Just one day before the grand opening of the new Santa Maria High School stadium, athletic director Ralph Baldiviez stood in the middle of the new field, recalling his own days of playing football for the Saints.
“I wasn’t a starter,” he said, “but I worked hard.”
Then he looked up and immediately saw the two-foot letters on the visitors’ stands spelling out his own name.
“Oh, wow,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve seen that. It wasn’t painted last time I was out here.
“At least they spelled my name right,” he joked.
From a freshman sitting on the sidelines, to the namesake of the new stadium, Baldiviez has come a long way. And yes, he jokes about the new “Ralph Baldiviez Stadium,” possibly because he still can’t believe that it’s real.
“It’s quite an honor for a guy who grew up here,” he said.
Baldiviez has been with the school for 36 years, 25 as the athletic director. Before that, he taught and coached football and wrestling. He’s seen the school change in many ways throughout the years, he said, but some things always stay the same.
When he walks the halls, he still remembers his own time as a student on campus, and the fun that he had playing sports as a Saint. He brings that level of understanding to his job as athletic director and tirelessly promotes sports at Santa Maria High School.
Though he did talk about his own honor, Baldiviez was happy to change the subject and discuss the field itself and the impact it will have on the school’s sports teams.
Santa Maria High School is the third school in the district to get a new facility. Baldiviez said that there were a few people at the school who were annoyed that they had to wait so long, but he knew that patience would pay off.
“I told people, ‘Just wait, they’ll get the bugs out,’” he said.
The results speak for themselves. The field is gleaming, with an eye-catching combination of red, white, and green. The Astroturf is the latest version of the technology, Baldiviez said, and the workers who put it in had benefited from their installation experience at Righetti and Pioneer Valley.
The $2 million renovations were completed over the summer. Since then, all the school has had to do is keep people off of it until that first football game.
“We said no. We stuck to our guns. We were not going to let anyone play until the Santa Maria Saints football team played here,” Baldiviez said at the grand opening ceremony on Sept. 5.
The Saints’ first game is set for Sept. 12, and the team is fired up. The football players are excited to play on the new field, Baldiviez said. The school’s soccer team is also eagerly awaiting its own chance to try it out, and the track team can look forward to fewer cases of shin splints this season.
“This is third generation,” said Santa Maria principal Craig Huseth. “It’s really a wonderful facility.”
Baldiviez is hoping that the excitement surrounding the stadium will help with recruitment. The football program has struggled in recent years to field a team, and this year the school had to scrap the JV team and fold the players into one varsity team.
But that’s nothing that a couple of wins couldn’t cure, Baldiviez said, and at the grand opening he told the crowd that this season would be different.
That crowd—filled with alumni, students, and fellow faculty members—wasn’t there to cheer on the football team. Not yet. They were there to see Baldiviez, a man so modest that he put in several calls to the Sun to promote the new stadium, without once mentioning that it was to be named after him. Baldiviez was surprised by the honor when he found out last June.
As Superintendent Jeff Hearn explained at the ceremony, Baldiviez was nominated by his fellow teachers, and the board members discussed the matter for less than a minute before deciding that the honor was “long overdue,” according to Hearn.
“I can’t think of a more deserving person,” Hearn said.
It’s not often that a landmark is named after a living person, and Hearn said that he’s just glad the honor came for Baldiviez now while he can still enjoy it.
As for Baldiviez—the boy who grew up in Santa Maria, graduated from Santa Maria High School, went to Cal Poly, and then came back again—he still can’t believe that his name is written up on that stadium wall.
“It boggles my mind,” he said. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘What the heck?’”
Sports Editor Sarah E. Thien wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks, ‘I can’t wait for the 2012 Olympics.’ Send comments to sthien@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 11-18, 2008.