The Rancho Alamitos Alumni Association has presented the third Annual John Callard Memorial Scholarship to Brett Hurley, a 2012 Rancho Alamitos High School graduate.
Hurley was a three-sport standout at Rancho in football, baseball and basketball. During his senior year on the football team – Garden Grove League champs – he was named league MVP, made the All-CIF Defense Team and third Team All Orange County, and was chosen to play in the North vs. South All Star game.
He will be attending Santa Ana College in the fall where he plans to play football and study toward a degree in fire sciences.
“With any individual award or honor I have received over the years, I have recognized that without my teammates and coaches there is no way I could have achieved anything,”
Hurley wrote in his application for the scholarship. “I have been introduced to great friends and outstanding coaches and mentors who have had a huge impact on my life and are people I will always have there for me until the end.”
Those sentiments are very much an echo of Coach Callard’s outlook. A longtime staff member at Rancho, he joined the faculty in the school’s opening year of 1956 as a mathematics teacher and “B” football coach.
He spent his career there over the next 33 years, serving as varsity head coach from 1965 to 1976, during which time the Vaqueros won seven league championships.
Growing up in Long Beach, Callard played football at historic Poly High School, and was named by the Long Beach Press-Telegram in 2009 as one of that legendary institution’s top players for the decade of the 1940s.
At Long Beach City College he was a member of the 1950 Junior Rose Bowl national championship team (and earned the MVP award for that bowl game). He is also enshrined in the LBCC Hall of Champions.
Callard passed away in 2008. The Alumni Association established the scholarship in 2010 to honor the memory of a beloved teacher and coach.
It is given to a graduating senior varsity athlete from Rancho Alamitos who is pursuing both academics and athletics at a community college.
The Rancho Alamitos High School Alumni Association is a non-profit organization. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the John Callard Memorial Scholarship may send contributions to the Rancho Alamitos Alumni Association, Inc., in care of Rancho Alamitos High School, 11352 Dale St., Garden Grove, CA 92841 or visit www.ra3vaqueros.com/scholarship_fund.htm.
Brett Hurley
