Bob Drucker ’58

Bob Drucker ’58 is best known as the Wizard of Westlake for leading SI basketball teams from 1966-1986, taking the ’Cats to the NorCal championship and to the state finals in 1984. Drucker got his start in basketball long before coming to SI when, in 1947, his mother took him to the San Francisco Examiner basketball camp at the Mission Armory. He won a shooting contest, received a trophy and had his picture in the paper. That first taste of glory got Drucker hooked on the game. Later, as a student at St. Anne’s, he found himself in a PE class taught by one of his heroes — Jim Kearney ’48 — who won the Brophy Award at SI (and later the Christ the King award) and played football for USF’s undefeated, untied and uninvited football team of 1950–51. (Kearney later became a distinguished principal in several San Francisco high schools.)

“He was a hero back then to all the seventh and eighth graders,” recalled Drucker. “We would go to USF football games at Kezar and see him play on the same field the ’49ers used, and that was good enough for all of us.”

At SI, Drucker played on the 110s, 120s, 130s and varsity teams and trained with Rene Herrerias ’44 and Jim Keating. “These men, along with Phil Woolpert, who coached at USF, were the kind of men you admired and respected. They were young and enthusiastic and had a profound influence on me.”

Drucker, who served as sports editor for Inside SI, did not find scintillating teachers in his classrooms. “They just talked for the entire period. It wasn’t even the Socratic method.” In his junior year, Drucker found himself in J.B. Murphy’s math class. “That was like an island at SI. He would lecture for 5 or 10 minutes and then have us do student-centered work.”

Drucker found himself grateful for the help provided by scholastics. “Fr. Ed Malatesta, SJ, knew I was struggling; he took me aside and encouraged me to work harder. He recognized that I could do better, and we became fast friends until his untimely death.”

In the 1990s, both Drucker and the late Jim Kearney were inducted together into the Bay Area Prep Hall of Fame. Drucker later coached golf with Kearney’s son, Steve Kearney ’81. (For Bob Drucker’s fabled career as a basketball coach, read the next chapter.)