Two all-state football players from the 1950s were Rafer Johnson of Kingsburg (shown competing in the Olympics) and Dick Bass of Vallejo (shown as a member of the L.A. Rams). Photos: Fresno Athletic Hall of Fame & footballcardgallery.com.
Note: To view all our entire all-state football package of teams from 1950 through 2023, including overall, medium schools, small schools and underclass, you’ll need to sign up for a Gold Club membership. We’re adding plenty to the value of a Gold Club membership with more to come in the future. To check out the extensive archive with all of our all-state teams, including the retroactive overall all-state basketball teams from 1954-55 through 1978-79, sign up for just pennies per day. CLICK HERE.
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To View The Retroactive All-State Football Teams, CLICK HERE
Retroactive All-State Football Primer, CLICK HERE
Retroactive All-State Basketball Primer, CLICK HERE
The first season for the Cal-Hi Sports all-state teams was for the 1979-80 school year, but co-founder Nelson Tennis actually researched plenty of state players of the year, regional players of the year, players of the year by division and class and positional players of the year going back before that, especially in football and boys basketball.
In recent years, managing editor Ronnie Flores has supplemented to those all-time lists by adding all-state teams for each year in football and boys basketball that are picked exactly how teams would be in real time using the same disciplines. In October of 2023, the retroactive all-state boys basketball teams were released from 1978-79 back to the 1954-55 season. In October of this year, the retroactive all-state football teams were published going back to the 1960 football season.
We wanted to go back to the 1950 season in football since we already published all-decade teams in football and had all-time player of the year lists with many of the same names already selected by Tennis and Flores. With the help of long time Northern Section correspondent and MaxPreps writer Kevin Askeland, we have now published an additional 10 seasons of all-state football teams, consisting of 11 players on offense and defense, plus one utility player. We didn’t stop there, either, as it was only natural to take our positional players of the year (Offensive End, Lineman, Quarterback, Running Back, Linebacker, Defensive Back) and state defensive player of the year honors back to the 1950 season as well.
In looking over some of the names of those now added as all-state players in our archives back to 1950 we see several well-known coaches as well as athletes who were successful not just in football but in baseball and track.
Downey vs. Anaheim from 1956 remains the most heavily attended prep football section title game in state history. Photo: Cal-Hi Sports archives.
The list includes Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson of Kingsburg (1953 DB), MLB manager Pat Corrales of Fresno (1958 OL), and the legendary Dick Bass of Vallejo (1954 RB). NFL greats added on include QB Daryle Lamonica of Clovis (1958), DL Lionel Aldridge of Pittsburg (1958) and WR Art Powell of San Diego (1954).
More 1950s all-state alums show as 1959 QB Ron Calcagno of San Francisco St. Ignatius. He later became one of the winningest head coaches in CIF Central Coast Section history at St. Francis (Mountain View). For 1958, Ken Hubbs of Colton is now listed. He has an award named in his honor for San Bernardino County that celebrates his life. Hubbs died in a plane crash at age 22 in 1964 after he already had starred in two MLB seasons for the Chicago Cubs. Also for 1950, legendary USC line coach Marv Goux is listed as an all-state linebacker from Santa Barbara High.
The most famous game of the 1950s was the 1956 CIF Southern Section championship game at the L.A. Coliseum and both star RBs — Randy Meadows (Downey) & Mickey Flynn (Anaheim) — are of course now added into these archives.
You can view all of our all-state teams in football from 1950 though the 2023 season season by CLICKING HERE or by using the blue navigation bar (“All-State”) at the top of the webpage. There you can access not only the football content, but all the all-state teams we’ve published over the years in boys and girls hoops, baseball and softball, too.
There’s more. Askeland has been working on retroactive all-state teams for Medium Schools and Small Schools for some time and is excited to get those published during the spring or summer of 2025. In our annual all-state package, we publish separate all-state squads for medium schools and small schools (30 players each) and have been doing that annually since the 1989 season (and perhaps a few more in our hard-copy newsletters). We continue to add names of great players to our lists and database of players we’ve covered over nearly 50 years and we’ll be excited when those are published next year.
In addition, we’ll keep adding detail to all the all-state material and biographical writeups that exist in our newsletters to the overall all-state teams over the years. We published and mailed out the hard-copy newsletter from the 1979-80 season through the 2012-13 season. One of our next big projects is to publish all the printed newsletters on the website in easy-to-read PDFs and to re-create major news stories on our website that will be searchable just as all the material is since the 2012 football season. You’ll be able to access all of that and more with a Cal-Hi Sports Gold Club Membership, so please consider joining our team today!
To View The Retroactive All-State Teams, CLICK HERE
Retroactive All-State Football Primer, CLICK HERE
Retroactive All-State Basketball Primer, CLICK HERE
Ronnie Flores is the managing editor of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at ronlocc1977@yahoo.com. Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter: @RonMFlores
