Sandy post., August 27, 1981, Page 46, Image 46

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GRESHAM ¡Ore ) OUTLOOK ond SANDY (O r* J POST Thor»
Aug 27 1981
Thor»
This Lemon is no lemon
Aug 27, 1981 GRESHAM (O r«.) OUTLOOK ond SANDY (O r * .) POST — E
by Dick Baltus
Goodness,
get a load of
that thing, sitting
up there like some
monolithic tribute to
(he sequoia a lifesize replica of El Capitan Iarok at the way
it rests on those broad shoulders, a fire hydrant on a freeway
Wait, it stirred Ooh. i t ’s getting all reft and bulging out
even more oh no, run, it's alive
ep, he s changed folks 1 hey sent Steve Lemon down to
Stanford to go to school and play football, and after just one
year he came back «‘quipped with a neck — ‘ The Neck’’
and a fresh supply of polysyllabl«*s
oh. he s still a nice guy, s till the kind of guv you'd like to
take home to meet your mother But now he has "The Neck.”
and if he wanted to wear a St Christopher he'd have to hang
it from a hula hoop And he has "The Thighs” to match And
now he says stuff like "In other words” and "As such” and
In general, not one single "You know” or " I mean ' or
“ Like, um "
He acts just like a college student now He looks like the
football player he is
I ve added l»ody mass,” he says " I
look bigger, but I don't weigh that much more”
but heads
like a college student, one year and a w hole other world wiser
than h«* was at Gresham High School, where he graduated in
1»W as. perhaps, the finest student athlete ever to wear the
blue and white
Now he is back at (¡resham, slapping fresh paint on the
walls that once bore posters imploring him and his Gopher
teammates to
Maul the Mustangs” or "Ground the
Eagles ”
And he s back in the weight room getting ready for season
No 2, adding bulges to The Neck and inches to The Thighs
My how you've grown The last time we saw you
When I look back, he says, " I think high school was pret­
ty fun I he kids who say they can't wail to get out are crazy I
kind ot sensed in high school that it was fun and that it was
going to be tough coming out.”
But surely not for Steve Lemon This was The Boy Most
Likely To Succeed, if they still did that bit This was the star
three sport athlete, the No 2 GPA in the school, the No I
H l NK, the student body president How could anything be
tough for h im ’’
Well, it couldn t Or if it was, he made it look like it wasn't
He went to Stanford and started five games in the defensive
secondary as a freshman Hey, nuthin' to it And he didn't
even flunk any classes A frosh, a football placing frosh a
football play ing frosh playing football ai^d study ing
Petronius and Plato, not to mention playbooks, at prestigious
Stanford I niversity, didn t have the decency to flunk a class
Academics didn't go too badly.” Lemon says " I learned
what to study and what not to study The first term I was
reading every thing and I was thinking My God, I don't have
time to do all th is .'"
Guess who found the tim e'’ You got it
Now Lemon has to prove himself all over again No big
deal, everyone else has to, also Nobody has a position sewn
up and all that jazz Lemon is used to it He had your basic
baptism under fire last year when he was thrown into a star
About Ihu onlv thing Sieve Lemon doesn’t make look easy is w eightlifting.
Lemon painted his alma mater during summer break.
Or was it vice versa?
ting assignment as strong safety against Oklahoma, as in
OKLAHOMA; you know, where the wind and the football
players come whipping down the plains.
I hate to think about playing freshmen, period,” says
Chuck Detwiler, secondary coach at Stanford. "B u t without
ever having played a down, Steve came in against Oklahoma
and did just a tremendous job for us He intercepted a pass,
caused a fumble and had about eight unassisted tackles I
was probably more nervous than he was ”
Probably. But Lemon’s initial year wasn’t all Horatio
Alger m aterial At times, he played like the freshman he
was And one of those times came on regional TV.
"When we played Washington, through no fault of his own,
he didn t have a great game,” Detwiler says. "R ather than
have him continue to get intimidated I sat him down for a
while That helped him ”
Going into spring drills, ,x»mon was battling junior Kevin
MacMillan, from Grant High School in Portland, and senior
I ete St (¡erne for the* starting job this fall Coming out, it was
just Lemon and St Gem«*
MacMillan has some kind of congenital (count the
syllables in that one) hip defect," Ix*mon says "W e run this
d rill where they throw the ball at our legs and if Kevin gets
hit, his hip pops out. I started most of the spring because he
got hurt, but during our second to th«* last scrimmage I
screwed up and didn t play well so going into fall St.Geme
was listed ahead of me But I think it all comes down to what
happens in the fall He II go in as the No. I guy, but as fa r as
I'm concern«*«! the job is wide open.”
And to that end, Lemon spent his summer with the weights
He worked at the school until 4 p m , then worked out, usually
for about four hours He could have gotten by on thr«*e hours
maybe even two Paris Hancock, his girlfriend, thinks I
minutes would have done the trick But four hours is what
Lemon chose to get by on And he didn't do it because it made
his day — because it didn't
The games are fun,” he says "Sometimes you look back
and some of the other things that happcn«*d were fun But it's
more of a job than it ever was in high school
I e o p lc think athlet«*s are so lucky to get scholarships
"Juice” junket his nickname and his old No. 22 when he became a Cardinal.
(Continu«*«! on Page IK)
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