LES DAUTH, MEMBER OF PASO ROBLES
HIGH SCHOOL
class of 1939, has always been interested in sports, both as participant
and spectator. Most Friday nights in fall you will find him at War
Memorial Stadium watching the Bearcat football team. He was a member of
that team for the first two years of his high school career until knee
problems forced him to retire. In Lester's day Coach Hank Beiden's team
played on a field on the current site of the post office.
Paso Robles was a part of the San Luis Obispo County
northern league and they played against teams from Atascadero,
Templeton, Shandon, and Cambria. Championship games were with the
winners of the southern league which included San Luis, Arroyo Grande,
Santa Maria and Lompoc.
Lester played Bearcat basketball for four years in
games at the Veterans' Building on Spring Street. The team practiced on
an outdoor wooden floor built by the woodshop class just behind where
the Flamson gym now stands. Lester remembers the itchy, heavy wool
uniforms and games that were pretty low-scoring by today's standard. He
noted that after each basket, the team went to a center jump instead of
in-bounding the ball as is done today.
Baseball, also coached by Hank Beiden, was played on a
field at 25th and Spring. One of Lester's teammates, Bud Sheely went on
to play for the Chicago White Sox. Some of the players who lived in San
Miguel were sometimes given a ride home after the games by a local
highway patrolman who ferried the boys on the back of his motorcycle.
Track was a big sport in Paso Robles and some of the
standouts in the 1930's included Ed Sauret, Frank Minini, Les Hoffman,
and Bud Bayer. It seems there was another member of the track team who
had gotten into trouble and so was not allowed to ride the team bus.
Undaunted, this pole-vaulter would hitchhike to meets with his pole!
Many Paso Robles athletes have made names for
themselves in the world of sports, and Lester Dauth is part of the
committee that established the Bearcat Hall of Fame to honor them. The
first inductees included Hamp Pool, Roy Thomas, Ken Buck, Paul Kinne,
and Rusty Kuntz.
DOLLY BARBA BADER'S
STORY 
