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As Homestead Faces Salinas in the CCS Playoffs, a Columnist Recalls the 1968 Mustang Football Team
Will Homestead go down, 20-17? Any columnist can make a prediction, but this Homestead alum detours and takes a spin around 1968, when the Mustangs were unstoppable.
The Salinas Californian columnist George Watkins (Homestead, Class of '68) predicts that Salinas will best Homestead 20-17 Friday night in the Central Coast Section playoffs.
The match-up, though, is a mere vehicle for Watkins, an alumnus, to detour onto Memory Lane about those Mighty Mustangs in 1968, his senior year. He waxes on about that 9-0 season, his then-newly built alma mater and lining up every day in in P.E., alphabetical order, next to a classmate named Steve Wozniak. The '68 Mustang varsity football team was so good, he says, that eight players got four-year scholarships, mostly to Pac 8 (yes 8) colleges, and three players made it to the NFL. So good that two Texans in the stands said they'd never seen a team as good as that one.
One more tidbit: The home-opener was against powerhouse Los Altos, back when they were Knights. The Mustangs went 27-0, but only because Coach Ron Useldinger was a gentleman and didn't want to run up the score. Read it here.
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And come on out to the game Friday night at Homestead, 7 p.m., General admission $10, families $20. Maybe Watkins will be there, checking out the fabulous new Mustang Field.
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