Book Reviews
The
History
of
Butte
College
Men's
Basketball
by
Thomas
Charles
Anderson
Stories
of
games,
players,
politics,
coaches
and
their
rosters.
The addition of Butte Junior College to Butte County in the mid-1960s suddenly offered local students an alternative to the 4-year university. No longer did GPAs and SAT scores decide who would go to college and who would learn a trade, or—worse yet—become available to the draft. All that was needed to obtain admission to Butte JC was a completed application and $10.00 for tuition. Along with this new freedom of educational choice came the extension of many athletic careers that normally would have ended at high school graduation.
While some exceptional local athletes competed with considerable success at what was then still called Chico State College, the opening of multiple sports programs at Butte JC offered popular local athletes with less than exceptional ability an outlet for their passions. And for the exceptional athletes, it provided a choice between playing at a 4-year-university level, or at a somewhat lower level (at least initially) with local athletes they had known all their lives.
Junior college basketball at Butte became the stuff of which local legends are made. Within a short period of time the Butte basketball program became the best in the state, but with the titles came pressure to maintain that level year after year. When that couldn’t be done with all-local talent, players from all over California and outside the state found themselves on the tartan surface of the Butte gymnasium.
The junior college system in the state of California is still very similar today to what it was 30 years ago when Butte College first broke ground on Pentz Road in a hard-rock field in what must have seemed like the middle of nowhere to most people. Other cities that boasted schools in the Golden Valley Conference (GVC) included Rocklin (Sierra JC), Yuba City (Yuba), Ukiah (Mendocino), Redding (Shasta), Weed (Siskiyous), Eureka (Redwoods), Quincy (Feather River) and Susanville (Lassen).
This book takes the reader back through those times: from when local boys with state titles gave way to out-of-towners, until the present day, when an almost all-local women’s team once again makes the phrase Butte College basketball something to fear throughout the state. --Introduction, The History of Butte College Men's Basketball
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