On Aug. 1, I happened to glance toward the book shelf where my high school annuals are kept. I had a fleeting thought to pull one out and take a look at it, but then something else on the same shelf caught my eye:
It was a program from the annual high school all-star football game featuring players from the state’s biggest high schools, including West Albany, which had sent Pat Hampl to the contest at OSU’s Parker Stadium.
What really caught my eye was the date: Aug. 1, 1992, meaning the game, which I had covered, had taken place exactly two decades earlier. How coincidental that I would have for no particular reason pulled out that program on the game’s 20-year anniversary.
I don’t remember a ton about the game and couldn’t tell you which side won, the North (basically the greater Portland area) or the South. I seem to recall the contest taking place on a warm Saturday night, and not much else.
Glancing over the rosters, I was reminded that the South team included a huge lineman from Thurston named Willy Roaf, who went on to play at Oregon, and a crafty, sure-handed receiver from South Salem named Joe Douglass, who ended up at Oregon State.
Roaf played four years at UO, while Douglass spent two years lost in Jerry Pettibone’s wishbone offense before transferring to Montana; with the Grizzlies, he returned to Corvallis and took part in a spanking of the Beavers and also won a national title, and this fall he will be inducted into the Grizzlies’ hall of fame.
Also playing a role in that 1992 football game was current West Albany principal Susie Orsborne:
And now our walk down memory lane shifts to Catch of the Day, No. 23, a Montgomery Ward-made Stan Musial glove from the 1940s. A friend who knows I collect gloves picked this one up for me:
