Hall of Fame
No one has ever had more passion than Ben Foster to see PC, PLC and PLNC, succeed in basketball.
In his freshman year at Pasadena, Foster was on the junior varsity team. After a particularly upsetting one-point loss to Cal Lutheran, Coach Carroll Land found him in the locker room. Everyone else had already changed and headed to the buses, but Foster was still brooding over the loss. He had hit 23-24 from the line and he believed it was his one miss that had cost the team the game. There was never a doubt from that moment on that Foster had a tremendous amount of drive and that he was committed to success.
Through the guiding and molding of Coach Chalmer Cartwright on the varsity team, Foster was chosen as the Meguiar Outstanding Male Athlete and succeeded at a level that few have accomplished in PC/PLNU history.
In Foster’s senior season, the head coach of USC, Bob Boyd said, “If I had [PC’s] three big guys, Foster, Higgins and Nicholson, I could go through the USC dorms, add to them and have a better team than I do right now.” Many believed that if USC had been on the schedule that year, they would have lost to the Crusaders.
Foster was selected as the Los Angeles Player of the week by the LA Times on more than one occasion. He was drafted and signed by the Los Angeles Stars of the ABA before they joined forces with the NBA. The Stars head coach at the time was former USC guard Bill Sharman, who had also played with the Boston Celtics.
If one really wanted to know about Foster’s production in basketball, they would have to study his four years of statistics which include 1,786 points and 1,324 rebounds. A clear picture of Foster as coach can be seen in his two decades with basketball and golf. With the basketball team, Foster earned 311 wins and three consecutive NCCAA national championships.
Foster married fellow PLNU alum, Sandra Bolerjack—a professor in the Human Environmental Sciences department. The Fosters have two sons, Jason and BJ, who have both attended PLNU.
The award for Outstanding Achievement by an Athlete and Coach was presented to Foster by Jim Bond.
