Hansen’s Sunday Notebook: Wildcat, Olympian George Young an American success story

A few months after Mike Candrea coached Team USA to the 2004 Athens Olympic softball gold medal, I drove to his home on McCartney Road in rural Casa Grande, which is the epitome of the middle of nowhere.

When Candrea greeted me in his front yard, he pointed to one of the few homes in the rural area.

“What are the odds two Olympic medalists live on this same road?” he asked with a laugh.

I asked him what he was talking about.

“That house down the road is where George Young lives.” he said. “If you want to do a story on someone, you should stop and talk to George.”

And so I did. I had talked to Young on the phone several times over the years and knew of his remarkable career, but I had never met him.

The man from Silver City, New Mexico, enrolled at the University of Arizona in the fall of 1955, hopeful he could make coach Carl Cooper’s track team. He was not offered a scholarship. You could say he “made it.”

By 1959, Young finished second in the NCAA steeplechase. By 1960 he made the USA Olympic team for the Rome Olympics. He also made the American team for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the 1972 Munich Olympics. He won a bronze medal in the steeplechase in Mexico City.

To make ends meet while at Arizona, Young washed dishes at a fraternity house and unloaded rail freight cards, worked at the dog track and did field maintenance at Arizona Stadium.

Talk about your American success story.

A good and decent man, Young died last Tuesday in Casa Grande, where he had lived since leaving Tucson in the mid-1960s. The long-time coach and athletic director at Central Arizona College was 85.

When I stopped unannounced at Young’s house that day in 2004, he talked not about himself — do you realize he set 11 world records in age-group distance running in his 30s? — but about the Tucsonans he hired to coach at Central Arizona College: Candrea, two-time Marana High School state championship basketball coach Norm Patton and former Salpointe Catholic High School basketball coach and UA assistant coach Gary Heintz.

That’s what put a gleam in his eye: those he had mentored, not the records he set.

Last summer, while researching a story on Candrea’s years as CAC’s softball coach, I asked Young how in the world he hired a baseball player to coach CAC’s new softball program.

“Mike taught some fitness classes and every now and then I’d stop by to see how he was doing,” said Young. “His classes were always full. People liked him. I could see that he had something special in the way he dealt with young people.”

Arizona’s Hall of Fame track coach Dave Murray, who enrolled at the UA just as Young was becoming a global distance-running figure, also counts Young as one of his foundational mentors. The walk-on from Silver City had a golden career.

A celebration of Young’s life is scheduled Dec. 11 at 2 p.m, It will be held at Pence Center on the CAC campus.

In his first 11 NBA games, 2022 Pac-12 Player of the Year Bennedict Mathurin is averaging 20.4 points for the Indiana Pacers.

Do you realize how good that is?

Through Friday’s games, Mathurin’s rookie numbers exceeded those of every Arizona NBA first-round draft pick.

Damon Stoudamire averaged 19.0 points when he was the NBA’s Rookie of the Year in 1996. Deandre Ayton averaged 16.3 in his first year with the Phoenix Suns. Lauri Markkanen averaged 15.2 in his first NBA season, Mike Bibby averaged 13.2, Gilbert Arenas averaged 10.9 and Sean Elliott 10.1.

The Pacers have about 70 games remaining, and a lot can change, but it’s unlikely there’s anything fluky about Mathurin’s start. Stoudamire was averaging 17.3 through his first 11 NBA games and Ayton was averaging 15.8. Now it’s Mathurin’s turn to star on the big stage.

Former Arizona wide receiver Jay Dobyns, a Sahuaro High School product, recently resigned after three years as Tanque Verde High School’s head football coach. He worked the 10 previous seasons as an assistant coach for Dennis Bene’s highly-successful Salpointe Catholic teams.

As hard as it is to believe, Dobyns is 61. He went 15-9 at Tanque Verde, which followed a career as an ATF undercover agent, a best-selling author and public speaker. He owns and operates the Jay Dobyns Group, focused on law enforcement training.

Dobyns became the 22nd UA football letterman to serve as a head coach at a Tucson high school. Talk about special company. Here’s the list of the ex-Wildcats who coached here, followed by their length of service:

• Ed Brown, 19 years at Cholla.
• Scott McKee, 13 years at Sahuaro, five years at Pueblo.
• Howard Breinig, 12 years at Sahuaro, three years at Rincon.
• Murl McCain, 15 years at Amphitheater.
• Lance Prickett, 14 years at Rincon.
• Rollin Gridley, 13 years at Tucson.
• John Mallamo, 11 years at Tucson.
• Robert Bonillas, 10 years at Desert View.
• Bob Sicilian, eight years at Palo Verde.
• Red Greer, eight years at Tucson.
• Clarence McRae, seven years at Mountain View.
• Larry McKee, four years at Sabino, three years at Pueblo.
• Paul Schmidt, three years at Mountain View, three years at Marana.
• Erv Nicholson, six years at Catalina.
• Gus Brisco, five years at Cholla.
• Vincent Smith, four years at Tucson.
• Jerry Davitch, four years at Salpointe.
• Andy Rumic, four years at Rincon.
• Don Bowerman, four years at Pueblo.
• Dobyns, three years at Tanque Verde.
• Sam Giangardello, one year at Sunnyside.
• John Kaiser, one year at Catalina.

Talk about a strong legacy in local football.

When former Santa Rita and CDO linebacker Blake Martinez announced his retirement from the NFL last week, it was on his terms. He led the Las Vegas Raiders in tackles last week (11) and had started 76 of his 80 NFL games since leaving Stanford. More than that, the 2015 All-Pac-12 linebacker earned $28.5 million in his NFL career, according to overthecap.com. Several media services reported that Martinez has also earned more than $2 million recently selling rare Pokemon cards. Martinez is 28. …

When Kerr Kriisa produced a triple-double Friday at McKale Center against Southern — 14 points, 11 assists, 12 rebounds — he pushed the Pac-12 career total to 31 triple-doubles. Arizona leads the Pac-12 with 11 triple-doubles. The best? I’d go with Andre Iguodala’s performance against No. 6 Texas in December of 2003 at Madison Square Garden. Iggy had 13 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists against a Longhorns team that reached the Sweet 16. Runner-up: center Loren Woods‘ epic 16-point, 10-rebound, 14-block game against Oregon in February 2000. I mean, 14 blocks? C’mon. We’ll never see that again. …

Last week I asked Arizona baseball coach Chip Hale if he intended to schedule UCLA and USC once the two schools bolt for the Big Ten. “No,” he said, flatly. I suspect the Trojans and Bruins will fill their nonconference baseball schedules the next decade with Long Beach States and Cal State Fullertons, which are far preferable to home games with Big Ten baseball teams, which haven’t been relevant in college baseball forever. The last four Big Ten baseball champions have been Maryland, Nebraska, Indiana and Minnesota. I think the USC/UCLA travel demands and lack of elite competition in the Big Ten will actually help Hale and Arizona recruit top prospects in the greater Los Angeles area. …

I made the mistake of tuning into Sean Miller’s return to Xavier on Friday, a 22-point blowout over Montana televised on Fox Sports 2. No change. Miller was the same manic figure on the sideline, shouting, stomping, his face beet-red. In the offseason, he told reporters in Ohio he had changed and would take a calmer approach in his return to coaching. Oh well. …

One of Miller’s old Arizona adversaries, Pac-12 referee Michael Irving, made his first appearance at McKale Center since 2012 on Friday. Irving called a technical foul on Miller in the famous “he touched the ball!” incident late in a loss to UCLA. Miller was fined $25,000 and the Pac-12 did not schedule Irving to officiate a UA game for the next nine seasons. Last year, Kenpom.com ranked Irving as the No. 7 basketball referee in the Pac-12, a man who has been assigned, on merit, to work eight of the last nine NCAA Tournaments. The league isn’t overflowing with elite referees; Irving’s return to UA games is welcome. …

Coach Dave Cosgrove’s defending NJCAA men’s soccer champions at Pima College will return to the big stage on Tuesday at the Kino Sports Complex. That’s when the Aztecs, the No. 4 overall seed, will begin play for the national championship. The No. 1 overall seed is Phoenix College, which edged the Aztecs in their home-and-home series this season, winning in overtime and on penalty kicks. If Pima wins its Tuesday and Wednesday pool-play games, it would likely play Phoenix again on Friday night in the Final Four. Coach Kendra Veliz’s PCC women’s soccer team, also the No. 4 overall seed, opens the national championships at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Kino Sports Complex. It could be a week to remember in Tucson soccer history.

At the Arizona’s season basketball opener last week against Nicholls, I saw 1960s Wildcats baseball standouts Nyal Leslie, Eddie Leon and Mike Paul sitting on the same row a few yards above the scorer’s table.

It wasn’t happenstance. A day earlier, nine Wildcats from coach Frank Sancet’s highly-ranked teams of the mid 1960s gathered at the home of Terry DeWald.

“I had us all sit in a big circle and relate life stories since leaving Arizona baseball and it was inspiring,” said DeWald, who retired after a remarkable career as a global mountain climbing guide and a Native American pottery expert (and also as the head baseball coach at Sunnyside High School).

Most of the nine played for Arizona’s 1966 College World Series team, a talented squad in which those at McKale last week were all-star players: Leon was a first-round draft pick who played shortstop and batted third; Leslie, who played in the Mets system, batted cleanup and played third base; and Paul, who was the club’s winning pitcher in the region championship game. Paul spent more than 30 years in the big leagues as a pitcher and scout.

The others at the reunion included All-WAC outfielder and former Arizona head coach Jerry Stitt; second baseman Kenny Kurtz, a longtime Pac-10 basketball official who was the leadoff hitter on the ’66 championship team; and teammates Bob Gauna, Scott Nielsen and John Hosmer.

Said DeWald: “There were no bad hops, no knockdown pitches, no broken bats, no foul outs, no called third strikes, no pickoffs, no balks, no hidden-ball tricks, and no errors. Just 55 years of tall tales and a lot of fun.”