ORANGE COUNTY HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES : Football Was His Forte : Beatty Guided Santa Ana College to National Title in ’62

Homer Beatty seems more ready to talk about golf these days than any of his accomplishments as a football coach.

Beatty, 76, recently lamented about a bad back that has kept him off the golf course most of the past few months and played havoc with his handicap.

His handicap had been as low as five in earlier days. He was at nine before his back started acting up, and now carries a 12 at his home course, Alta Vista Country Club in Placentia.

“It’s an old football injury,” he said. “It happened my junior year at USC (1935) and just started acting up again. If I can’t play golf, I don’t know what I’ll do with my time.”

Until he retired from coaching in 1968 and quit teaching in 1976, golf was only a part-time hobby for Beatty.

Before that, he had coached several successful teams, starting at Porterville High School in 1940 and ending with the Orange County Ramblers in 1968.

He also coached at Bakersfield High School, Bakersfield College, Santa Ana College, which later became Rancho Santiago, and Cal State Los Angeles.

Beatty, who has been recognized for his accomplishments by many organizations, is about to add the Orange County Hall of Fame to the list when he is inducted Oct. 29.

But hall of fame appointments are hardly new for Beatty, who has made a hobby of receiving such awards.

He has been enshrined by the California Community College Coaches’ Assn., Kern County, Cal State Los Angeles and Phi Sigma Kappa at USC.

“They make such a big deal about it,” Beatty said. “When I was elected to the Community College Coaches’ Hall of Fame, I found out about it in the paper. But it was a nice honor, just like this one (OC Hall of Fame).”

Beatty’s time in Orange County was short but memorable.

It began when he was football coach at Santa Ana College from 1959-63.

His 1962 team is considered by many as one of the best ever on its level. The team went 10-0 and claimed the national championship by beating Washington Columbia Basin, 20-0, in the Junior Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

The 1962 team still holds the school-season records for most points (382) and yards rushing (2,564).

The team also was one of the best examples of Beatty’s coaching philosophy.

“I always believed that you first had to get the best athletes you could in your program,” said Beatty, also known as a tireless recruiter. “Then you have to maximize their strengths and play away from their weaknesses . . . We also figured that first you had to stop the other team from scoring before worrying about how you scored.”

The fact that Beatty came to Santa Ana was a bit of a fluke.

Beatty knew he wanted to coach when he was at Bakersfield High School and prepared for it as a blocking back at USC. He played varsity in 1935-36. Beatty, who majored in social science and Spanish, graduated in 1937.

He played professionally with the Los Angeles Bulldogs before becoming a coach.

His first job was at Porterville High School in 1940 and the team went 7-0.

Beatty moved from Porterville to Bakersfield High in 1946. He remained at the school through 1952.

Beatty has had a chance to coach many memorable athletes, but his best-known pupil perhaps is Frank Gifford, former USC and New York Giants’ standout and now an ABC sportscaster.

“Football was a salvation for him,” Beatty said about Gifford. “Frank had problems in the classroom as well as on the field. But once he found out what he wanted to do in life, he became the most dedicated player I’ve ever had.”

Beatty’s Bakersfield teams finished either first or second in league each year, but he soon was on the move again, looking for another challenge.

He took over at Bakersfield College in 1953 and led the Renegade program until 1958. His teams compiled a 53-7-1 record and won the Junior Rose Bowl in 1953.

Bakersfield is one place, Beatty says, he might have stayed until retirement had it not been for an illness his wife suffered.

“Heck, it was where I was from,” he said. But the move became necessary when Lucille, his wife of 47 years, came down with “valley fever,” an illness that comes from bacteria in the soil.

And so Beatty went looking for a job and ended up at Santa Ana.

The Dons were 6-3 in each of Beatty’s first two seasons and tied for second in the Eastern Conference each time. In 1961, they were 7-1-1 and won the conference title.

But that was just a prelude to the 1962 season in which the Dons dominated their opposition on the way to winning a national championship.

“His teams were always tough,” said Fullerton College Coach Hal Sherbeck, who coached against Beatty in 1961 and ’62. “They always played hard and that’s the way I remember Homer. You were always in for a hard game when you went against him.”

Looking for a new challenge, Beatty moved on to Cal State Los Angeles.

“Had I been able to take that team (Santa Ana’s 1962 team) with me to Cal State Los Angeles we would have won two more national championships,” Beatty said. “We had everything.”

He didn’t take the entire team, but among those who went along was quarterback Dunn Marteen, who, Beatty says, was the best running quarterback he coached.

Cal State Los Angeles had won 32% of its games before Beatty arrived, but he turned things around quickly.

He coached at Los Angeles for three years and won the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. title each time.

His 1964 team also won the College Division national championship, which is now known as the Division II title.

After the 1965 season, Beatty sought additional funding from the administration, but was not successful in acquiring the money.

He became frustrated when he did not get the support and stepped down after the 1965 season. He continued to teach physical education at CS Los Angeles until he retired in 1976.

Beatty then ran coaching clinics throughout the United States and scouted for professional teams, including the Rams.

He made one final coaching appearence with the Orange County Ramblers, who played in the short-lived U.S. Continental Professional League.

The results were hardly a surprise. In the two years (1967-68) the league existed, the Ramblers compiled a 28-4 record and won the league title each season.

“I had the other business going--the coaching seminars,” Beatty said, “so I really didn’t miss coaching that much. Now I just stay home and watch games on TV, when I’m not out playing golf.”