Died – Dying – Obituary
Dwight Garner, key determine in Cal soccer historical past, dies at 58
BERKELEY — Former Cal soccer participant Dwight Garner, who maintained ceaselessly that his knee didn’t contact the bottom earlier than he lateraled the ball throughout The Play in 1982, died on Friday at his residence in Florida after a battle with prostate most cancers.
Garner, who attended Skyline Excessive College in Oakland, was 58.
Cal soccer alum Ahmad Anderson made a tearful announcement of the information in the course of the unveiling of a statue in entrance of Memorial Stadium that commemorates The Play.
Garner was a freshman at Cal in 1982 when the Bears pulled off the five-lateral kickoff return that ended with Kevin Moen plowing by means of the Stanford band as he crossed the objective line.
Garner was the third participant to the touch the ball in the course of the return and was mobbed by Stanford defenders and headed to the turf as he launched his lateral to Richard Rodgers.
“A real brother, his knee was by no means down, and we’ll at all times stand right here remembering him on this second on this time for so long as we stay and thereafter,” Anderson advised a crowd gathered for the ceremony that exposed the statue of Moen.
In 1992, 10 years after The Play, Garner talked about receiving the lateral from Rodgers and pondering he would make an enormous play.
“I stated, ‘Wealthy,’ and he threw it. I used to be a younger freshman and I used to be pondering landing, which is why I used to be tackled by 20 individuals,” he advised the San Francisco Chronicle in ’92. “I had the ball virtually between my legs; my forearm was the one factor free. If I had fallen with that ball, my profession would have been rather a lot completely different.”
Garner’s pitch of the ball again to Rodgers has been some extent of competition for 4 many years with Stanford followers, satisfied he was down and The Play ought to by no means have been accomplished.
Garner got here to Cal after main Skyline to the Oakland Athletic League crown, totaling 400 yards of offense with 5 touchdowns within the OAL championship sport.
At Cal, the 5-foot-8, 185-pounder rushed for 1,048 yards and caught 120 passes for 1,027 yards.
He additionally returned 51 kickoffs for 958 yards, and returned 35 punts for 274 yards and a landing. He totaled 10 TDs in his four-year faculty profession.
Undrafted by the NFL, Garner performed two video games for Washington in 1986 and returned seven kickoffs for 142 yards. Then he performed in three postseason video games for the group that season, returning 5 kickoffs for 98 extra yards.
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Dwight Garner, key determine in Cal soccer historical past, dies at 58
