As part of the buildup to the 75th Anniversary celebration for Claremont McKenna College (visit CMC's 75th Anniversary Countdown Page to learn more), we are reliving many of the great moments and landmark years from CMS athletic department history over the 75-day countdown from April 17 to July 1. If you would like to add to the memories of one of these moments, or if you would like to submit your memories of your own favorite CMS Athletics moment, fill out the form on our main 75th Anniversary page.

Great Moments Featured in This Story

1970 Football: CMS 35, Whittier 20 (SCIAC Clincher)
1979 Football: CMS 30, Whittier 28 (SCIAC Clincher)
1986 Football: CMS 28, La Verne 23 (SCIAC Clincher)
1996 Baseball: CMS Takes Cal Lutheran to 5 in NCAA Regionals

The first half of 1995 started out like it would be a typical CMS landmark year, with great success from its teams across the board. The women's and men's swimming and diving programs swept SCIAC titles in the winter of 1995 while competing in brand-new Axelrood Pool, women's basketball and women's tennis both won their first-ever NCAA Tournament contests, the men's and women's track and field teams swept SCIACs, including the fourth in a row for the Stags and the first one ever for the Athenas.

In addition, the 1994-95 academic year ended with CMS sweeping all three SCIAC All-Sports trophies for the third year in a row, displaying the department-wide success that had come to be typical during John Zinda's tenure as the athletic director.

The second half of 1995, though, saw adversity hit the athletic department in waves, beginning with Zinda passing away from leukemia in July. The news resulted in the renaming of CMS Football's home as Zinda Field, which was dedicated as part of a Homecoming celebration for the season finale against Pomona-Pitzer in November. 

Zinda joined the Claremont-Mudd athletic department in 1968, taking over the head football coaching position. In his third season, he led the Stags to their first-ever SCIAC title, including the program's first-ever wins over both Occidental and Redlands, as well as a clinching win over powerhouse Whittier, the six-time defending champions. 

A look at Zinda's history paints the picture of a coach who was flexible in his football philosophy, always willing to adapt to the talent that he had. After a couple of down seasons in 1976 and 1977, he revamped the offense around quarterback Bob Farra, who led the nation in passing in 1978 and 1979. The result was another SCIAC title in 1979. 

"I'd claim Coach Zinda invented the West Coast offense (not Bill Walsh)," said Don Chester (CMC '80). "Thanks to Bob's talent, the team went from the traditional running game and throwing 5-8 times a game to throwing 40-50 times per game. Our games went from taking 2.5-3 hours to 4 hours. We played Oxy in driving rain storm and still threw 40 times, moving up and down the field and running up the score on them. It was a great two years playing at the top of the league, and I believe that really helped Coach Zinda raise the level of the program."

After Bill Arce, the first athletic director in the department's history, retired after 27 years in 1983, Zinda added the athletic director title to his resume, handling double-duty for 13 years. During that time, he oversaw the introduction of three new women's varsity sports, women's soccer (1985), softball (1990) and women's water polo (1993), as the department grew to 19 sports, all while continuing to achieve unprecedented success.  

The football program didn't suffer as Zinda added athletic director duties to his plate, or at least not for very long. After a 1-8 season in 1985, the Stags had a dramatic one-year turnaround to finish 8-1, this time changing their offensive philosophy again to rely on a potent ground game to win the SCIAC title. 

"We certainly knew we could improve upon the 1-8 season," said running back Chris Dabrow (pictured with Zinda at right), who still holds CMS records for rushing yards and rushing touchdowns. "We went from a passing, spread offense to a running game. I don't think we knew we had something real special until the first game when we beat up Redlands and we had a lot of success running the ball and then it just built from there."

The Stags repeated as SCIAC Champions again in 1987, giving Zinda his fourth title, but his cancer diagnosis followed a few years later. He thought he had it beat, but he ultimately decided to lighten his load and take care of his health, stepping down from the football coaching position after the 1994 season and enjoying a retirement ceremony where his past players came back to honor him. He planned to stay on board as the athletic director, but had a relapse of his cancer in the summer of 1995. Doctors discovered that it had spread to his bone marrow, and he passed away soon after, on July 14, at the age of 57.

A famous story about Zinda was that in his 27 seasons as a head coach, only one of his players who played four years didn't graduate -- and he was still trying to track him down until the very end. "He was going to haunt him to come back and graduate," his wife, Suzanne, said. 

The hundreds of Stags who came through his program over those 27 years almost universally left with their degrees, but many also took Zinda's life lessons beyond the classroom with them into adulthood.     

"He was a second father to me," Sam Reece (CMC '74) told the Los Angeles Times after his passing. "He talked about the four quarters in football and the four seasons in a lifetime. The curious thing about a football, he said, was that it was oblong. It's never going to bound the same way all the time. Life was like that. You've got to be ready to go all four quarters."   

After Zinda's passing, the bad bounces kept coming for CMS. Head Men's Basketball Coach David Wells, a former Stag who also had over 25 years in the department as both a player and coach, took over the AD reins, and then he was diagnosed with cancer, continuing to work through his treatments (he would step down as coach in 1998-99 and also pass away in 2001). Then in December, head men's golf coach and sports information director Grayle Howlett also passed away, leaving another big hole in the athletic department.

However, the "fourth quarter" of the 1995-96 athletic year saw CMS Athletics keep on fighting through the tough adversity, sweeping the SCIAC All-Sports trophies for the fourth straight year. In the winter, CMS swept all four SCIAC Championships, with men's and women's basketball each winning an opening round NCAA Tournament game, as the Stags defeated Upper Iowa and the Athenas beat La Verne (one year after their first NCAA win over Cal Lutheran).

A big highlight of the spring season was the CMS baseball team, which came one win from the 1996 Division III World Series by pushing Cal Lutheran to five games in the regionals. One of the stars of the team was Brian Zinda, John's nephew, who had arguably the greatest season for a pitcher in program history, going an impressive 12-1 on the mound during the year, including two wins in the regionals. He surely battled through innings where his arm felt tired on his way to 11 complete games, including the last one when he went the full nine innings to beat Cal Lutheran for a second time while working on one day's rest.

But in true Zinda Family fashion, he was always ready to go.

"The last thing he said to me in the hospital was "Beat La Verne", which we did," he said. "La Verne had gone undefeated in league play the year before and had won the Division III championship. I always felt like that year was dedicated to my uncle."