Class of 2013 Bios
The first question one might be tempted to ask Bill Barker is what he has against football. An avid sportsman since high school, Barker ran track in high school, won awards for basketball in high school and college, played fast pitch softball for 25 years, and continues golfing five days a week.
After studying Physical Education and Math in college, as well as earning a credential in Special Education, he began his career at Rio Americano High School, where he coached junior varsity basketball. He went on to coach JV baseball and basketball at Campos Verdes Junior High School and San Juan High School respectively before moving to Del Oro High School in 1967. As the JV basketball coach there, his team won six league championships before he moved up to varsity coach in 1984.
Over the next eleven years, Del Oro’s basketball team won three Sierra Foothill League championships, was Nor Cal runner-up three times, and won the section title in 1989. Besides being named SFL Coach of the Year three times, Barker was the Sacramento Kings Coach of the Year in 1989. One of his former players, Greg Hoffman, a stand-out guard at Sierra College who went on to play professionally in Australia, says it was the amount of time their coach was willing to spend with them and the dedication he showed in helping them to improve their game which resulted in their significant growth both “as basketball players and as young men.”
It wasn’t only in basketball, however, that Barker’s team won accolades: serving as Del Oro’s golf coach for 23 years, he led the squad to two SFL championships, and they were section champions and Nor Cal runner-up in 1990. In a coaching career that spanned 32 years, he coached basketball, baseball, women’s track and golf. As Hoffman explains, it isn’t only his basketball players who owe Coach Barker a great deal of gratitude, but the “hundreds of student athletes that came through his programs.”
After 35 years teaching Math at Del Oro, Barker now enjoys camping with family and friends, as well as working with his wife in their grandchildren’s classrooms. He continues to play golf but still no football.
Don Boyce was a busy guy long before he took up coaching. After earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, he spent five years in the U.S. Air Force, ultimately being awarded the rank of Captain. During that time, he earned his California Teaching Credential and, after leaving the Air Force, his Master’s in School Administration. However, it was his brief but stellar stint as women’s basketball coach at Grant Union High School that earned him a place in the La Salle Club Coaches’ Hall of Fame.
Though Boyce speaks humbly of his accomplishments, the team he led at Grant was one of the strongest women’s basketball teams this area has ever seen. They won four Sac-Joaquin Section titles, two Nor Cal titles and were one game short of winning the state championship in the ’82-’83 season. That year, his team was 36-1 for the season and 3-0 in Division I Nor Cal title games. Three of the young women he coached went on to play college basketball: Jackie Rogers at Oregon State, Deitra Hannibel as a starting point guard her freshman year at UCLA, and Teri Hunt, the Sacramento Bee’s Player of the Year for 1983, who went on to break records at USF and become their first player to win West Coast Conference Player of the Year.
Boyce himself was Sacramento Bee Coach of the Year twice (’81-’82 and ‘82’-’83) and Sacramento Union Coach of the Year for the ’82-’83 season. He was also the first coach in the area to win section titles at two different schools: Norte del Rio in 1982 and Grant in 1983.
Though his untimely exit from coaching at Grant caused outrage among players and the press, Boyce says it was ultimately a blessing, as it allowed him to enjoy raising his son who didn’t have to compete for his attention with 15 other kids. After many years working as president and co-founder of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and 36 years of teaching, Boyce is now enjoying retirement, occupying himself with skiing, golf, tennis and guitar.
Long before Bob Christiansen became a championship coach, he was a powerhouse athlete. A First Team All-League and All-City in football and an Honorable Mention All-American at Reseda High School in the late ‘60s, Christiansen went on to make Second Team All-American and First Team All-Pacific Eight at UCLA. While in college, he was selected to play in the College All-Star game, the East-West Shrine game, the All-American Bowl, and the Coaches All-America Bowl. Not surprisingly, he was selected in the fifth round of the 1972 NFL draft by the Los Angeles Rams.
Luckily for Del Oro High School, Christiansen left pro-football after a few years and dedicated himself to teaching and coaching. In his 17-year coaching career at Del Oro, Christiansen helped guide the football team to four Sac-Joaquin Section titles and ten Sierra Foothill League championships. He was selected to coach two Optimist All-Star games and was named Sacramento Bee Co-Coach of the Year in 1994.
After over 30 years at Del Oro High School, he retired as its principal in 2009. Today, he is active in the Loomis Lions Club, plays golf, and enjoys traveling with his wife, Claudia, and spending time at their cabin in Truckee.
How does it feel to be the most hated man on the court? Dan Hooper can answer that question, having regularly displeased 50% of the people he encountered since 1966. After earning a degree in Elementary Education from Southern Oregon College, Hooper was encouraged to apply as a basketball official in 1966. Over the next 26 years, he officiated high school and junior college basketball games, inevitably developing a thick skin because, as he explains, those who don’t “won’t last long in this job.”
Hooper’s first varsity assignment was, coincidentally enough, a game between John F. Kennedy and Elk Grove, with Bill Cartwright on the floor and Dan Risley coaching from the sidelines. Hooper went on to officiate two state championship games and numerous post-season games. Considered one of the area’s best referees, he was the first official inducted into the California Basketball Hall of Fame.
In 1992, Hooper merged his talents on the court with the office, becoming assistant to Jim Jorgensen at the Sacramento Association of Collegiate Officials. Eventually, in 1982, Hooper took over as owner of SACO and went from assigning officials at six schools in our area to 57 Division II colleges in California, Utah and Hawaii. With 114 programs, both men’s and women’s teams, he now has 330 officials on his roster.
After a 38-year teaching career, Hooper spends his free time hunting all manner of birds in California, Canada and Argentina and has attended the Indy 500 for the past 26 years, even managing to do a couple laps in a car himself. Luckily, no angry coaches were on the track at the time.
Having attended Sacramento High School, Sacramento City College and Sacramento State College, Mike Inchausti is undoubtedly a River City native. A baseball player himself in high school, he went on to major in Physical Education and earned his teaching credential in 1968. In 1972, he began coaching baseball at Luther Burbank High School, leading his team to the Metro League Championship in 1979 and earning the Metro Coach of the Year award that same year.
Coach Inchausti was popular with his players, and Gary Darling, long-time MLB umpire, remembers him as being truly caring and very fair, even to umpires. Darling says, “Coach did not allow us to ride the umpires too much,” adding that that is something he still holds “dear to [his] heart.”
Inchausti didn’t limit his coaching only to baseball or to high school. He served as the Titans football team’s defensive coordinator for several years and was the defensive coach for two Pig Bowls in 1987 and 1988. Not surprisingly, he coached Optimist All-Star baseball and football teams as well. Following a solid career at Luther Burbank, he went on to coach baseball at his alma mater, Sacramento High School, from 1990 to 1992.
After 35 years of teaching, Inchausti now enjoys spending time with his grandchildren, traveling around California, and cheering on the Sacramento River Cats.
Dan Risley had visited Elk Grove twice before accepting the position of basketball coach at Elk Grove High School in 1970. The culture shock he experienced came not as much from the rural location but from the prevailing lack of interest in the sport of basketball which, he explains, was just “something that happened between football and baseball.” Leaving Mira Loma High School with an impressive 19-3 record as junior varsity coach, Risley was determined to put basketball on the map in Elk Grove – or, at the very least, outsell the wrestling matches.
According to Risley, the foundation of Elk Grove’s basketball team from 1971-1974 consisted of three young men: Bill Cartwright, Mike Pinkerton and Terry Saufferer. All three of them, and indeed their teammates, were good athletes who were willing to work hard. And work hard they did, or else, as Mike Pinkerton explains, “they were gone” because the coach had high expectations and a “very disciplined team.” Bill Cartwright adds that though they spent all their free time in the gym, their coach was always right there with them. He remembers very well how high Risley’s expectations were but says that at the same time, “you knew he was on your side.” He recalls how the coach would pick up his players to take them to the gym and that he worked “as hard or harder than anyone else.” For Cartwright, Risley became much more than his basketball coach. “He did stuff no other coach would do,” Cartwright says, like taking their practice gear home to wash so that it would be clean for them the next day and buying each team member his own ball. Risley opened his home to his players, and Cartwright admits that he probably ate as much at his coach’s house as he did his own.
The high expectations and dedication to his players undoubtedly led to Risley’s incredible accomplishments as coach of perhaps the greatest high school sports team in area history. As Pinkerton notes, Risley “took a program that was going nowhere” and turned it into one of the most talented in the United States in an amazingly short time. Under Dan Risley, the Elk Grove High School basketball team won the Metro League title every season for four years straight, was the #2 rated team in the state in the ’73-’74 season with a record of 30-0, and #1 in the state for the ’74-’75 season. In Risley’s last year as coach, his team was rated #2 in the entire United States. Risley himself was named Metro League Coach of the Year three years in a row, Sacramento Coach of the Year twice, and California State Coach of the Year his last season.
Two of his players, Saufferer and Cartwright, went on to play college basketball, Saufferer at Northern Arizona and Cartwright at USF, where he was named All-American twice before eventually being drafted by the New York Knicks in 1979, the beginning of a 16-year NBA career. In a testament to their bond on- and off-court, Risley joined Cartwright at USF for two seasons as assistant coach. Having achieved more in five years than many do in 20, Risley ended his coaching career and dedicated himself to teaching American Government, retiring from Elk Grove High School after more than 30 years of service. In a long overdue admission, the La Salle Club welcomes Dan Risley into its Coaches’ Hall of Fame.
As an all-around athlete herself, playing tennis in high school and basketball, softball, field hockey and golf in college, it was no surprise that Vera Vaccaro went on to a very successful coaching career. Having earned her Bachelor’s degree at Sac State and her Master’s at the University of LaVerne, Vaccaro returned to the Sacramento area to teach, receiving an Outstanding Teacher award in 1982 and eventually serving as principal at both Del Campo and Casa Robles high schools.
Though she coached a variety of sports at various schools, including assistant women’s basketball coach at American River College, assistant softball coach at Sacramento City College, and tennis instructor at Sierra College, it was her years as the head coach for Mira Loma’s softball team that illustrate her tremendous success. In 1985, she was named Sacramento Bee, Sacramento Union and Capitol Valley Conference Coach of the Year for softball after leading her team to win the North San Joaquin Division II championship. She again received the Coach of the Year award for the Capitol Valley Conference in 1987 and was the Sacramento Union Coach of the Year in 1989, the year the Mira Loma softball team won the Capitol Valley Conference title as well as the San Joaquin Valley Division I title. That same year, Vaccaro also helped lead American River College’s women’s basketball team to win the state championship.
Besides her long career as a high school and community college coach, she also served as the Police Olympics softball coach for several years, winning a number of medals both in Las Vegas and California.
Today, she enjoys playing golf and traveling and keeps herself busy as a reserve lieutenant in the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, a board member in the Carmichael Kiwanis Club, and advisor for the Del Campo High School Key Club.
There isn’t much to be written about Jerry Weinstein that hasn’t been written before. As fellow inductee Dan Hooper says, “Weinstein is a legend in Sacramento.” This sentiment is echoed by Greg Vaughn, one of Weinstein’s protégées at Sacramento City College and 14-year veteran MLB outfielder, who explains that “Jerry stamped his face on Sacramento baseball.”
Though Weinstein has a long coaching history over the past 40 years, more than half of that time was spent here in Sacramento. In his 23 years at Sac City, he had a record of 831-208 while guiding the Panthers to 16 conference championships, two co-conference titles, a state title in 1988 and the national crown in 1998. He has served as both assistant and head coach for USA Olympic teams and has managed or coached a number of professional teams, most recently working as catching coach for the Colorado Rockies.
Weinstein’s greatest strength may well be in his scholarship of the sport. Having written numerous publications on baseball, both practical and theoretical, published locally and nationally, his knowledge of the game is much esteemed. When Vaughn left Sacramento, he was amazed to find that no matter where he traveled, everyone seemed to know his former SCC coach. Vaughn credits Weinstein for his own knowledge of the game, knowledge he says helped him tremendously throughout his major league career. He says that among the many lessons he learned from Weinstein, one of the most important was to pay attention to detail “because little things lose the game.”
Mark Wellendorf (CB ’83), a teammate of Vaughn’s at City College, now a firefighter and local cult-favorite musician, wrote a song about his former coach, a tongue-in-cheek lament of the demands of Weinstein and his coaching staff. In it, Wellendorf describes how Weinstein ‘persuaded’ his players to clean the field and encouraged them to be early, or, as the song goes, “If you're on time, it's great, but you'll be running long distances ‘cause if you're not early you're late.” Despite his demands – or perhaps because of them, it’s obvious that Weinstein’s players have a great deal of respect and affection for him, not only because of what he taught them but also how he treated them. As Vaughn remembers, “He treated his players with respect and never raised his voice.”
A Coach of the Year recipient and Hall of Fame inductee several times over, Jerry Weinstein has earned his place among the greats in the La Salle Club Coaches’ Hall of Fame.
The first question one might be tempted to ask Bill Barker is what he has against football. An avid sportsman since high school, Barker ran track in high school, won awards for basketball in high school and college, played fast pitch softball for 25 years, and continues golfing five days a week.
After studying Physical Education and Math in college, as well as earning a credential in Special Education, he began his career at Rio Americano High School, where he coached junior varsity basketball. He went on to coach JV baseball and basketball at Campos Verdes Junior High School and San Juan High School respectively before moving to Del Oro High School in 1967. As the JV basketball coach there, his team won six league championships before he moved up to varsity coach in 1984.
Over the next eleven years, Del Oro’s basketball team won three Sierra Foothill League championships, was Nor Cal runner-up three times, and won the section title in 1989. Besides being named SFL Coach of the Year three times, Barker was the Sacramento Kings Coach of the Year in 1989. One of his former players, Greg Hoffman, a stand-out guard at Sierra College who went on to play professionally in Australia, says it was the amount of time their coach was willing to spend with them and the dedication he showed in helping them to improve their game which resulted in their significant growth both “as basketball players and as young men.”
It wasn’t only in basketball, however, that Barker’s team won accolades: serving as Del Oro’s golf coach for 23 years, he led the squad to two SFL championships, and they were section champions and Nor Cal runner-up in 1990. In a coaching career that spanned 32 years, he coached basketball, baseball, women’s track and golf. As Hoffman explains, it isn’t only his basketball players who owe Coach Barker a great deal of gratitude, but the “hundreds of student athletes that came through his programs.”
After 35 years teaching Math at Del Oro, Barker now enjoys camping with family and friends, as well as working with his wife in their grandchildren’s classrooms. He continues to play golf but still no football.
Don Boyce was a busy guy long before he took up coaching. After earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, he spent five years in the U.S. Air Force, ultimately being awarded the rank of Captain. During that time, he earned his California Teaching Credential and, after leaving the Air Force, his Master’s in School Administration. However, it was his brief but stellar stint as women’s basketball coach at Grant Union High School that earned him a place in the La Salle Club Coaches’ Hall of Fame.
Though Boyce speaks humbly of his accomplishments, the team he led at Grant was one of the strongest women’s basketball teams this area has ever seen. They won four Sac-Joaquin Section titles, two Nor Cal titles and were one game short of winning the state championship in the ’82-’83 season. That year, his team was 36-1 for the season and 3-0 in Division I Nor Cal title games. Three of the young women he coached went on to play college basketball: Jackie Rogers at Oregon State, Deitra Hannibel as a starting point guard her freshman year at UCLA, and Teri Hunt, the Sacramento Bee’s Player of the Year for 1983, who went on to break records at USF and become their first player to win West Coast Conference Player of the Year.
Boyce himself was Sacramento Bee Coach of the Year twice (’81-’82 and ‘82’-’83) and Sacramento Union Coach of the Year for the ’82-’83 season. He was also the first coach in the area to win section titles at two different schools: Norte del Rio in 1982 and Grant in 1983.
Though his untimely exit from coaching at Grant caused outrage among players and the press, Boyce says it was ultimately a blessing, as it allowed him to enjoy raising his son who didn’t have to compete for his attention with 15 other kids. After many years working as president and co-founder of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and 36 years of teaching, Boyce is now enjoying retirement, occupying himself with skiing, golf, tennis and guitar.
Long before Bob Christiansen became a championship coach, he was a powerhouse athlete. A First Team All-League and All-City in football and an Honorable Mention All-American at Reseda High School in the late ‘60s, Christiansen went on to make Second Team All-American and First Team All-Pacific Eight at UCLA. While in college, he was selected to play in the College All-Star game, the East-West Shrine game, the All-American Bowl, and the Coaches All-America Bowl. Not surprisingly, he was selected in the fifth round of the 1972 NFL draft by the Los Angeles Rams.
Luckily for Del Oro High School, Christiansen left pro-football after a few years and dedicated himself to teaching and coaching. In his 17-year coaching career at Del Oro, Christiansen helped guide the football team to four Sac-Joaquin Section titles and ten Sierra Foothill League championships. He was selected to coach two Optimist All-Star games and was named Sacramento Bee Co-Coach of the Year in 1994.
After over 30 years at Del Oro High School, he retired as its principal in 2009. Today, he is active in the Loomis Lions Club, plays golf, and enjoys traveling with his wife, Claudia, and spending time at their cabin in Truckee.
How does it feel to be the most hated man on the court? Dan Hooper can answer that question, having regularly displeased 50% of the people he encountered since 1966. After earning a degree in Elementary Education from Southern Oregon College, Hooper was encouraged to apply as a basketball official in 1966. Over the next 26 years, he officiated high school and junior college basketball games, inevitably developing a thick skin because, as he explains, those who don’t “won’t last long in this job.”
Hooper’s first varsity assignment was, coincidentally enough, a game between John F. Kennedy and Elk Grove, with Bill Cartwright on the floor and Dan Risley coaching from the sidelines. Hooper went on to officiate two state championship games and numerous post-season games. Considered one of the area’s best referees, he was the first official inducted into the California Basketball Hall of Fame.
In 1992, Hooper merged his talents on the court with the office, becoming assistant to Jim Jorgensen at the Sacramento Association of Collegiate Officials. Eventually, in 1982, Hooper took over as owner of SACO and went from assigning officials at six schools in our area to 57 Division II colleges in California, Utah and Hawaii. With 114 programs, both men’s and women’s teams, he now has 330 officials on his roster.
After a 38-year teaching career, Hooper spends his free time hunting all manner of birds in California, Canada and Argentina and has attended the Indy 500 for the past 26 years, even managing to do a couple laps in a car himself. Luckily, no angry coaches were on the track at the time.
Having attended Sacramento High School, Sacramento City College and Sacramento State College, Mike Inchausti is undoubtedly a River City native. A baseball player himself in high school, he went on to major in Physical Education and earned his teaching credential in 1968. In 1972, he began coaching baseball at Luther Burbank High School, leading his team to the Metro League Championship in 1979 and earning the Metro Coach of the Year award that same year.
Coach Inchausti was popular with his players, and Gary Darling, long-time MLB umpire, remembers him as being truly caring and very fair, even to umpires. Darling says, “Coach did not allow us to ride the umpires too much,” adding that that is something he still holds “dear to [his] heart.”
Inchausti didn’t limit his coaching only to baseball or to high school. He served as the Titans football team’s defensive coordinator for several years and was the defensive coach for two Pig Bowls in 1987 and 1988. Not surprisingly, he coached Optimist All-Star baseball and football teams as well. Following a solid career at Luther Burbank, he went on to coach baseball at his alma mater, Sacramento High School, from 1990 to 1992.
After 35 years of teaching, Inchausti now enjoys spending time with his grandchildren, traveling around California, and cheering on the Sacramento River Cats.
Dan Risley had visited Elk Grove twice before accepting the position of basketball coach at Elk Grove High School in 1970. The culture shock he experienced came not as much from the rural location but from the prevailing lack of interest in the sport of basketball which, he explains, was just “something that happened between football and baseball.” Leaving Mira Loma High School with an impressive 19-3 record as junior varsity coach, Risley was determined to put basketball on the map in Elk Grove – or, at the very least, outsell the wrestling matches.
According to Risley, the foundation of Elk Grove’s basketball team from 1971-1974 consisted of three young men: Bill Cartwright, Mike Pinkerton and Terry Saufferer. All three of them, and indeed their teammates, were good athletes who were willing to work hard. And work hard they did, or else, as Mike Pinkerton explains, “they were gone” because the coach had high expectations and a “very disciplined team.” Bill Cartwright adds that though they spent all their free time in the gym, their coach was always right there with them. He remembers very well how high Risley’s expectations were but says that at the same time, “you knew he was on your side.” He recalls how the coach would pick up his players to take them to the gym and that he worked “as hard or harder than anyone else.” For Cartwright, Risley became much more than his basketball coach. “He did stuff no other coach would do,” Cartwright says, like taking their practice gear home to wash so that it would be clean for them the next day and buying each team member his own ball. Risley opened his home to his players, and Cartwright admits that he probably ate as much at his coach’s house as he did his own.
The high expectations and dedication to his players undoubtedly led to Risley’s incredible accomplishments as coach of perhaps the greatest high school sports team in area history. As Pinkerton notes, Risley “took a program that was going nowhere” and turned it into one of the most talented in the United States in an amazingly short time. Under Dan Risley, the Elk Grove High School basketball team won the Metro League title every season for four years straight, was the #2 rated team in the state in the ’73-’74 season with a record of 30-0, and #1 in the state for the ’74-’75 season. In Risley’s last year as coach, his team was rated #2 in the entire United States. Risley himself was named Metro League Coach of the Year three years in a row, Sacramento Coach of the Year twice, and California State Coach of the Year his last season.
Two of his players, Saufferer and Cartwright, went on to play college basketball, Saufferer at Northern Arizona and Cartwright at USF, where he was named All-American twice before eventually being drafted by the New York Knicks in 1979, the beginning of a 16-year NBA career. In a testament to their bond on- and off-court, Risley joined Cartwright at USF for two seasons as assistant coach. Having achieved more in five years than many do in 20, Risley ended his coaching career and dedicated himself to teaching American Government, retiring from Elk Grove High School after more than 30 years of service. In a long overdue admission, the La Salle Club welcomes Dan Risley into its Coaches’ Hall of Fame.
As an all-around athlete herself, playing tennis in high school and basketball, softball, field hockey and golf in college, it was no surprise that Vera Vaccaro went on to a very successful coaching career. Having earned her Bachelor’s degree at Sac State and her Master’s at the University of LaVerne, Vaccaro returned to the Sacramento area to teach, receiving an Outstanding Teacher award in 1982 and eventually serving as principal at both Del Campo and Casa Robles high schools.
Though she coached a variety of sports at various schools, including assistant women’s basketball coach at American River College, assistant softball coach at Sacramento City College, and tennis instructor at Sierra College, it was her years as the head coach for Mira Loma’s softball team that illustrate her tremendous success. In 1985, she was named Sacramento Bee, Sacramento Union and Capitol Valley Conference Coach of the Year for softball after leading her team to win the North San Joaquin Division II championship. She again received the Coach of the Year award for the Capitol Valley Conference in 1987 and was the Sacramento Union Coach of the Year in 1989, the year the Mira Loma softball team won the Capitol Valley Conference title as well as the San Joaquin Valley Division I title. That same year, Vaccaro also helped lead American River College’s women’s basketball team to win the state championship.
Besides her long career as a high school and community college coach, she also served as the Police Olympics softball coach for several years, winning a number of medals both in Las Vegas and California.
Today, she enjoys playing golf and traveling and keeps herself busy as a reserve lieutenant in the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, a board member in the Carmichael Kiwanis Club, and advisor for the Del Campo High School Key Club.
There isn’t much to be written about Jerry Weinstein that hasn’t been written before. As fellow inductee Dan Hooper says, “Weinstein is a legend in Sacramento.” This sentiment is echoed by Greg Vaughn, one of Weinstein’s protégées at Sacramento City College and 14-year veteran MLB outfielder, who explains that “Jerry stamped his face on Sacramento baseball.”
Though Weinstein has a long coaching history over the past 40 years, more than half of that time was spent here in Sacramento. In his 23 years at Sac City, he had a record of 831-208 while guiding the Panthers to 16 conference championships, two co-conference titles, a state title in 1988 and the national crown in 1998. He has served as both assistant and head coach for USA Olympic teams and has managed or coached a number of professional teams, most recently working as catching coach for the Colorado Rockies.
Weinstein’s greatest strength may well be in his scholarship of the sport. Having written numerous publications on baseball, both practical and theoretical, published locally and nationally, his knowledge of the game is much esteemed. When Vaughn left Sacramento, he was amazed to find that no matter where he traveled, everyone seemed to know his former SCC coach. Vaughn credits Weinstein for his own knowledge of the game, knowledge he says helped him tremendously throughout his major league career. He says that among the many lessons he learned from Weinstein, one of the most important was to pay attention to detail “because little things lose the game.”
Mark Wellendorf (CB ’83), a teammate of Vaughn’s at City College, now a firefighter and local cult-favorite musician, wrote a song about his former coach, a tongue-in-cheek lament of the demands of Weinstein and his coaching staff. In it, Wellendorf describes how Weinstein ‘persuaded’ his players to clean the field and encouraged them to be early, or, as the song goes, “If you're on time, it's great, but you'll be running long distances ‘cause if you're not early you're late.” Despite his demands – or perhaps because of them, it’s obvious that Weinstein’s players have a great deal of respect and affection for him, not only because of what he taught them but also how he treated them. As Vaughn remembers, “He treated his players with respect and never raised his voice.”
A Coach of the Year recipient and Hall of Fame inductee several times over, Jerry Weinstein has earned his place among the greats in the La Salle Club Coaches’ Hall of Fame.