Eldridge Cooks, the starting fullback on the 1955 San Diego High team that won the Southern California championship and was acclaimed the national high school champion for that season, was at a UCLA basketball game when he passed recently.
The 165-pound blocker and runner was a two-year varsity letterman for the Hillers, whose combined record in 1954 and ’55 was 20-2-1.
Cooks, 78, also played baseball at San Diego State and was a member of Don Coryell’s first San Diego State football teams in 1961-62.
Cooks resided in Santa Ana for many years and was an enthusiastic alumnus of San Diego High and regularly attended sporting events throughout Southern California.
BRAVES’ ORIGINAL QUARTERBACK
Bobby Contreras was El Cajon’s Valley’s first varsity football quarterback when the school opened in 1955 and also starred for the Braves in basketball and baseball before graduation in 1957.
DRAFTED BY YANKEES
Kerry Dineen, 63, all-San Diego Section outfielder at Chula Vista in 1970, was a fourth-round draft choice of the baseball New York Yankees in 1973.
Dineen got into 16 games over parts of three seasons in the majors and had a .324 batting average. He was inducted into the University of San Diego Hall of Fame in 1997 and had a .409 collegiate career batting average.
In ’64 I worked with Eldridge at the Fed Mart warehouse in the barrio. Other notables working under Mel Skelley: Kern Carson, Neal Petties wife and the great Ray Schmatz.
Pretty impressive company. Carson, Schmautz, and Ms. Petties’ husband all played in the NFL, but none of these players, including the beloved Cooks, ever scoered a touchdown in the City Schools’ football carnival, as you did. Carson unfortunately met a terrible fate. He was murdered many years later.
I know I’m a year late, but I still feel like commenting.
I met Eldridge at SDS when a mutual friend, Tom Pirazzini, invited us to go with him to the Coliseum Relays in L.A. in the Spring of ’64. I’m glad Eldridge was with us, because you could tell by looking at him that he wasn’t a guy to mess with. That image was bolstered by his 101st Airborne Screaming Eagle jacket. He was a fun guy, and the three of us had a great time at the Relays. We even saw a couple of world records.
I also got to know Kern Carson. I sat next to him for a year in Mr. King’s drafting class at Lincoln. He was a senior football and basketball star, and I was a lowly sophomore. Nevertheless, he couldn’t have been nicer. I feel very fortunate to have seen Kern and Eldridge play on those great early Coryell teams at SDS, and even more fortunate that I got to know them. They both left us way too early.
I knew both men well. Outstanding athletes and good friends. I echo your thoughts.
HEY SCOOPS: U – R – D – MAN!
I love the history.
RE: Eldridge “Cookie” Cooks. A little known double header piece of trivia is in the facts: 1) Eldridge was a member of Charlie Smith’s 1961 Aztec baseball team. Eldridge was an original recruit by Don Coryell during his first season on Montezuma Mesa. In the beginning of the 1961 semester, Cooks tried out for, and made the varsity baseball team. When it came time for spring football drills, he had to leave the roundball team to fulfill his commitment to the football program that lead SDSU to pursuits of national greatness and 2) It also came to my mind, just today, the team’s diversity was greater than ever before. There was a definite Southeast San Diego presence on the team in Lenny Arevalo and myself (Lincoln HS), Hilbert Mercado (St. Augustine HS) and Eldridge (San Diego HS). I have a team photo I will forward to your email address Rick. And for a trivia triple header, what was Rick Smith’s nickname while he was the sports editor for the Lincoln HS student newspaper (“The Buzz”) in 1956-57? We called him “Scoops.”
Cooks was a starting fullback for the 1955 San Diego High national champion team and played at San Diego junior College before a stint in the Army that led to an invite from Don Coryell. Reader: I was known as Scoops. The commentor, “Hubba Jubba”, was a three-sport star at Lincoln and, after graduating from San Diego State, played for the local Marine Corps Recruit Depot team and correctly predicted that the Marines would beat Coryell’s Aztecs. They did, in 1962, and ’63.
1980 Clairemont beat’s Kearney at Mesa college 24-21 to make playoffs.chieftains stop komets on goal line on four plays to win.
That win over Kearny was the highlight of an 8-2 season in what became the greatest era in Chiefs history. In the five seasons of coach Steve Miner, 1980-84, the chieftains were 42-11-2 with one San Diego Section title. Clairemont was 17-29-1 in the five years before Miner and 13-35-1 in the five years after Miner. Demographics obviously played a role but there’s no diminishment of what Miner and his teams accomplished.