Max Sparrer inducted into Los Gatos High School’s hall of
fame
It’s been 45 years since Max Sparrer’s MVP season at Los Gatos
High School
– a season where the star running back accounted for 90 percent
of the Wildcat’s touchdowns.
Max Sparrer inducted into Los Gatos High School’s hall of fame
It’s been 45 years since Max Sparrer’s MVP season at Los Gatos High School – a season where the star running back accounted for 90 percent of the Wildcat’s touchdowns.
The 1962 school year was also the same year that Sparrer set the school’s long-jump record (called the broad jump back then) of 22 feet, 8 ¼ inches, crushing the old mark set by Ted Abe in 1957 by more than a foot.
It was a school record that would stand for 15 years. Even to this day, Sparrer’s leap into the school’s record books still has him in all time third place.
For those feats as well as his solid academics, Sparrer, who now resides at Ridgemark in Hollister with his wife, was named to the school’s athletic Hall of Fame.
“I was very, very shocked when I first heard the news,” said Sparrer, who is now 63. “I actually had tears in my eyes when I found out. It was such an honor.”
Each of the last four years, Los Gatos High School has named 10 athletes to the prestigious list. Considering that Los Gatos High School has been in business since the 1880s, Sparrer’s entrance into the Hall in only the fourth season of voting was impressive.
Other athletes from Los Gatos High that were inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame include Chris Von Saltza, who won Olympic Gold in swimming at the 1960 games in Rome, Italy in the 400m freestyle, the 4x100m freestyle relay and the 4×100 medley relay. She also held 4 world records and won 32 national championships.
Former San Francisco 49er Hugh Campbell, who is now the commissioner of the Canadian Football League, was also inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. Campbell was in the Class of 1959.
During the 1962 season, Sparrer scored nine of the Wildcats’ 10 touchdowns, which is even more impressive because the team’s wide receiver that year, Bill Fairband, would go on to play for the Oakland Raiders.
A four-year member on the school’s track & field team, Sparrer had a stellar senior year despite an ankle injury his junior year that prevented him from competing in both sports.
In his senior campaign, Sparrer finished in fifth place in the 100-yard dash and won the 180-yard low hurdle event in the West Coast Valley League.
In football that same year, Sparrer was named the MVP of the team and was named to the Central Coast Section’s All-League Second Team – which was a huge feat considering that back then the section went from San Francisco to Bakersfield.
After high school, Sparrer went to San Jose City College for a year, where he continued playing football. From there, he wrapped up his education at California Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo where he earned a degree in food processing.
Sparrer earned the degree for use in the family business: Sparrer Brothers’ Sausage – a company that his grandfather started in San Jose in 1929.
Sparrer would stay with the company until the Sparrer family opted to close it down in 1975 as a result of major changes in the meat processing industry that had a major impact on the smaller companies.
“Most all of my life I’ve been in the meat business,” said Sparrer, who has one sister and a younger brother Dick, who is the editor of the Los Gatos Weekly newspaper. “Our business was mainly from King City to Burlingame, and we had about four trucks. We weren’t too big.”
For the past six years, Sparrer has worked as a new account salesman for Oregon-based Boyd’s Coffee Company.
Although far removed from his days on the gridiron and on the track team at Los Gatos High, Sparrer still tries to keep up on the activities at his alma mater, and will often show up to the one football game each year where the alumni are invited onto the field and given a tour of the campus.
In addition to his achievements on the playing field, what caught the interest of the committee that votes on the annual list of potential inductees was a Student Athlete Award that was bestowed on him. On the trophy, which lists all of the recipients of the award, was Sparrer’s name for the year 1962.
After seeing it there, the committee decided to dig a little deeper into all of his achievements.
“There just weren’t a lot of records on the older guys that were kept back then,” Sparrer said.
Fortunately, his mother had a scrapbook listing all of his achievements that his brother Dick was able to verify for the committee.
“The selection committee sent me a beautiful letter letting me know about the honor,” Sparrer said. “They gave the 10 of us a nice dinner. It was a great event. I was the third oldest in the group. I hadn’t really been in the school since my 40th reunion five years ago.”
Three of the committee members were very familiar with Sparrer’s achievements. Two of the members, Pete Denevi and Larry Matthews, coached him on the football field and committee member Fred Niemann was his track coach.
