FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - Homecoming has a special meaning for the 1958 Arizona State College football team that will gather back in Flagstaff this weekend for their 50th Anniversary celebration. On Saturday, the playing surface at Lumberjack Stadium, the former home of the football team, was named "Max Spilsbury Field" in a special ceremony in honor of their coach Max Spilsbury.

"He was a man's man," said NAU Hall of amer Bruce Bernhardi, who played for Spilsbury. "He is probably the toughest guy I have ever met. Everything he did was geared to making you a better athlete and a better person. He did not just expect that on the football field. He expected it out among the students."

Spilsbury coached at NAU from 1956-64, posting 58 wins over nine seasons. It was a mark that stood for the last five decades before current head coach Jerome Souers broke the record earlier this season.

"He did not have any room for lack of courage on the football field," said Bernhardi, one of seven Spilsbury players inducted into the NAU Hall of Fame along with the 1958 team. "He was a former Marine, Carlson's Raiders in World War II. They were a precursor to the special forces of today. He was one of them, went to the Pacific and fought and came back and started his coaching career at the University of Arizona."

A graduate of Bisbee High School, Spilsbury coached five years in the prep ranks, including two years at Globe High School and three years at his alma mater in Bisbee. He led the Bisbee team to an undefeated season in 1954, earning recognition as the state champions.

Joining Arizona State College from Arizona, he took over a team that went 0-9 in 1955 and was out-scored 220-72. In his first season, he led the team to an 8-2 record and a Frontier Conference Championship. Two years later, he conducted the best season in school history, including a third consecutive conference championship and an appearance in the NAIA National Championship Game in the Holiday Bowl in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"It was a tremendous experience for all of us," recalls Bernhardi. "That was the first time any of us had been on an airplane. We all played football in our little high school arena. All of a sudden we are on an airplane and playing for a national championship."

The Lumberjacks lost to N.E. Oklahoma in a game televised by CBS 19-13, spoiling a perfect season and a national championship. But it sealed life-long friendships that produced a bond that brings an era of players to together every year for Maxer's Axers gathering.

"We are one big family," said Bernhardi of his teammates. "Coach Spilsbury ran camp like a Marine boot camp and that bond was built from the constant competition and comraderie."

Spilsbury was inducted into the Arizona Football Hall of Fame in 1971 and NAU Athletics Hall of Fame in 1983 as both an individual and as the coach of the 1958 squad.

While he has never been forgotten by his charges on his ASC teams, he will now forever be memorialized at the stadium where he roamed the sidelines and developed a group of men that will never forget him.