Fans in McMinnville Figure
Linfield to Be Oregon's Best Football Team
By DICK
LEUTZINGER of The (Eugene, Oregon) Register-Guard
Thursday, Nov. 22, 1962
As important as this
weekend's little affair between Oregon and Oregon State may be to some people,
it's strictly second-rate stuff as far as the folks in a little community about
40 miles southwest of Portland are concerned.
In the small, out-of-the-way community
of McMinnville, the 7,600 citizens have their own team, Linfield College, to
root for. To them, Oregon and Oregon State are bush league, as exciting as a
chess match, as significant as the rainfall in Siberia.
While most people agree the
winner of the Webfoot-Beaver scuffle is undisputedly the state's most
successful football team, the population of McMinnville would be inclined to
argue even if both teams could win.
Linfield, they say, is
champion. The Wildcats would get chopped up in minutes against either of the
Eugene or Corvallis outfits, yet there's still no denying it: Linfield is, and
has been for most of the past seven years, Oregon's winningest team.
Not a Loss
Paul Durham, who's been
coaching at the 1,000-student McMinnville school for as long as most people
there can remember, had a team this year that didn't lose to anybody. Last year
it lost only to Pittsburgh State in the Camellia Bowl.
In fact, since 1955, the
Wildcats have lost only nine games while winning 51. They've won 21 regular
season games row, 14 straight at home and 12 in league play. They are the only
team in Northwest Conference (NWC) history ever to have put two undefeated
seasons back to back.
Naturally, Linfield plays
schools of comparable size. Yet considering the similar restrictions on
recruiting facing all NWC schools, Durham's success has been amazing.
Each school in the conference
is allowed to give through grants-in-aid, an amount not exceeding 30 times one
student's tuition. It must be spread out so no student-athlete receives more
than three-fourths of his fees through scholarship.
In other words, since a
year's tuition at Linfield is $800, the grants-in-aid may total $24,000 but no
one athlete may receive more than $600 in aid.
Durham figures any athlete
looking for as much financial aid as he can get will shy away from Northwest
Conference schools anyway and splits the grant-in-aid allotment tip even
further, giving the full three-fourths only to outstanding two-sport athletes.
Not Just Football
The 30 - times - tuition
allowance, incidentally, does not cover just the football team, but is all the
league allows for the four major sports combined football, basketball, baseball
and track.
Durham's success, besides
teaching sound football, obviously must lie somewhere other than being able to
hire his talent. It does.
Time he's just completed his
15th season as Linfield's head coach and the school's excellent curriculum in
physical education have provided Durham with a network of self-appointed
recruiters the likes of which couldn't be hired for any kind of money.
When this season began, 174
Linfield graduates were coaching, mostly in small high schools in Oregon and
Washington. In recent year, many of them, have sent their best players to
Linfield.
Testimonial of this is the
fact that on this year's 58-man football squad, only nine players arc from out
of the Northwest.
The players themselves, after
taking a quick liking to Durham and the school, often talk their friends into
enrolling, too.
Such a case brought Durham
one of his fullbacks a year ago. The fullback. Bob Ferguson who went to South Eugene,
decided on Linfield because its all-conference guard and Bob's friend, Fred vonAppen,
played on the same team as Ferguson at South and told him about Linfield.
Played Key Roles
Both played key roles in the
Wildcats' second straight undefeated season which ended just last week with a
13-0 win over arch-rival Pacific, a team the Wildcats have been playing since
1896.
VonAppen, who weighed less
than 180 pounds when he was an all-district tackle at South in 1959, now weighs
about 215 and is expected to be on the all-NWC team for the second straight
year when it is announced soon.
Fred wanted to play football
in college, knew he probably wouldn't have much chance at a large school "They
wouldn't give me the time of day, he says of Oregon laughingly so he enrolled
at Linfield.
Durham, who was starting vonAppen
in a few games by the end of his freshman year, thinks highly of him. ". .
. . he's big, strong, agile, determined, dedicated, anything you want," he
smiles.
His only problem, Durham
says, is a result of having grown too fast. "I think he took on weight a
little too fast and it hurt his agility a little. I think he'll improve some
more next year, and if we have another good year, he'll be a candidate for
Little All-American.
”If he keeps his weight down
around 215 (he weighed 223 before the season), he'll catch up in agility."
Reacting to defensive changes
in the best part of Fred's game, according to Durham and open-field blocking
the only weak part. "If he corrects that, he can be one of the best guards
that ever played in our league.
"He's as determined and
dedicated to the game of football as anybody I've ever had," Durham says.
Coach Durham, who doubles as
Linfield athletic director and sports editor of the town newspaper, doesn't
rate Ferguson so highly, but Bob hasn't been around as long as vonAppen.
A sophomore scholastically
now, Ferguson still has three years of eligibility since he missed his freshman
season because of an injury. He suffered a dislocated shoulder during
pre-season practice before he ever attended a class his freshman year.
Bob, a 195-pound power runner
not quite as fast or as tricky as first-string fullback Dennis Vitale,
nonetheless saw considerable action this past season.
Vitale was used mainly on
fast fields, but since the Wildcats played several games in the rain, Ferguson
got in enough times to carry the ball 46 times for a 5.4-yard average.
"He's a real strong
runner," Durham says. "He punishes the defense . . . runs right over
it. We were lucky to have him with this weather."
After Linfield had played Chico
State during the Columbus Day storm, the Chico players said Ferguson had hit
them harder than anyone they'd seen all season.
"He has a tremendous
explosive charge," Durham says, thinking ahead to next year when he may
also use him as a defensive end. "Nobody's going to push him around out
there he doesn't like it."
He was probably thinking nobody's
going to push Linfield around next year cither. After all, only seven players
will be lost by graduation and this season was just supposed to be a building
year.
Photo cutline: BOB FERGUSON
“...A Real Strong Runner"
Photo cutline: FRED VONAPPEN “…He's
Big, Strong, Agile …”
Postscript:
Thanks to Bob Ferguson, this article from the
Nov. 22, 1962, issue of the Eugene, Ore.,
Register-Guard daily newspaper. It’s about infield football players Bob and
Fred vonAppen, both Linfield Class
of 1965 both also grads of South Eugene High School. Both are members of the
Linfield Athletics Hall of Fame, too. Plenty of quotes in the article from Coach Paul Durham (Linfield Class of
1936).
An original clipping of the
article was given to Bob “by an old South Eugene High classmate. Her mom had
just passed on and she was going through her mother’s stuff and found the
article. While she was attending Stephens College her mom saved all articles
from the newspaper about her daughter’s South Eugene High classmates. I had
never seen the article,” Bob said. “It is a nice ‘blast from the past.’ ”
..........................
Below are photos of Bob Ferguson from "Eugenean" yearbook of South Eugene High School
