Dave Gleason, Millennium Hall of Fame

Although Dave Gleason was one of the best defensive tackles the

Newport-Mesa community has ever produced, his true athletic joy didn’t

come until he discovered a game with physical contact and no pads.

A Costa Mesa High and Orange Coast College football and heavyweight

wrestling star, Gleason got a taste of heaven playing rugby at Cal.

After his first football season for the Golden Bears, Gleason, whose

grappling reputation preceded him, was approached by the school’s

wrestling coach. But Gleason wanted to try something different, a noble

concept for early-70s Berkeley.

“Why would anybody want to wrestle, when there’s rugby and linemen can

carry the ball?” said Gleason, who, despite a long and illustrious

football playing and coaching career, believes rugby “is the greatest

game on earth.”

A JC All-American defensive tackle for Orange Coast in 1970, Gleason

arrived at Berkeley during a tumultuous time. Not only was the football

program on NCAA probation following the Coach Ray Willsey regime, there

were student protests throughout the campus and antiwar demonstrations as

radical as anywhere in the country.

During football practices in the spring of 1971 -- Gleason’s first

semester -- there were days when players had problems breathing because

of tear gas emitted from police to break up riots.

“I was going from conservative Orange County to Berkeley, and it was

really eye-opening,” Gleason said. “You didn’t really want to wear your

lettermen’s jacket, either, because there was a lot of apathy. If you

played sports, you were part of the establishment. Nobody gave you a hard

time, but it just wasn’t cool.”

On the field, Cal went 6-5 in Gleason’s junior year before Willsey

resigned with NCAA sanctions pending. The next year, Mike White became

head coach. Gleason started every game for the Bears, but felt he was

caught in the transition of defensive philosophies. “But I was happy ...

I had a good time,” he said.

Gleason remembers traveling to Ohio State in ’71 and playing in front

of 90,000 fans, then playing the Buckeyes at home in ’72 and stuffing a

freshman halfback named Archie Griffin. “We gave him his worst day,”

Gleason said.

White also played rugby at Cal, a novelty since he was the head

football coach. Consequently, it generated interest on campus and a lot

of football players went out for rugby.

In the spring of ‘72, Cal won a mythical national rugby championship

with Gleason, a 6-foot-2, 230-pound bulldozer, and he would later

participate on the Newport Beach Rugby Club.

Prior to college, Gleason was Costa Mesa’s Athlete of the Year in

1969.

Greatly influenced by Mesa line coach Doug Brown, Gleason was a

two-year starter after moving into the area from Fresno, where he and his

brother, Mike, played for traditionally tough Fresno High.

In Week 2 of the 1967 season, Gleason’s junior year, the Mustangs

knocked off Newport Harbor, 3-0, on Ramon Ricardo’s 34-yard field goal.

Gleason had transferred from a winning Fresno program and was surprised

when “everybody went crazy” after the Mustangs’ early-season victory.

“My brother and I were thinking, ‘What happened?’ Because truly,

people went nuts,” Gleason said. “It was like we’d won a CIF

championship. We were puzzled.”

Gleason realized later it was quite a feat to beat Harbor, while

snapping a three-year losing streak against the district rivals.

The next day, an account of the game in the Daily Pilot read:

“Jubilant Mesa supporters broke into tears for joy and excited shouts

when the final gun signaled that the upset triumph was indeed theirs.”

Gleason, who went on to become one of Mesa’s top players, was also a

standout wrestler, placing fifth at the CIF finals for heavyweights his

senior year.

Once, at the Santa Ana College Tournament, Gleason pinned an opponent

in five seconds. “He was fish,” said Gleason, whose two-year prep record

was 60-6, while going 75-7 at OCC.

Jack Fair, former OCC wrestling coach and assistant football coach,

made sure Gleason was ushered into the wrestling room immediately after

football.

“When (Fair) coached me, I hated him, but I never respected a coach

more,” said Gleason, who later coached at OCC with Fair and legendary

former head coach Dick Tucker, including the 1975 season when the Pirates

won their second national championship.

Gleason, the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame,

celebrating the millennium, began his coaching career at Corona del Mar

High in 1973 under Dave Holland, then moved over to OCC the following

year.

A mainstay at OCC until 1986, Gleason also coached wrestling and

women’s basketball for the Pirates, who captured back-to-back South Coast

Conference wrestling titles in 1978 and ‘79, before the program was

retired.

From 1993 to ‘96, Gleason returned to OCC’s assistant football

coaching ranks under Bill Workman.

Gleason, an OCC professor who teaches health education, is in charge

of the strength and conditioning programs in the state-of-the-art Orange

Coast exercise science facility.

He lives in Newport Beach with his wife, Laurie.