Bruce Coldren, arguably one of the best ever Dos Pueblos High School basketball players in its storied history, passed away unexpectedly on July 12, 2021, in Fall Creek, Oregon. He was 67.
Coldren’s passing evoked a flood of memories about his Goleta roots and athletic success from friends and former teammates who comprised the team that won the 1971 CIF “AAA” basketball championship.
The Chargers went 27-2 during the 1970-71 season, and Coldren, a 6-7 junior center, was the star of the 49-40 championship win on March 13, 1971, over Bellflower, scoring 25 points and picking off 16 rebounds.
Not since 1935, when Santa Barbara High beat Long Beach Poly 20-17, had a local team won a CIF basketball title.
He went on to play for the University of Oregon, and became a legend with Ducks fans for his stellar performance as he nailed 12 of 14 shots from the floor for 24 points in a rousing 56-51 upset of top-ranked UCLA in February 1974.
As local basketball fans know, Doug Little of San Marcos High was the CIF 3-A Player of the Year in 1969, and preceded Coldren at Oregon as one of the original “Kamikaze Kids” under coach Dick Harter.
Bruce is survived by his wife, Karen, a 1973 graduate of Dos Pueblos High; his daughter, Jamie; son Ryan; and father Reg of Goleta. A memorial service has yet to be announced.
Bruce graduated from the University of Oregon in 1977 with a degree in physical education and health. He taught at Lowell (Oregon) Junior and Senior High School for 32 years, retiring in 2008.
He coached basketball for 12 years, baseball for seven years and served as athletic director for 32 years.
(Photo courtesy of Mark Looker)
The Goleta Boys’ Club played an integral role in the development of the 1971 championship team. In a 1981 interview, Boys’ Club Director Sal Rodriguez said he knew those DP kids were special a couple of years before anybody dreamed the school would contend for a championship.
“They were always down here,” he said. “They played and played and played. We had an adult team that went against them and by their senior year we couldn’t touch them.”
Even during the season, when they had practices and games, they would go to the Boys’ Club at night to get in some extra playing time together.
“They were gym rats,” Rodriguez said. “Eventually I had to kick them out so I could go home.”
One of the younger gym rats was Ben Howland, who would become a coaching legend, most notably at UCLA from 2004 to 2013, and currently as head coach at Mississippi State. Howland recalled going to the Boys’ Club when he was 8 years old. Coldren was three years older, and Howland watched him in awe.
“For kids my age, he was one of my idols — one of my basketball heroes. He was always nice to us younger kids, and I really appreciated that,” said Howland. “I met his dad Reg, and he is really a nice man. I just can’t imagine what he is going through. I was so sad when I heard the news. So sad.”
Howland as an eighth-grader made the trip to the L.A. Sports Arena in 1971 to watch the CIF championship game, and recalls above all else “the feeling of pride at what Bruce and the team did. These guys from the Boys’ Club did it!”
Howland played on the Dos Pueblos JV team his freshman year and watched Coldren shine again as a senior who was getting a lot of attention from college scouts.
“Back then, it was the PAC-8, and that was the highest you could go,” he said. “There were not many local players getting attention from college scouts. Bruce was one of the few locals getting a scholarship. He was one of the best players to ever come out of Santa Barbara County.”
Howland’s family moved to Cerritos for the remainder of his prep years, but he returned to play at Santa Barbara City College, where he led the Vaqueros to the state finals in 1977.
He began his coaching career in 1981 as a graduate assistant for Jay Hillock at Gonzaga, but always kept track of Coldren’s playing days at Oregon, and then at Lowell High School in Oregon.
Coldren’s legacy is very clear, Howland said.
“He was, number one, an incredible person,” , Howland said. “Very nice, friendly, caring, good man. For all the success he had, he had no arrogance. He was down to earth and humble. I really appreciated that fact.”
What made Coldren a great player?
“He was the main guy in that drive to the CIF title,” Howland explained. “He was very confident. He had the physical and mental toughness that all great competitors have.”
Charger teammates and friends who had just recently noted the 50th anniversary of their historic win offered their thoughts on Coldren as a tough competitor and floor leader who wasn’t afraid to show his gentle side and bonded with his teammates.
As Coldren said in a 2001 interview: “Any team that has ever been successful has always been really close.”
Here’s what members of the 1971 CIF-champion basketball team had to say about Coldren:
Guard Tom Henderson
A 6-foot senior guard on the championship team, he went on to play basketball for UC Davis, and was athletic director at San Juan High in Fair Oaks. A part of the Goleta Boys’ Club contingent, Henderson recalled how Coldren always had a sense of himself and how he treated others.
“My brother Greg, a freshman, would take the city bus every morning that dropped him off on Hollister Avenue. He would have to walk across the overpass and through the neighborhood to get to campus. Yet, he rarely had to make the walk, as every morning that Bruce Coldren (he was a senior) drove by, he would pick Greg up.
“Greg doesn’t think that at first Bruce even knew that he was related to me. He just thinks that he knew Greg was a fellow basketball player, although on the freshman team. Whether he knew him or not, that was just the kind of guy Bruce was, someone who made life a little easier for those around him.”
Tom Henderson was an all-conference guard at UC Davis, and recalls the time Davis played the University of Oregon Ducks:
“When I was a senior at UC Davis, we played against the Dick Harter-coached Kamikaze Ducks. Before the game, Bruce came over to our locker room to say hello, even though he said that he would probably have to do another ‘17 and down’ (a brutal drill of 17 full outside-line-to-sideline sprints in less than a minute) for, as Coach Harter called it, ‘fraternizing’ with the enemy.”
“Then after the game they beat us pretty handily, Bruce came again to our locker room to say that he couldn’t go out after the game. They had curfew that night because Harter was pissed, and that he (Bruce) had already been yelled at earlier for coming to our locker room. He also said he had enough 17s lined up to last him a lifetime.
“After having seen in person how Oregon played and Harter coached, it made me realize just how tough Bruce was inside. He often had this kind of goofy grin, so you had a tendency to think he was too easy going when he played, especially for Coach Harter’s liking. But he was as tough as the proverbial ‘nails’ and he knew how to win. It made me thankful to have had him as a teammate.”
Forward Richard Stein
A 6-3 senior forward, Stein was one of the championship team’s offensive mainstays.
“I agree with Tom about Bruce’s inner toughness,” Stein said. “Because he wasn’t a Boys’ Club regular and Green Phantom teammate, we all gave him a lot of grief. We thought we had to toughen him up. But that certainly wasn’t needed.
“In the biggest moments, Bruce stepped up, none bigger than the CIF final. He was a superstar high school player and worthy of all his accolades. I wish that I had got to know him better as a person after high school. He just seemed like such a kind and genuine person.”
Guard Greg Hanson
A 6-1 junior guard who played a reserve role, Hanson kept in touch with Coldren, and recalls a road trip a few years ago to visit him at his rural Fall Creek home.
“The day before the Ducks football game in Eugene, he took me on a tour of the university campus,” Hanson said. “We had lunch at a sports bar across from the Knight Arena where the basketball team plays. The booth we were seated at had memorabilia from ‘UCLA’s Ambushed on the Oregon Trail weekend.’
“The glassed photo was signed — ‘Yikes! Lost in space!’ — by Bill Walton. Bruce causally mentioned to our server: ‘I am not one to bring attention to myself but that’s me in the photo.’ The server asked if he would also sign it — which he did.
“Earlier, I asked Bruce: ‘To this day, when you go out into shopping centers or other places, do people up here still remember that game and that he is a legend?’ Yes, it’s true, he said. He made his first eight shots and ended up 12 of 14 for 24 points as Oregon pulled off a shocking 56-51 upset of top-ranked UCLA.”
Coldren was inducted into three halls of fame.
In 1999, it was the University of Oregon’s as part of the team known as the ‘Kamikaze Kids.’ In 2016, he was enshrined into the hall at Lowell High School, where he taught, coached, and administered for 32 years.
His dad, Reg, represented him in 2019 when Bruce was named a honoree of the Santa Barbara Basketball Court of Champions.
“Besides being an outstanding athlete, he was a great husband, father, grandfather, son, and friend,” said Hanson. “We enjoyed serving our community together while in the Dos Pueblos Key Club, the high school organization supported by Kiwanis Club. He may have left us on Earth, but his memories and family will carry on the best each day. You are and will be missed big man.”
Guard Barclay Hope
A 6-foot junior guard known for his hard-charging style, Hope earned a starting role his senior year
Hope recalls Coldren’s formative junior year on an otherwise senior lineup.
“While always a warrior on the CIF playoff team, there was still a bit of uncertainty to Bruce throughout the year, and as mentioned by others, our team held him to a high standard,” he said. “He was still deferential to mostly Stein, but also to the collective weight of the seniors, until the playoffs where he really blossomed and became ‘the man’ by the final game.”
Hope remembers spending a lot of time with Coldren during their senior year.
“I was around after practices when the scouting coaches would show up, or when Bruce would whip out the latest stack of letters. He was ambivalent about the attention. He appreciated it and was sort of cute how he wanted to share it, like, ‘Can you BELIEVE I’m getting letters from THESE guys?’
“Yet throughout, in a setting where it would have been understandable and very easy to get a big head, Bruce stayed amazingly humble. That was the other side of ambivalence. Bruce really was sort of quiet, liked his alone time, and didn’t want to be the center of attention, which by this point he ALWAYS was around campus, given his stature and fame.
“He just wanted to enjoy his senior year before he headed off to the next adventure. Never pulled the ‘I’m the man’ routine, always encouraging to the new guys on the stage of varsity ball. A great teammate, who left it all on the floor every day in practice and at the games. No wonder Harter wanted him, the perfect Kamikaze Kid! But more so, a regular guy who just wanted to fit in with everybody else, and help others along the way.
“We didn’t see each other much during our twenties, though he was a participant in one infamous birthday party of mine at my mom’s condo at the beach, where the tequila started flowing and we ended up traipsing down to the beach, through the washed-up kelp, and back again by way of a motel pool. Did I mention he had a wild streak as well?
“Anyway, RIP my friend, see you on the other side someday. I’m sure you’ll be netting 20-footers in-between casting your fishing line.”
Student Manager Paul Yarbrough
The team’s student manager, Yarbrough kept in touch with Coldren over the years, from Goleta school days to when he was an editor for the Eugene Register Guard and Coldren worked at nearby Lowell High School.
Yarbrough recalls the early Goleta days:
“Although Bruce was a year older than I, we ended up on teams together several times at the Goleta Boys’ Club, both in basketball and baseball. In basketball, we teamed on a 7th-8th grade team called the Bruins that won the league championship with ease, averaging more than 100 points a game. In addition to Bruce and me, also in the starting lineup was a kid named Steve Weist who later went on to star at our rival San Marcos High School.”
Baseball was also one of Coldren’s passions.
“In summer baseball, Bruce’s dad, Reggie, was our coach,” Yarbrough remembers. “The great thing about the Boys’ Club baseball program was we weren’t playing a short season to put an all-star team together. We were just playing baseball two or three times a week in June, July and August on rock-hard elementary school fields such as Fairview, La Patera and Hollister. “
After a 25-year career at the Santa Barbara News-Press, Yarbrough took a job at The Register-Guard.
“I knew Bruce was teaching and coaching at a small high school nearby,” Yarbrough said. “One day I decided to go to the school and try to find him, about 20-plus years since we had last seen one another. They told me that Bruce was teaching a PE class in the gym. I stood on one side of the gym, staring intently across the floor at the teacher obviously supervising the class.
“From a distance, I couldn’t tell if it was Bruce or not. When the class ended and the kids scattered, I nervously walked toward the teacher, and as I got closer, his smiling eyes gave it away. It was Bruce. We talked as long as we could that day and I would run into him and Karen at Oregon basketball games, Marist High basketball games, where his daughter and son starred, local pizza parlors, and Lowell High athletic events.
“No matter how much time had passed, every time we ran into each other, we were seemingly 12-year-olds again enjoying life in Goleta.”
—Mark Looker is a 1972 graduate of Dos Pueblos High School, where he was the Charger Account sports editor in 1971 and student manager, along with Paul Yarbrough, of the varsity basketball team. He is the owner of Modesto-based Looker Communications Consulting, which services the California agricultural community.