Sign up for email newsletters

Sign up for email newsletters

Former Drake boy's basketball coach Pete Hayward led the 1981 and 1982 teams to the NCS and Cal State championships. (IJ archive)

DATE TAKEN: Drake High 1982 basketball team which won the California State Championship. Photo from the 1982 Drake High yearbook

Drake's Jim Saia handles the ball in a game on March 5, 1982. (IJ archive)

Drake's Jim Saia brings the ball up the court. Chris Fulton is in back during a game at Redwood on Jan 1982. (Marina Little/Marin Independent Journal archive)

Drake's Steve Kenilvort plays in a game during the teams run to the state title in March, 1982. (Marin Independent Journal archive)

Drake's Chris Fulton going to the basket on March 4, 1982. (Robert Tong/Marin Independent Journal)

Drake's Doug Dibley plays in a game during the teams run to the state title in March, 1982. (Marin Independent Journal archive)

Dan Hunt and Jim Saia walk off the court after a Drake win on March 10, 1982. (Marina Little/Marin Independent Journal archive)

Some 40 years after its crowning achievement, the Drake High boys basketball program – now Archie Williams – still holds a special place in Marin county lore.

Many of the prominent players from coach Pete Hayward’s era – which ran from 1973 until 1992 and crested with a State championship in 1982 – are gathering this weekend at Marin Rod and Gun Club in San Rafael for a 40th-year reunion with the title team.

“It’s more about honoring coach Hayward and his tenure there,” said Jim Saia, who was the point guard on the 1982 title team. “Obviously we had a great team but there were other great teams and great players that played for coach Hayward.”

Hayward, who lives in Novato, oversaw what was likely the most dominant stretch a Marin basketball team ever put together. The 1981 team went 31-1 and won a NorCal championship. Most of that team returned as seniors for the 1982 season and went undefeated (34-0), winning the first Division II title awarded in basketball.

Saia, Dan Hunt, Steve Kenilvort, Chris Fulton and Doug Dibley made up the starting five from that team.

“(Hayward) was way ahead of everyone else in terms of offenses and put us in a system that allowed us to play and play the right way,” Fulton said. “One of the things is we could all pass. We all shared the ball and that’s why we were so good. We had too many good players to try key on anybody. We could all pass the ball and shoot the ball and were all high IQ players.”

As if trying to complete an undefeated season with a state title wasn’t enough pressure, the players had to make sure they finished the job after watching the Drake girls team – led by Gigi Geoffrion, Lisa DiVito, Sue Burroni, Sharon Casey and coach Anne Scott – defeat Mission Viejo 58-53 to win a state title of its own. The 1982 girls team will also be in attendance and celebrated this weekend.

“When the girls won the state title, we all looked at each other and said ‘We can’t screw up now’,” Saia said. “We were really happy for them but we have to finish the deal.”

Kenilvort had 35 points and 16 rebounds in the title game, an 87-85 victory against Banning that pushed the program’s winning streak to 56 games. Kenilvort was featured in Sports Illustrated’s Faces In The Crowd in the May 10, 1982, issue thanks to that performance.

“What I remember about that time is the community,” said Michael Daly, a bench player on the team who has taken on the role of reunion organizer over the years. “The 1982 floods – some incredible things were happening in Marin and San Anselmo. It really brought the town together for a public school that draws from Fairfax and San Anselmo to have two (state title) teams in the same year.”

Since that time, only two Marin public schools have won state titles in basketball – the Novato girls in 1986 and the Tam boys in 2000. (The Marin Catholic girls, both Branson School programs and the San Domenico girls have won state titles as private schools).

Hayward’s coaching was one big reason for the success of the boys team but it was far from the only one. Under Hayward’s guidance, Drake was already established as a basketball powerhouse and the guys on the 1982 team grew up going to games watching legendary players like Eddie Joe Chavez and Walt Gillespie, among others.

“Eddie Joe Chavez, Walt Gillespie, Steve Spencer, Bryan Colteaux, Mike Saia – those guys were our heroes,” Fulton said. “And we wanted to be like them. It never would have happened if it wasn’t for those guys.”

To this day, players from that era of Drake basketball are considered the best to come out of the county.

“Walt Gillespie was the Michael Jordan of Marin County basketball,” Jim Saia said. “There was no one in Marin County that played the game like him. He was so much fun to watch. Obviously you can debate – Eddie Joe is probably the best player from Marin. Watching those guys as kids, there was no better place to be on a Friday night than Drake High.

“For a kid to go to those games – our dream wasn’t to play college basketball, our dream was to play for Drake High basketball.”

The CYO scene also played a role in how a public school in San Anselmo put together a high school basketball juggernaut.

“We got some really good CYO coaching at St. Rita,” Daly said. “Larry Fulton had a lot of those teams. Mike Saia was my coach in eighth grade. We got some quality coaching while we were growing up.”

Chris Fulton, Jim Saia and Doug Dibley were all on a St. Rita’s team coached by Chris’ father, Larry, who had worked with Hayward previously at Marin Academy. Many of Fulton’s top players at St. Rita fed into the Drake program.

“My dad was giving us college-level coaching,” Chris Fulton said. “We were getting coached like college guys were when we were in third grade. … My dad set the foundation when we were in third and fourth grade.”

Larry Fulton died in February and was the inspiration for the state title run made this year by the San Domenico girls team – coached by Larry’s other son, Mike Fulton.

All of those elements came together in the early 1980s and produced a run that hasn’t been seen in Marin basketball since. During the 1981-83 seasons, the Pirates went 92-3 and never lost a game in Marin county. The program’s win streak in MCAL play eventually reached a state-record 83 games in 1986.

Beyond the achievements of his teams over the course of his 20-year career, Hayward’s legacy can also be measured by how many of his players remain deeply connected to basketball to this day.

Jim Saia is the head coach at Cal State LA and his older brother, Mike, coaches the Marin Catholic boys basketball team. Lavin recently took over as the head coach at the University of San Diego, having coached previously at UCLA and St. John’s.

Spencer is at Orange Coast College and Paul Trevor is at Stanislaus State. Hayward’s son, Mike, has also been an assistant coach at the college level, often with fellow Drake alum Alex Pribble at the helm.

Mike Fulton has gone on to win a pair of state titles as coach with Branson and San Domenico. Reed Nottingham was a long-time coach at Novato and is now the athletic director at San Marin – with another former Drake player, Tony Butler, as the girls basketball coach.

Many of Hayward’s top players chose to remain near San Anselmo as adults and sent their kids to play basketball for Drake. Dan Hunt’s sons, Liam and Jesse, both played for Drake. Jesse Hunt was the best player on the Drake team that made it to the state title game in 2014.

Buck Chavez’s sons – Skylar, Lucas and Neal – were all standout basketball players at Drake, as were Dan Kenilvort’s sons, Alec and Brandon.

“We all love basketball but someone had to create that atmosphere and environment and that was coach Hayward,” Jim Saia said. “It was all about Drake basketball on a Friday night. … It was such a great time and great experience for us as high school kids. We wanted the game to stay a part of us. A lot of us are coaching college and high school and stayed a part of the game.”

Sign up for email newsletters

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.