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Fifty Years Ago this spring will mark the beginning of an astounding march towards Live Oak’s very first Football Championship clinched in a dramatic last game of the season mud bowl 13-0 victory over San Lorenzo High School on November, 14th, 1965.  While I was hiking last year with my good buddy and old teammate of that team Kim Moreno, we noted the 50 year anniversary would be upon us soon and that our ancient march towards that football championship in 1965 had actually begun 3 years earlier when Dr. Howard Nicholson, Superintendent of our huge rural school district, hired Darrell Guthrie as an English, Math, PE teacher and Head Football Coach. When Coach Guthrie assumed the football helm in 1963, Live Oak played in the Mission Trail Athletic league (MTAL) where the terms used to describe Live Oak Football was “the Live Oak Acorns were the perennial league doormats” winning only one league game for the entire decade of fielding a football team. Morgan Hill, then with a growing population of almost 4000, was the smallest town in the league with the football power houses of the day usually being Carmel, King City, San Lorenzo and Pacific Grove. Even our neighboring town of Gilroy, with our arch rival the Mustangs, was twice the size of Morgan Hill in those days.