1958 Boys Wrestling Team: NCS Title Winners
The 1958 Castro Valley High School Boys Wrestling Team, the first CVHS team to win an NCS title.
Top row: Coach Vaughn Hitchcock, Benson, Holden, Alves, Adamson, Gough, Emmons, T. Boring, Stevens, Bennett, Paulsonl, Hunan, Wilburn, Sessions, Jogoe, Lerman and Vierra.
Middle row: Cerny, McBeth, Cammerville, Opperman, Scotena, Ellicker, Campbell, Thompson, Lang, Silveira and Brushman
Bottom row: Sorenson, Thomey, Abbott, Ramm, Preisendorf, Peterson, B. Boring, O'Connell, Weiss, Taylor and Glasser.
A funny thing happened to the powerful Hayward High wrestling team in route to a likely North Coast Section (NCS) championship in 1958. An upstart high school in neighboring Castro Valley swooped in and took it away.
That’s exactly happened in Castro Valley High School’s second year of existence, when several of former Hayward wrestling standouts helped lead their new hometown team – then known as the Spartans – to the school’s first-ever NCS championship.
Sixty-six years later, Castro Valley High has won NCS team championships in seven different girls sports and in six boys sports. Heck, even once in coed badminton. But the first was the 1958 wrestling team and for that accomplishment – as well as earning the distinction of being the first-ever NCS wrestling champ – it has been selected as the male-team entrant into the Castro Valley Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024.
It all started with a former football player and a wrestling mat. When Castro Valley High opened its doors in September of 1956, a total of 1,363 students – pretty much equally split between freshmen and Hayward High transfers – enrolled for classes. It didn’t take long to establish a first tradition: this would be a wrestling school.
“I remember when I went to the first meeting my freshman year (before the 1959 season),” recalls Mike Remer, a 7th Grader at Earl Warren Junior High when the new high school opened. “120 guys signed up.”
When Castro Valley finished 17 points ahead of Hayward in the 1958 inaugural competition at Menlo-Atherton High, Remer assures it never would have happened without Vaughan Hitchcock.
A former standout wrestler and football player at Hayward High and Washington State, Hitchcock established the Castro Valley wrestling program before the paint had dried at the new school and had his guys raising an NCS banner into the gymnasium rafters within 18 months of the school’s opening.
“He devoted his whole day to wrestling,” Remer claims. “He really made it a big thing. We had stat girls, cheerleaders … It was very impressive.”
The key to the school’s almost immediate success, legendary local wrestling coach Zach Papachristos observed, was Hitchcock’s belief that football players could make good wrestlers, and vice versa.
“He was one heck of a recruiter,” Papachristos boasts. “Back then, athletes participated in two or three sports. He could talk kids into coming out for wrestling. It was one of the best wrestling programs in Northern California. It was because of Vaughan Hitchcock.”
Even with a great coach, winning the first NCS championship was no easy task. At the time, the section finals drew teams from as far away as Santa Cruz to the west, Gilroy to the south, Pittsburg to the east and Novato to the north. Still, Castro Valley came out on top, with Vincent Weis (112 pounds) and Jerry Campbell (145) winning individual titles, John Thompson (138), John McBeth (154) and Bob Paterson (165) placing second, and Bill Silveira (120) taking third.
When the individual points were totaled, Castro Valley had 65, topping Hayward (48) and third-place Camden of San Jose (39).
Campbell and Thompson, the Most Valuable Wrestler at the Alameda County Athletic League Championships, were the season-long stars of the team, but McBeth’s success under the NCS spotlight was as important as any. Finishing ahead of Hayward’s Ben Paz, who took third, it gave the Spartans a nice cushion in the standings.
Among the many others who contributed to the championship were Craig Preisendorf, Harvey Scatena, Jay Opperman, Bob Boring, Ron Cerny, Rick Thomey, Terry Gough, Stan Benson and Larry Wilburn.
One year later, the team was even better. Castro Valley had eight wrestlers finish in the top three at the NCS meet, with McBeth, Paterson and Opperman winning championships. The Spartans were so dominant by that point, they even rewrote wrestling rules.
“We had a guy named Denny O’Connell,” Remer recalls of the 138-pounder. “He wore tights only in his matches. Within 30 seconds, he was covered in sweat, and no one wanted to touch him. They changed the rule the next year that you had to wear a top.
“The funny thing about Denny was all he ate was peanut butter.”
This is the second in a series of 16 articles profiling the 2024 inductees into the Castro Valley Sports Hall of Fame.
