For the first time in seven years, Live Oak will add to its athletics Hall of Fame.
Ten former Acorns will be inducted into the shrine for the first time since 2006. This will be the largest number of inductees since the inaugural class in 1987 that also had 10. This will be the seventh time Live Oak will honor former players or coaches.
Leading the 2013 class is former San Francisco 49er Jeff Ulbrich, who is now an assistant football coach at UCLA. He is joined by fellow former NFL player Ryan Neufeld.
The two played against each other while Neufeld was with the Buffalo Bills.
Also to be inducted are former Major League Baseball relief pitcher Brandon Villafuerte, former Arizona University softball player Allison Andrade, former University of Massachusetts water polo standout Kelly Chassy, former Cal water polo player Jason Childers, former Live Oak football coach and athletic director Norm Dow, softball player Chantiel McDonnell who played at Abilene Christian and former Texas Tech softball player Kristi Robles.
Former football coach Larry Koester will be posthumously inducted.
All are being honored for their athletic prowess at Live Oak and beyond.
They will be formally inducted on Oct. 4 before the football game against Leigh. According to Athletic Director Mark Cummins, eight of the nine surviving members are expected to be on hand for the ceremony. He said Ulbrich will be absent because of scheduling conflicts.
Cummins said he hopes Ulbrich will be available Oct. 18 the day before UCLA is scheduled to play Stanford in Palo Alto.
This hall of fame is such a joke. Theres so many great athletes who went on to play division 1 sports. But unless you know mark cummins you never are even mentioned . Oh thats right hes the newest hall of famer and he never played one game. Mike Perez meant more to the baseball program than anybody who ever coached here. He handed Mark a program that was already winning championships Mark won a division 3 championship. big deal. Mike took teams to division 1 playoffs year after year. How does somebody like Joe Cuneo get left off the list? Every year he made ist team all conference. in Football , basketball and baseball. was mvp in all three sports . Even played in the all star game at sparten stadium. You put softball players in that did nothing after high school but leave Mark Petersen off who Was all ccs and his batting average is still the highest in school history. He also started on live oaks first championship football team and wrestled varsity as a freshman, making it to the ccs championships. He went on to play Pac 10 Division 1 baseball in washington. You have people like cummins who know nothing about the history of acorn athletics voting and ones that i mentioned being left out.