Editorial The Oregonian, Portland -Tuesday, June 15, 1971, page 22
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) baseball title won by Linfield College is – by any guideline – a true state of Oregon championship.
Every member of the Linfield team which traveled to Phoenix for the tournament, with the exception of star pitcher Vince Doherty, lists an Oregon city as his hometown. And Doherty, who is from Moscow, Idaho, played high school baseball in Reedsport.
The Linfield coach, Ad Rutschman, is strictly an Oregon product, also. He participated in sports in Hillsboro and at Linfield and then coached Hillsboro High School to both state football and baseball championships before returning to the McMinnville institution three years ago.
The Wildcats’ title – their second in seven years – is a tribute to the Linfield athletic program headed by Roy Helser. The Wildcat sports facilities are among the barest in the Northwest and rumors have the Linfield intercollegiate program headed for financial troubles. Excellent coaching and an alumni pipeline form the high schools have kept Linfield strong, however.
In an era when
college sports, with big budgets and expensive recruiting, are under fire from
all quarters, it is a pleasure to see a national championship won by Oregon
kids playing on an athletic shoestring.
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Wildcatville comments:
--This Oregonian editorial from 1971 is/was posted
in 2019. There’s about 48 years between those years. Some things never change.
--When this editorial ran, June 15, 1971, J. Richard Nokes, was Oregonian managing editor. In 1936, he graduated from Linfield as did Paul Durham, former Linfield athletic director and football coach. Also a member of the same class was Roy Helser, who led Linfield to its first national sports team title in any sport in 1966. (Linfield won the 1966 NAIA World Series.) However, Helser, because he left school to play pro baseball, didn’t graduate from Linfield until 1941. Helser, whom Ad Rutschman succeeded as Linfield baseball coach, was Linfield athletic director in 1971.
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