Coasters: The OCC Connection

Steve Virgen

Call it the Orange Coast Connection. There’s some six degrees of

Pirates going on at Coast as there are several links of athlete to

athlete and how they came to know of the school by the beach with all the

beautiful girls -- and, oh yeah, they have a pretty good athletic

program.

We start with the football team where the Bucs landed their No. 1

recruit in prep phenom linebacker Marvin Simmons.

After realizing he couldn’t play for USC, Simmons considered El

Camino, Compton and San Francisco City, but chose OCC mainly because the

school came recommended by the Trojans. Simmons also became a Buc because

he had friends Alphonso Williams and Randy Gaither playing at Coast.

Simmons made his debut Saturday night at East Los Angeles. He caused a

fumble and stuffed a PAT when he tackled the holder who fumbled the snap.

Also with the football team, running back Niles Mittasch came to

Orange Coast because his Churchill High (Oregon) football coach, who is

Mike Taylor’s brother-in-law, told the young runner to play for the Bucs.

Then Mittasch turned around and told his buddy, Stanton Duke, to join him

at Coast. And now Duke is one of the scoring punches on the men’s soccer

team. He has three goals as the Pirates have started out a bit on the

rough side.

On to the women’s and men’s volleyball team where there was actually a

love connection that brought Katja Muller to Coast. Her boyfriend is

men’s volleyball standout Soeren Schneider. She visited Soeren last

spring and aside from being in love with Soeren, she also fell in love

with Coast. She transferred to become a Pirate and she is one of many

players who have brought hope to OCC’s women’s team.

Finally back to the football team. There are four players from

Danville, where San Ramon Valley High Coach David Kravitz told his

players about Orange Coast. Kravitz, a Newport Harbor High product who

also starred at OCC, told Kevin Lloyd, Brian Cristol, Tim Festa and

Dennis Sprague the war stories from being a Buc. The quartet was

convinced and they converted to the way of the Coast.

If you were debating whether to go to the Bucs’ game at East L.A. and

you decided to stay home, kudos to you. That was some bad football.

Twenty-seven total penalties and six total fumbles, it was as if no one

wanted to win. Fortunately for the Bucs, defensive back Jimmy Thorson and

Randy Gaither saved the day. Thorson recovered an East L.A. fumble with

less than six minutes left to play. Later Gaither scored on a 7-yard

touchdown. He called it the greatest touchdown of his life.

‘We needed a game like this,’ Gaither said. ‘Because now we know we

can’t take anyone lightly. We have to come out next week and take care of

business.’

A side note from Weingart Stadium. The football arena was the site of

the movie Forrest Gump, when the speedy Forrest ran back a kickoff return

for the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Bucs could’ve used Mr. Gump on Saturday

night. And that’s all I got to say about that.