Proud Classmates

Date: 11/12/2012

From: Fred Lopez

To: Editor of The Lompoc Record

Subject: Don’t know if they will print it, but it was something the town needed to be reminded of. It expresses how I felt about the school and our football team.

50 years ago the Lompoc High Football Team of 1962 won the first SLO League Championship in Lompoc history. We were rated last in the league before the start of the season, but under Coach Bob Leck's no-nonsense tutelage we ended up 6-3, co-champions with Arroyo Grande. Since we beat AG in the regular season we went to our first CIF AA playoff. We lost 25-14 but that didn't dull the shine on our league trophy. It was a new school campus, we were the first seniors on its sidewalks and we inaugurated the Braves athletic stadium in a manner befitting a wonderful town. There was no Cabrillo High school, no bad parts of town; we were just a disparate bunch of kids from the town, the farms, and Vandenberg AFB who loved to play football. There were no real stars, just average kids with the above average desire to be the best and have fun doing it. We lost our first two games, non-league. Then we won the next five league games in a row, and we really started to believe. The excitement in the town was palpable and we were filling the stadium at every game. Our next game was away at Atascadero, which we should have won because everyone was beating them. But we lost, our heads were getting bigger than our hearts. The last game, away against Santa Maria our arch rival, was played before a packed stadium, and we came away League Champs. We learned many of life's lessons that season .. how to win, how to lose, not to quit, teamwork, that was to serve us later in life during a very turbulent time in our nations history. So Go Braves, we players from the past salute you as you carry on the tradition of winning.