Inductees
Stan Roberts
Year: 2022
Gender: Male
About Stan:
Some are late bloomers, and some peak early. Stan was undefeated as a 120-pound freshman at Brookfield Central High School in Wisconsin, but back then freshmen weren’t allowed on varsity. Roberts was the leading scorer at 127 pounds on the JV team as a sophomore, but when he made varsity as a 133-pound junior, he was rarely a starter – – stuck behind teammates including a friend who was 4th in State.
Stan moved his family to Laguna Hills in 1994, near to the high school becoming a wrestling powerhouse. Wrestling was his favorite sport in high school, so he encouraged both sons to achieve great success, including undefeated league championships. Tommy, a Masters Qualifier, won 70 matches, 45 by pin while pinned only once in two varsity years. Eric was a four-time Masters Qualifier, a two-time CIF champion (the school’s first sophomore) with 151 wins. The State Qualifier was All-Orange County as a sophomore, junior and senior on teams that won four CIF Divisions and two CIF Dual titles. Stan’s wife Jane became a wrestling official, and daughter Julie cheered at all home matches.
Roberts started writing about wrestling as sports editor of his high school newspaper. Stan began to write, design and produce annual booklets for the Laguna Hills HS wrestling teams in 2003, and he just never stopped. His stories and photos were sent to the county’s daily newspaper, the area’s weekly newspaper, the school’s newspaper, the yearbook, the principal’s letter and to the school’s daily video news network for which he also produced short highlight clips. He enjoyed recognizing excellence, preserving history and inspiring future generations as the LHHS teams set state records for 27, then 28, then 29 consecutive league championships while earning 11 CIF Division titles and three CIF Dual championships since 2002.
While videotaping all of his sons’ matches, Stan decided to film all of the teams, too. Since 2003, he has edited LHHS dual and tournament matches into hour-long highlight movies that are shown here during the school’s annual awards banquets. Roberts used to give copies to the wrestlers, but now the movies are posted and available on YouTube. Stan has also written, designed and produced the teams’ annual awards books since 2003. He developed and directed the school’s advertising sales program that has raised over $500,000 in display ad and banner sales income to help pay for assistant coaches when their school district wouldn’t. He designed and sold spirit wear, announced matches, and worked the Masters scoring tables.
Stan was invited to join the executive committee of the California Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2010. He has designed and produced these annual induction booklets for since then, and he has done annual books for the California Wrestling Hall of Fame since 2013. Roberts has also assisted in the annual induction ceremony banquets for both groups, like he has done for the high school since 2003. He hopes to start transforming his collected history of print materials and photos into digital files to be featured as soon as possible on the websites for LHHS and for the NWHOF-CA Chapter.