Guy Mamac left a mark on Vikings sports
Record-setting running back named to Siuslaw Athletic Hall of Fame, Class of 2024
HOF Class of 2024:
Eric Daniel - Forrest Lewis - Alaura Little - Guy Mamac -
Max Perry - Katy Potter - Trevor May - Tyler May
The induction-dinner is 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 23, at the Florence Events Center.
By Don Hunt
Siuslaw graduate and Siuslaw Hall of Fame member
Guy Mamac, named to the Siuslaw Sports Hall of Fame this week, enjoyed one of the most superb seasons in Siuslaw High football history in 1998.
But the path to his record-breaking campaign was tumultuous.
As a sophomore in 1996, Mamac knocked a Newport player unconscious on a crack-back block and felt so badly about it that he briefly quit the team. The game was delayed for 20 minutes before an ambulance transported the player to a Newport hospital.
An assistant coach visited Mamac’s home the following Monday and talked him into turning back out.
A year later, frustrated that he wasn’t playing up to his own standards while battling a couple of injuries, Mamac quit again, this time for a week. He was allowed to rejoin the team but only after a team vote that he was told was close.
“Totally understandable,” said Mamac, who was grateful that head coach Tim Dodson allowed him back on the squad. “I let a lot of people down. I’d been putting a lot of pressure on myself and wasn’t doing as well as I had hoped. I couldn’t crack 100 yards (rushing). I was frustrated.”
His first game back, Mamac, who stood 5-foot-6 and weighed 145 pounds as a Viking, never touched the ball. But the following week he ran for 85 yards on just nine carries and three touchdowns in a 35-6 win over Gold Beach.
The rest is history.
Mamac gained the majority of his 596 yards over the final six games in 1997 as the Vikings advanced to the second round of the state playoffs.
“I was totally rejuvenated,” said Mamac, who spent his early years in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii and played on Pop Warner teams that went unbeaten for four straight years.
And then came 1998. Although Siuslaw failed to reach the playoffs, Mamac went on a tear, amassing 1,439 rushing yards, scoring a whopping 27 touchdowns and averaging 8.5 yards per carry.
All while playing in just nine games.
The touchdown total and the 186 points he racked up remain single-season school records. And no former Viking comes close to Mamac’s 160 yards per game rushing average.
More statistics to ponder: Mamac surpassed 100 yards in seven games, scored at least one touchdown in every game and tallied four touchdowns in four of them.
“That was the first year that I totally enjoyed playing football in a long time,” said Mamac, who recently moved to Nashville, Tenn., and works for a private contractor as a project manager for infrastructure maintenance. “It was frustrating to miss the playoffs because we had a talented team, but there were a lot of good moments.”
The Vikings seemed destined for the postseason following a 7-0 start in 1998, but they lost their final two games, including a gut-wrenching 40-38 loss to Myrtle Point in which they drove inside the Bobcats’ 10-yard line twice in the fourth quarter but failed to score.
As talented as Mamac was in football, he was no slouch in baseball, either. He was a three-year varsity performer and two-year starter as a pitcher, center fielder and leadoff hitter. The Vikings won the Far West League his sophomore and senior seasons and made the playoffs all three years he was on the team. He earned honorable-mention all-conference honors as a junior and senior.
Mamac also wrestled, but gave that sport up early in his sophomore year after he learned he had suffered hairline fractures in both ankles from a football injury.