When I went to Yuba JC in 1947 and 1948, our football team was coming off a disastrous two years of football. In the two years, under Coach Les Voorhees, the high point was a 13-13 tie with Marin JC. He was fired and Coach Walf Oglesby, from Willows High was hired to turn around our football program. It was decided to drop out of the league and find other non-league teams to play. Most of the games were with JC teams but we played CSU Chico JV’s, Cal Aggies JV’s and Mather Field Air Force team. The latter, we won 3-0 even though their fullback had been with the Wisconsin team that had gone to the Rose Bowl the previous year.
Coach Oglesby had brought many of his graduating seniors from Willows where they had never lost a game. I remember them beating Live Oak 64-0. His record at Yuba was six wins, two losses and a tie.
The game I remember the most was the most exciting game I have ever seen. It was against Monterey Peninsula JC which was in the top ten JC’s in the country. Their halfback, Alan Carmichael was being mentioned as a possible All American.
In the first half of the game, played in Marysville, they gained 256 rushing, mainly Carmichael and the score at half time was 21-0. Coach Oglesby must have said something very inspiring as we roared back, holding them to a minus 6 yards rushing and scoring 3 touchdowns. I was getting hoarse yelling. The last touchdown came with only a short time remaining on the clock. Coach Oglesby gave the go ahead for the quarterback, Cloy Stapleton, to try for a two point conversion. Stapleton got great protection in the pocket as he checked out his ends. He spotted No. 4, Hub Johnson, out in the open and threw the ball right to him. Hub lunged for ball, had it on his fingertips and dropped it! There was no joy in Marysville that night.
I see Hub once in a while and have a hard time resisting the urge to remind him of the dropped pass.
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