San Mateo County Community Colleges mourn the passing of pacesetter Jerry Drever
November 12, 2020
SAN MATEO - Jerry Drever, who led College of San Mateo to its first official California Community College Athletic Association team sports championship -- in golf in 1952 -- and started the basketball and elite golf programs at Cañada College, died at the age of 87 on November 4.
He was considered the first person to lead a team to a CCCAA golf championship as a player and as a coach. His 1988 Cañada team won the 1988 crown (when the Colts also had the individual medalist in Javier Sanchez).
After coaching San Carlos High School to the 1967 Peninsula Basketball Tournament championship, Drever went to Cañada College in 1968 to start the basketball program at the new school, coaching the Colts for ten seasons. He started the golf program there in 1973 and coached for 20 years, until 1992, winning five conference and three Northern California titles. He was inducted into the Cañada Sports Hall of Fame in 2013.
Drever led CSM to second place in the second official CCCAA state golf tournament, in 1951, and then to the title in 1952, under legendary CSM coach Ray Balsley. (That was the first of the Bulldogs six championships in that sport under Balsley: 1956, 1959 through 1962.)
Drever, an Army veteran, is a graduate of Sequoia (Redwood City) High School and San Jose State University.
HISTORY NOTES: Men’s golf, with seven official titles, remains the most successful sport in 98 athletic seasons in the San Mateo County Community College District (through the interrupted 2020 spring season). It is, apparently, the only sport where more than one of the District’s three colleges has taken state team titles – thanks to Jerry Drever! Balsley, a member of CSM’s first sports Hall of Fame class, had individual state champions in 1962, 1963, and 1967. The SMCCCD, therefore, has had four individual winners at two colleges.
(Fred Baer, College of San Mateo)