COLLEGE REUNION : Former High School Teammates Bid for Increased Glory at Ventura

The glory days do indeed pass most athletes by. Hometown heroics become little more than memories long before letterman’s jackets are mothballed.

For Tim Albrent, Tran Sanders and Chris Thomas, however, the glory days are past and prologue.

The trio started and played key roles on the 1987 Ventura High football team that finished 10-2. It’s not exactly back to the future, but now, two seasons later, they are hoping to reignite that excitement at Ventura College.

That 1987 team won its first eight games and finished with the second-highest win total at Ventura High since the 1951 Southern Section Northern Division co-championship team.

Sanders was a senior guard, Albrent a junior tailback and Thomas a junior free safety on the 1987 Ventura team.

“Those are three great kids,” Ventura High Coach Harvey Kochel said. “The team wouldn’t have been nearly as good without them.”

Ventura College Coach Dick James says as much now.

James calls Albrent, Sanders and Thomas “certainly the backbone of the offensive side of the football.”

Sanders is a redshirt sophomore center, Albrent a sophomore quarterback and Thomas a sophomore wide receiver. The coming season looms large, yet the remembrance of games past remains emblazoned in their minds.

“We talk about it all the time, me and Timmy and a couple of my other friends,” Sanders said. “We’ll go out some night, and we’ll just start talking about high school football.”

Unfortunately for the Ventura High connection, a parallel can be drawn between this season and the 1988 season, in which the Cougars were stung by graduation losses as well as a disappointing end to the 1987 season. In 1988, when Thomas and Albrent were seniors--Sanders had graduated--the team finished 4-6.

Similarly, Ventura College lost its final four games last fall and finished 7-4. Several key contributors from that team have departed.

Yet the trio is approaching the season with optimism. Albrent, Sanders and Thomas are ready to put their imprint on what they believe is a young but talented team.

Albrent (6-foot-2, 205 pounds) is the link between center Sanders and wide receiver Thomas, on and off the field.

Albrent rushed for nearly 900 yards as a tailback on the 1987 Ventura High team and played fullback and quarterback his senior year.

“It wasn’t until he came to our place that we said, ‘There’s no more switching, you are the quarterback,’ ” said James, who has put option plays and bootlegs into the offensive package to take advantage of Albrent’s running skills.

Albrent started the first game at quarterback last season but played sparingly thereafter.

However, he and James spent hundreds of hours this spring and summer in the film room and on the field, working on the mental and physical nuances of playing quarterback.

Albrent, who averaged 37.5 yards a kick in 1989, might be a better punter than a passer, but he would get a kick out of playing quarterback at a four-year school. He completed 16 of 40 passes for 182 yards and four touchdowns last fall and should have even more opportunity to prove himself this season.

Thomas is described by James as Ventura’s most talented player; he likely will be the team’s most highly recruited athlete.

“I think we have to feature Chris Thomas within every means possible,” James said. “He has got to get his hands on the ball. Chris has got to catch 50 balls for us. He can dominate at wide receiver.”

One of only four returning starters on offense, Thomas (6-2, 175) caught 18 passes (16.0 average), four for touchdowns. He received an All-Western State Conference Northern Division honorable mention as a kick returner.

“Coming out here catching at these practices that we’ve been having, I’m just doing a lot better than I’ve ever done before,” Thomas said. “I hope that continues throughout the season.”

If the explosive Thomas is the team rocket, Sanders is the spark plug, sturdy and dependable.

The center often is described as the coach on the field, a role for which Sanders is well-suited. After starting at guard his freshman season, Sanders sat out his sophomore year, not wanting to risk an injury that would jeopardize his planned career as a firefighter.

He spent last fall working as a junior-varsity coach at Ventura High and eventually cooled to the idea of becoming a firefighter.

“I had a great time,” said Sanders, who now hopes to become a coach. “Coaching over at the high school helped keep me in contact with football. . . what made me miss it so much is seeing kids having a good time.”

Sanders is a transistor-sized lineman at 6-0, 228 pounds.

“I’m just out having fun this year. It’s for myself,” said Sanders.

Sanders likely will face some monsters during the course of a daunting schedule that begins Saturday with a home game against El Camino, which finished last season 10-1.

“That’s going to be a good indicator of how the season is going to be,” Thomas said.

It’s more than a test, it’s the bar exam. The regular season ends with a Nov. 17 road game against Moorpark, which was ranked ninth in the state at 9-2.

“I don’t see why we couldn’t have the same year we had when I was a junior or even better,” Albrent said. “I don’t see why we can’t have a 10- or nine-win season this year.”