Photo credit: sjsuspartans.com
By: Ana Kieu
This past week has been a very busy week for Spartan Athletics, particularly the San Jose State football and men’s basketball teams.
Let’s start with the football team, who honored those who gave their lives in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Not only that, they also remembered the 1941 Spartans, who were supposed to be SJSU’s first team in three years to enjoy a season-ending trip to Hawaii for a pair of charity games to benefit the Honolulu Police Department. Turns out, Pearl Harbor happened and the team’s plans changed in the blink of an eye.
More than 4,200 SJSU alumni served in World War II, but let’s take a look at the football players who served.
• Don Allen served in the Army’s 395th infantry regiment and in the 1944 Battle of the Bulge.
• Kenneth Bailey was killed in action. A second lieutenant, he was declared missing in action over Bari, Italy in Dec. 1943. He was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart. His parents, Mr. & Mrs. Wilber Bailey of Palo Alto donated the lead gift for the construction of the Spartan Memorial Chapel on the main campus that opened in 1952.
• John Brown served in the Army Air Corps.
• Stu Carter served in the Navy as a skipper of a PT boat.
• Jack Galvin, the last of the 1941 team to pass away in 2012, joined the Marines and was stationed on the Samoan islands as a cartographer.
• Fred Lindsey served in the Army.
• Aubrey Minter served in the Air Force.
• Center Bob Hamill, a junior college transfer from Glendale College, was named a team co-captain for the 1941 team on Dec. 7, 1940. Hamill achieved the rank of captain in the Army Air Corps. He earned one silver and two bronze oak leaf clusters. He flew in missions in Africa, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece during World War II and in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
• Bert Robinson reported for duty in 1942 in the Armed Forces Army Air Corps. A B-17 pilot in the 15th Air Force, 301st Bomb Group based in Italy, he completed 50 missions from 1942-1945 and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.
• Ken Stanger served in the Navy.
• Paul Tognetti was drafted into the Army in July 1944.
• SJSU Sports Hall of Fame two-sport athlete Hans Widenhoefer was born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1922 and raised in San Francisco. A star fullback and wrestler, Wiedenhoefer enlisted in the Marine Corps and was in the 36-day Battle of Iwo Jima Island in the South Pacific–a major victory for the U.S.
All in all, the 1941 Spartans were true American heroes.
SJSU tight end Josh Oliver, who’s an underrated senior prospect who turned a challenging season into a higher NFL Draft grade.
My apologies if you don’t know much about the Spartans as they picked up just one win this past season, but Oliver is a TE that you shouldn’t overlook because he could be a reason why the TE position in the 2019 NFL Draft will be a must-see for the fans and media alike.
After all, he recorded a team-best 56 catches for 709 yards and four touchdowns in his senior year after recording only 42 combined catches in his first three years at SJSU.
So the Spartan coaching staff has held meetings–some of which were home visits–with high school football players. Some of those players already committed to SJSU, while the others still need time to think things over. Hopefully, they’ll commit to SJSU, but then again, those are their decisions, not mine.
Let’s switch gears to the men’s basketball team, who most recently snapped a six-game losing skid with a 67-65 win over the Bethune Cookman Wildcats on Dec. 6, 2018.
After the game, I asked Spartan head coach Jean Prioleau what were his three takeaways from the Spartans’ second win on the season.
Prioleau told me: “I believe we have a mentally tough team. The message that I have to my team is that we’re going to be in a lot of games. I think that what we saw today–to the fanbase, you’re going to see a lot of close games. That’s what I think we are. I don’t know how explosive we are offensively–I think we are. But I think our team plays really hard and I think we’re going to have chances to win a lot of games. I think our guys play with a lot of heart and I think we’re resilient.”
SJSU wraps up their four-game homestand against the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks on Dec. 15 at 7:00 pm PST. So be on the lookout for my preview later this week.
Stay tuned for my SJSU podcast on Wednesday. But, in the meantime, you can catch me on Twitter @AnaKieu.
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