CSM Athletics Hall of Fame
Bulldog community honors its best at triennial bash brimming with emotion and pride
College of San Mateo’s sports community honors its best with induction into the Athletics Hall of Fame. Every three years, women and men who’ve figured greatly in Bulldog achievement, values and ideals are recognized with their names inscribed on the pillars flanking the CSM gym entrance. This recognition includes an emotional awards ceremony that packs CSM’s Theatre, and a flashy reception in College Center overlooking the San Francisco Bay.
“We’re adding to the culture of our college. We’re recognizing success. We’re moving into the future,” said Athletic Director Andreas Wolf at the 2022 event.
That occasion also honored CSM’s centennial and the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the federal law for gender equity in education that transformed women’s sports. Reflecting Title IX’s impact, 2022’s Hall of Fame inducted an equal number of women and men. They ranged from longtime football Coach Larry Owens to the undefeated 2015 softball team, which just missed a state title but led a rise in Bulldog recruiting and performance that led to 2022’s state championship.
Not just champions are honored: 2022’s roster included Kirk Sandvick, the football team’s hardworking “ball boy” for 45 years, and special recognition for Prof. Angela Stocker, who brought dance and yoga to CSM in 1964 and founded what is now its Addiction Studies Program.
“I also taught archery, tennis, golf,” Stocker told the crowd. “We had complaints from Parking Lot 3, but I didn’t care because they were really driving that ball.”
The Hall of Fame was an inspiration of the late Coach Tom Martinez, whose 1,400 career wins in football, softball and women’s basketball place him at the very top of California community college athletics. Martinez believed that everyone at CSM—not just athletes—is uplifted by knowing its proud history and seeing it on display. On Sept. 23, 2011, months before Martinez’s death, he became a charter inductee into College of San Mateo’s Athletics Hall of Fame. Also inducted were Super Bowl coaches Bill Walsh and John Madden, who preceded Martinez at CSM. (CSM’s third affiliate to coach in the Super Bowl, 1963 Bulldog backfield Coach Dick Vermeil, was in the 2022 Hall of Fame class.)
Emotion and pride are on full display at the inductions, which draw loved ones and the Bulldog faithful from across the United States. It’s okay to cry at Hall of Fame and plenty of athletes do. Some honorees, like Vermeil, are nationally famous. Some, like Martinez, eschewed the big leagues to make a mark at CSM. All brim with joy at the chance to reminisce and be remembered.
Great stories abound
Paul Bradford, a 2022 inductee, was an all-state defensive back for the Bulldogs.
As a cornerback with the San Diego Chargers in 1997, Bradford scooped up a 49er fumble in Candlestick Park and ran it back 78 yards for a touchdown. He didn’t tell the story while accepting his Hall of Fame honor, preferring instead to thank Coach Larry Owens—but fellow honoree Ken Haren, CSM’s football equipment manager, did.
“I’m a hardcore 49er fan,” Haren said. “Except when Steve Young fumbled the ball and Paul Bradford picked it up. I’m yelling and cheering all 78 yards. The only time I ever went against the 49ers, it was for Paul.”
In 1964, future Olympic racewalker Tom Dooley was a freshman on CSM’s cross-country team. “Everything was brand new. I was in awe,” he said of the College Heights campus.
To get home to Daly City each night, Dooley said, he’d hitchhike with Bulldog baseball coach John Noce as far as Skyline Boulevard. Then he’d run the rest of the way. Dooley was about to transfer to San Jose State, where he’d join the track team though he specialized in longer distances than are contested in the NCAA.
“Then a friend showed me how to racewalk,” Dooley said. “He gave me a 15-minute demo. Three years later I won my first U.S. title.” Dooley set 11 U.S. records from 1966 to 1980, competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics and won the silver medal in the 20k walk at the 1971 Pan American Games.
How it was
Pat Winslow Connolly was a three-time Olympian in track and field, setting U.S. records in the 400 meters, 440 yards and 800 meters and seven times in the pentathlon. Because CSM had no women’s track team when Connolly enrolled in 1962, she competed on club teams and was never formally recognized by CSM until her 2022 Hall of Fame induction.
“I am Title IX,” Connolly told the crowd. “Without the unique opportunities Title IX brought, I don't know where I would be today.”
While the College Heights campus was built with more gender equity in terms of locker and gym space than most colleges back then, many sports facilities at CSM’s earlier campuses were strictly male-only.
“I was not allowed to run on the CSM track, despite having won the gold medal in the 800 at the 1960 Olympic Trials,” Connolly said. “Whereas [fellow inductee] Fred Baer, as a staffer, was allowed to.”
Nonetheless, she said, CSM brought consolations.
“My biggest supporter was Jim Winslow, a political science instructor at CSM’s Coyote Point campus [and later her husband],” she said. “My shot improved two feet after my son was born.”
Later, thanks to Title IX, Connolly was the first coach of UCLA’s women’s track team, leading the Bruins to a national championship and helping develop Olympians Evelyn Ashford and Allyson Felix.
“When I put on that hat, all the issues made sense for the first time,” Connolly said. “I loved being called ‘Coach.’”
A standing O for Coach O
The final honor of the night went to a sentimental favorite, Bulldog football Coach Larry Owens. Greeted with a standing ovation, Owens choked up when thanking his loved ones and his colleagues and players from his 21 years at CSM—a longer tenure than all Bulldog football coaches but one.
“It’s a big-time achievement to be here,” Owens said. “Many years ago, I came across Coach Tom Martinez—my guy. He hired me in 1984 to be the defensive-line coach at CSM. I’d always wanted to coach college but didn’t know if I could. He believed in me. I was a young African-American male and there weren’t a lot of African-American coaches. I wanted to make the best of it. I wanted to make them proud.”
After a brief detour to Humboldt State, Owens returned to CSM as head coach in 1990.
“You were the muscle, the father figure, the counselor,” his player Paul Bradford said. “You always welcomed us with either a warm embrace or a good kick if we weren’t doing our best. You pushed us to be better versions of ourselves.”
Owens was concerned with his players’ academic futures, both as transfer athletic-scholarship players and as capable humans in the long term. He worked with CSM faculty to establish Writing in the End Zone, a football-based learning community that confers the skills for Bulldogs to complete undergraduate and even master’s degrees.
He thanked former Chancellor Ron Galatolo and former CSM President Mike Claire for the “beautiful and updated facilities” they brought to College Heights during Owens’ tenure. “A lot of the time the president doesn’t want to see the football coach come up to talk,” Owens said. “They want you to stay down there. But they listened to our football trials and tribulations.”
Finally, Owens thanked his athletes: “If you played for me, please stand up.” Many men in the crowd did. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I’m here because of you.”
Watch video of CSM’s most recent Hall of Fame induction ceremony, in 2022.
Learn more about the 2022 inductees:
Fred Baer
Ryan Boschetti
Paul Bradford
Cami Carroll
Harlee Donovan
Tom Dooley
Dave Hanson
Ken Haren
Ray Hisatake
Pete Jensen
Gavin Long
Hugh Loveless
Christie McCoy
Grainne Murray
Larry Owens
Kirk Sandvik
Barry Sbragia
Dick Vermeil
Pat Winslow Connolly
2015 Softball Team
a Stocker
Legacy Bulldogs: Cliff Giffin, Lars Jensen, Doug Ryan, Les Steers
