, 4, might grow up to carry on the family’s tradition.

“Who knows?” Ray said. “It’s already a unique situation.”