Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of stories on Manteca High graduates and faculty members as the school gears up for its centennial celebration this fall.

By JASON CAMPBELL

The Bulletin

When Dino Cunial started his career as an educator for Manteca schools, it was a one-horse town.

Manteca High School, where he taught orientation and world history to freshman, was the only high school in the town of roughly 7,000 people – the same population as the Northern California town of Susanville where he grew up and graduated from Lassen High.

There was only one stoplight in town – at Main Street and Yosemite Avenue – and even then, it was only a flashing light.

And for the next four decades, Cunial served the youth of the community as a teacher, a coach, and an administrator – earning him the honor of having his name on the stadium at the high school where he worked for 34 years.

“It was an uphill battle in those early years,” said Cunial, who has been enjoying retirement now for two decades. “When we played our basketball games at East Union, we had to go over to Winter Gym, and we practiced football at Golden West because we didn’t have any turf.

“What I love about those early years was the resiliency of the kids that we had – they showed up even when it wasn’t easy.”

But before he achieved legendary status for his time at East Union – where is a part of the school’s Hall of Fame – Cunial was a Manteca Buffalo.

In the fall of 1961, Cunial started teaching geography and orientation to freshman at Manteca High School and was recruited by Don Reed and Joe Handy to help coach basketball.

He became an official coach the following year when he took over the freshman football program and would hold that position until East Union High School opened up – effectively splitting Manteca, and its high school loyalties, in half.

“I just enjoyed being around kids,” Cunial said. “I was raised with a hard-nosed system of coaching, and I just liked being around kids – kids like to perform.

“You’ve got to practice perfectly to perform and win, and that was my philosophy as a coach.”

While the opening of East Union High School split the town in half – and led to some very tense opening years where rivalries got out of control – Cunial never lost touch with his Manteca High School colleagues or lost sight of where he came from.

Over the years he has worked with a who’s who of local coaching and education legends – Vern Gebhardt, Rick Arucan, Dick Durham, Bill Stricker – and the same year that he walked away from coaching and assumed the role of athletic director at East Union, longtime friend Walker Vick assumed the same role at Manteca High School.

An avid traveler, Cunial said that he loved getting to see his son Dan Cunial coach at Sierra High School and now relishes in watching his grandchildren play sports both locally and in other parts of California.

While he misses the town that he knew when he first arrived more than 50 years ago, Cunial said he still loves Manteca and those that call it home.

“It used to be that you could go downtown and knew most of the merchants if not all of them, and when I first moved here I was a Catholic and we would go to church at the local halls – the MRPS Hall one week and the FESM Hall the next week,” Cunial said. “Now I can go shopping in town and not see a single person that I know – it’s definitely changed.

“But I love this town and I’ll never forget where I started.”

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.