Warren Lokovsek is honored to be part of the 2011 Enumclaw High Hall of Fame induction class but doesn’t think he deserves it.
The committee that nominated and selected him disagrees and Friday he will get his moment in the spotlight.
“He was the mainstay of the football team,” said HOF committee member and classmate Dennis Hagan said. “He was impressive for his era.”
Lokovsek, a 1964 graduate, was a three-sport athlete, but football and baseball were his bread and butter.
At the time, EHS was part of the large Puget Sound League and one of the smaller schools.
Renton was the biggest school, Lokovsek recalled, they’d have 180 turn out for football by written invitation.
“They had 30 more people than we had in the graduating class,” Lokovsek said. “By the end of the third quarter you’re looking at clean jerseys.”
“As a team we had good players; we just didn’t have enough,” she said. “We got beat up, but we had fun. In the end it’s just a game.”
He was a three-year starter in football, playing defensive end, tight end, linebacker and fullback for the Hornets. The youngest of 10 in an athletically-gifted family, he started as a 14-year-old sophomore. His brother Harold was inducted in 2004.
He earned all-league honors as a sophomore, and all-conference honors as a junior and senior.
“He was a natural,” Hagan said. “He had good speed and good size.”
He was a three-year letter winner in basketball playing both center and forward, earning honorable mention his senior year. He played to stay in shape for baseball where he was a pitcher, who started and lettered for as sophomore and junior, making the all-league team his junior year.
“He was a left-handed pitcher,” Hagan said. “He was probably about as good as you can get. He struck out 21 baseball players in one game. It was against Clover Park. That’s every one in the game. That’s how good he was.”
After graduation, Lokovsek played baseball at Yakima Valley College. In his first game, he smacked a triple and injured his ankle hurdling over the third baseman.
“I was safe and we won the game,” Lokovsek said.
He came back for the junior college championship and pitched five innings of scoreless baseball.
Lokovsek had a try out with the Kansas City Athletics but in 1965 Uncle Sam came calling. He was drafted and spent nearly four years in the Air Force, stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane.
After college and the Air Force, he played on a local semi-professional team and then played slow-pitch softball with local friends for several years.
