Can storied Shoreline Univac make a comeback?

SHORELINE — In its heyday, Shoreline Univac was feared.

Its football teams won Seattle city championships and some of its players went on to college or NFL careers.

The once great Shoreline-based youth athletic club is a shell of its former self, but a small group is working to revive the organization.

At its height in the late 1960s and 1970s, Univac had 250 football players, fielding two teams in each of five divisions. Competition from neighboring football programs and other sports and activities coupled with a drop-off in parental involvement and changing demographics have caused Univac to go into decline.

Last year, Univac could not come up with enough participants to field teams and had to drop out of the Greater Eastside Junior Football League.

President John Nelson of Seattle and a small group of volunteers hope to revive the program for next season. As of Monday, Univac had 15 players for an 8-and-9-year-old rookie team, but lacked the numbers to support other age-group teams. The roster deadline for this fall is July 1.

Nelson believes Univac can make a fourth-quarter comeback but a return to its storied history won’t be easy.

50 years ago

In 1956, a small group of men including Don Jones, Wes Coble, Boyd Semple and Tim Burnett decided to start a youth football program in the Shoreline area. They were members of the University 20-30 Active Club, a national organization for men between 20 and 39 years old. They decided to call the program Univac and because several of the founders were graduates of Seattle’s Garfield High School, the club’s colors were purple and white.

Based in Seattle’s Lake City area, the group eventually became Shoreline Univac and in 1970, the Shoreline Univac Youth Activities Club, Inc. when it also became a registered non-profit.

In its first year, Univac fielded a single Gil Dobie youth football team. By 1967, the program had six football teams, five baseball teams and a 60-member girls drill team, according to a club history.

Ten years later, the club grew to eight football teams, 17 basketball teams, eight baseball teams, 11 soccer teams and an ice hockey team. Track and field was added the next year by lung surgeon Dr. Kent Sullivan.

Univac competed in the Seattle Junior Football Association until that group disbanded in 1982. Univac then became part of the Greater Eastside Junior Football Association, now the largest youth football program in the state with more than 120 teams. Greater Eastside uses an age-weight formula to ensure that players go up against opponents of similar size and experience. Univac won its last Greater Eastside Junior Football Association title in any age group in 2000.

Nuturing talent

Numerous Univac players have gone on to college and pro careers. Univac alum Ray Pinney, an all-Metro center at Shorecrest, went on to the University of Washington where he was a two-time co-captain and All-Pac-8 selection. Pinney played for the Pittsburgh Steelers and started at right tackle in the Steelers’ victory over Dallas in Super Bowl XIII.

Matt Kofler played for Univac while his father coached under Jim Owens at Washington. Kofler moved to San Diego and later starred for San Diego State. He went on to play for Buffalo and Indianapolis in the NFL. He now is head football coach at Mesa College in San Diego.

Univac graduate Mike O’Brien played defensive back at California and played with the Seahawks in 1979.

Brent Myers helped the 1973 Gil Dobie team to the Seattle city championship and then went on to play at Shoreline High. He started at center at Eastern Washington. Myers went into coaching and is now the offensive line coach and running backs coordinator at Arizona State.

Mark McGrath, whose father coached in the program, played slot back and returned punts for Shorecrest. He starred at Montana State as a wide receiver and later played for the Seahawks and Washington Redskins.

When Shorecrest won the state Class 4A baseball championship in 1975, many of the players were Univac alumni, said Jeff Woods, 49, of Everett, a Univac alum who played catcher on the team. The team’s ace pitcher was Marc Wilson, who went on to star at quarterback for Brigham Young and became a member of the College Football Hall of Fame in 1996. Wilson also played on the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders teams that won Super Bowls in the 1980s and succeeded Jim Plunkett as the Raiders’ starter.

“We were the elite program at the time, we really were,” said Woods, who played football, basketball and baseball for Univac. “The athletes that we had, our coaches were all a great bunch of guys. It was just something you never forget.

“Univac was very, very good to me and for me.”

Woods’ stepfather, Dick Harwood of Shoreline, started coaching in 1964 while he was in college. He later ran the football program and served as club president. Harwood, 65, met his wife, Judy, through Univac.

Coaches were required to wear ties on game days and players shined their shoes and waxed their helmets. “If you look at team pictures our shoes were spotless,” Woods said. “We waxed our helmets to make them harder.”

Lake Forest Park resident Paul Forseth coached football and basketball from 1973 to 1985. He ran the basketball program, which had up to 24 boys teams, three at each grade level, as well as several girls teams. Starting in seventh grade, players could try out for a highly competitive team, but most of the teams were recreational. The basketball program is still in existence and split off from the football program a few years ago.

Forseth’s three sons, Chris, Collin and Derek, all played Univac football and later for Shorecrest. Chris went on to play at the Air Force Academy.

“We all just wanted to play sports and that made us happy,” Collin Forseth said.

Raising money

Pat Murphy of Brier, a certified public accountant, served as treasurer from 1974 to 1990 and gave financial reports at every board meeting. The budget grew along with the programs and by the late 1980s expenses reached about $100,000. Murphy’s two sons, Michael and Sean, played on Univac football and basketball teams while growing up.

Fundraisers included dinner dances, yearbook sales and a concession stand at Hamlin Park that operated during games and practices.

“It was a fun time but it was a lot of work,” said Barbara Rizzuto of Lake Forest Park. Her husband, Tom Rizzuto, was involved with Univac from 1973 to 2001.

When the group’s concession stand at Hamlin Park closed in 1980, supporters turned to other means to raise money. In 1978, Univac started an annual casino night with parents serving as dealers. Silver dollars were used for the first casino night and it raised more than $10,000. They switched to chips but it was an effective money-maker until 2000. Univac parents became so adept at running casino games that they were hired by other groups to run similar fundraisers.

In the mid-1970s, the mothers of Univac players played for the Purple Guarders, an all-women’s football team that competed in an annual exhibition fundraiser against moms from Richmond Junior Football at Shoreline Stadium. The women wore the gear that the 13-to-15-year-olds played in.

“It was fun for us,” Barbara Rizzuto said. “That’s how I learned football. We related to the kids. I became as big a fan as my husband of football.”

Fans were charged $1 admission, and the games drew as many as 1,500 people.

“That was a great fundraiser and unity thing you don’t see anymore,” Tom Rizzuto said.

The Rizzutos’ three sons – Jeff, Jerry and Joe – played Univac sports and their daughter, Jena, was a cheerleader. Even now, when Rizzuto drives his lime green GMC truck with a license plate that reads “25 power,” one of his favorite plays, people recognize him.

“Middle-aged guys see the truck and honk,” Rizzuto said. “I have no idea who they are.”

Univac board meetings were at Goodies Restaurant on the second and fourth Mondays of the month. Roberts Rules of Order were used at meetings and anyone who spoke out of turn was fined, Tom Rizzuto said.

“Teams were disciplined because the coaches were disciplined,” he said.

Starting in 1963, scholarships for Univac alums who were graduating from Shoreline high schools were handed out. The three scholarships were later named for three Univac alums who died young: Stephen Hellwig, who was killed in Vietnam; Mike Barney, who died in a fishing accident; and Sean Murphy, who died of leukemia.

Competition and change

In the 1990s things changed for Univac. While the Eastside grew and families settled there, in Shoreline, there were fewer young couples with children. Also, soccer grew in popularity and other activities vied for youngsters’ time. Meanwhile, football clubs drawing from the Shoreline area such as Richmond Junior Football and the Mountlake Terrace Youth Athletic Association, began to break into Univac’s territory.

To fill out teams, Univac began to attract more players from outside the area. Travis Snider, the Jackson baseball standout drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays earlier this month, came from Mill Creek to play youth football for Univac.

Players from outside Shoreline kept the program going but it also meant the club became disconnected from the community.

Witnessing the decline was Chuck Nichols, of Brier, who played Univac sports in the 1970s and ran the football program from 1994 to 2002.

“As your number of players shrinks, so do your volunteers,” Nichols said.

Nichols said he set up the field and concessions stand on game days, coached and took down the field set up. “I was a masochist, I did almost everything myself, ” he said.

Univac also charged less than the Eastside clubs and as a result had less money to buy new equipment. The club often waived fees for players who couldn’t afford them.

“After doing that for so many years, that depletes our financial resources,” Nichols said. “We never turned a kid away who couldn’t pay. That’s one thing Univac prided itself on.”

By 2002 teams started to forfeit games because of lack of players. Nichols finally resigned because Univac couldn’t field a team for his son’s age group. His son now plays in Bothell’s club.

Nichols believes it will take a considerable marketing effort for Univac to come back.

The best shot Univac has at making a comeback is to start with the rookie team it has this season and nurture it and hope to get another group coming in behind it, Nichols said.

“I wish them well,” he said.

Nelson, the current president, agreed a better marketing effort is needed.

“Getting the word out requires manpower,” Nelson said. “More manpower than we’ve had the last three years.”

The group has given fliers to the Shoreline schools, the Shoreline/South County YMCA, put up lawn signs and set up a Web site. The Shoreline schools put the fliers out for pick-up but does not directly distribute fliers in classrooms unlike some Eastside districts such as Lake Washington, which is another challenge, Nelson said.

Still, he plans to push on.

“When parents focus on the importance of this particular team sport for the Shoreline area and the positive things it instills in our kids, we’ll be a success again,” Nelson said.