Two men with a combined 80 years of service in the educational field and a long span of service to high school sports, the Sac-Joaquin Section and the state CIF were rewarded for their lifetime efforts at a recent meeting of the Section Board of Managers.
Oakdale’s Norm Antinetti and Colfax’s Rick Spears are the 2010 recipients of the Distinguished Service Award from the Sac-Joaquin Section.
The award was established in 1997 with the first recipients being Richard Nelson and Eleanor Brown.
Antinetti has been the Valley Oak League commissioner for the last 12 years. He’s also been a member of the Sac-Joaquin Section basketball power rating committee for the last 15 years. Before that, Antinetti spent over 20 years as Oakdale’s boys basketball coach and, later, its athletic director.
Spears has spent over 30 years as a teacher, coach and administrator.
He has been the principal at Colfax High School for the last 10 years.
He served as the president of the Sac-Joaquin Section from 2006-2008 and is just finishing his two-year term as past-president. Spears was a member of the CIF state Federated Council for six years and he spent three years on the CIF state Executive Committee. He’s a 10-year member of the Association of California School Administrators as well. Both men received a Section lifetime pass as well as a declaration.
Hornet Stadium to host title games
For the first time in recent memory, the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section has pinned down all of the sites for its 2010 football championship games, by gosh, before the season has even began.
Thanks to Hornet Stadium at California State University, Sacramento being retrofitted this summer with an artificial playing surface, the CIF announced recently that the section’s Div. I, II and III title contests will be played there on Dec. 3 and Dec. 4.
It is not known at this time, however, what divisional game will be played on Friday night, which one on Saturday afternoon and which one Saturday night.
Before this season, only one CIF section championship game had been played on the Sacramento State campus. That was in 1987 when Tracy defeated Yuba City, 17-16, for the Div. I crown.
~Staff report