Meritorious Service
One of Linfield Athletics’ greatest claims to fame – The Streak – is perhaps only known due to the research of longtime alumni volunteer Dennis Anderson, who is being inducted into the Linfield Athletics Hall of Fame for meritorious service.
Anderson greatly gave back to the football program he once participated in as a student-athlete under legendary coach Paul Durham, during the fall of 1954.
After his time at Linfield, he embarked on a lengthy journalistic career that saw him serve in a variety of roles as correspondent, reporter and editor at 11 different newspapers in Oregon, California and Hawaii. He also cultivated a weekly feature known as the “Homegrown Report,” which highlighted the thousands of student-athletes from Hawaii who competed at colleges and universities on the mainland.
While working for the Honolulu Advertiser in 1986, Anderson returned to McMinnville for the first time to watch his son, Bryant, suit up as a special teams impact player for Coach Ad Rutschman’s third national championship team.
In watching his son play, Anderson grew so impressed by Coach Rutschman, his coaching staff and Linfield College that he joined on as a volunteer, dedicating nine weeks from each of the next 10 years of his life to serve as an administrative assistant for the athletic department. Anderson’s commitment was so great that he saved up his vacation time and traveled 2,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean at his own expense to volunteer with Rutschman and the Linfield athletic department.
As a self-proclaimed “go-fer,” Anderson helped the football coaching staff with paperwork, assisted in game-day responsibilities and aided Rutschman, by then also the college’s athletic director, in compiling the quarterly athletics newsletter.
But it was a special project that proved most rewarding for Anderson and Linfield faithful.
Following Linfield’s third national championship in five years, Rutschman approached Anderson and asked him to research winning records across all divisions for the past five, 10 and 15 seasons. He assumed, correctly, the Wildcats would rate high when compared to other programs over those time periods: first or third.
In the process of conducting the initial research for Coach Rutschman, Anderson discovered something else: very few teams achieved winning records every season, as Linfield did.
Upon returning to Hawaii, Anderson wrote to 300 colleges and universities across all three divisions of the NCAA, asking them to send their all-time season win-loss records. It took a great deal of time and energy, and many phone calls, but Anderson eventually gathered all the information necessary to determine Linfield owned the third longest active string of consecutive winning seasons.
At the time, there was no such category in either the NCAA or NAIA record books for consecutive winning seasons. But with Anderson’s help, and the publication of the results, a new record-keeping category was established.
Meanwhile on the gridiron, Linfield’s winning ways continued and within a few years, the Wildcats had risen from No. 3 to No. 1, where they remain today as the proud owners of The Streak: 61 consecutive winning seasons.
Anderson retired in 2005 and currently resides in McMinnville.
