George Stanich

Who is George Stanich?

George Anthony Stanich was an American athlete who was a collegiate all-American in one sport, and Olympian in another and a professional in still another.

As a basketball player at UCLA, Stanich was a 2-time all-conference guard and in 1950, he led his team to its first NCAA tournament appearance. He scored 9 points in the East-West All-Star Game and was a first-team all-American, the first of 24 Bruins who would earn this honor under John Wooden. As a Bruin baseball player, he was a pitcher for 3 seasons, including throwing a 5-hit shutout as a sophomore as UCLA beat USC for the first time in five years. He would become a professional baseball player after graduation, pitching for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, as well as Idaho Falls Russets and Stockton.

But it was a high jumper that George soared highest. According to the an unpublished thesis at CSU-Sacramento, "In the summer of 1948, George, a 19-year old having just completed his sophomore year of college, traveled to Chicago to compete at the collegiate tryouts to qualify for the Olympic track and field trials. UCLA paid for the trip, but George, who competed in the high jump, was not one of the six athletes to qualify. The Los Angeles Athletic Club paid for George to stay in Chicago for two weeks so that he could participate in the AAU meet from which the other six tryout qualifiers would be chosen. George finished in eighth place, but because two of the AAU qualifiers had already made the trials in the college competition, he became the final high jumper to qualify for the trials. Stanich moved on to the Olympic trials, where he barely cleared 6 ft 6 in on his last attempt, but then was the first to clear 6 ft 7 in and placed second with a jump of 6 ft 8.25 in.