By John Ganahl ’62
If you were a boy born in 1944 and lived in northern Orange County in summer of 1958, a new high school possibility suddenly showed up. If you were Catholic, you may have been headed to Mater Dei in Santa Ana. Now there was a closer option because the Servite Order was coming west from Chicago to open a new high school in Anaheim. The only problem was there was no school to go to… yet. There was a backup plan. For fall semester of 1958, nearly 100 boys who enrolled at Servite were allowed to use classrooms at St. Philip Elementary School in Fullerton in the morning with elementary students reclaiming their school rooms in the afternoon. Meanwhile, construction was being completed on the new school site on West La Palma Avenue.
The only sport available that first fall was football. With no athletic field of our own, another temporary solution was found. The fledging team of about 25 eager freshmen practiced on what was normally a grassy picnic area at La Palma Park in Anaheim under newly hired Coach Bill Miller and his assistant George Dena, a recent graduate of Anaheim High School. Each player was assigned a practice jersey that doubled as a game jersey. We took them home the night before games to wash them for game day. We definitely did not feel slighted. We had the needed equipment to play tackle football and that was a big step up from flag football in grammar school.
It occurred to players a couple days before Servite’s first game against St. Anthony in Long Beach that we did not have a school nickname. After practice, when the team gathered under the La Palma stadium bleachers, a few possible names, such as bears, lions or cowboys were called out. No suggested nickname got much support until one of the boys proposed… THE SERPENTS! That got a big cheer! It was quickly topped by… THE SNAKES!! To a group of fourteen year old boys, that was a cool nickname. The Servite Snakes had a ring to it. Coach Miller calmly said he would pass the suggested nickname on to the school administration. The next day, Coach Miller told us it was already determined by a higher authority that we would be the Servite Friars. We were a little disappointed, but that was quickly replaced by the more important goal of getting ready to actually play football and the nicknaming process was forgotten.
After Christmas break, we moved into our new school building on La Palma Avenue which consisted of one classroom building with promises of more improvements to come. We suddenly had a lot more space… remember there were only freshman boys that first year. Basketball was added winter quarter, but with no gym or outdoor lights, players had to report to St. Catherine’s Military Academy for evening workouts. As with the first football season, it seemed easy to adapt to what was available.
