In the era before Oregon high school football teams played for a state title, Eric Waldorf built a reputation for being one of Oregon’s great coaches while at Portland’s Jefferson High.
Waldorf grew up in Kennewick, Washington, and played halfback at Washington State from 1923 to ’25. He moved to Portland to teach and coach at Jefferson High School in 1928.
Waldorf took over a program that had scored just 14 points and gone winless the previous season. Four years later, the Democrats went 10-0 and outscored opponents 287-6. That was the first of nine PIL championships won by Jeff football. Over the three-year stretch from 1931-33 the Demos were 19-1-1 vs other PIL teams allowing a total of 19 points.
The 1931 team featured halfback Bobby Grayson, who scored a record 117 points in seven league games. He later played at Stanford University and earned a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Waldorf took a season off from Jefferson in 1939 to coach the freshman team at the University of Oregon, but returned in 1940, the first year the OSAA sponsored a state championship.
In the spring and summer of 1942, during the first year of World War II, Waldorf coached the semi-pro Seattle Shipbuilders to the Northwest Region title. He later took the fall and winter off from Jefferson in 1944 to work for the Red Cross.
The Demos reached the state title game in 1948, losing to Grants Pass 6-0 in the final. Waldorf, nicknamed the “Gray Fox” because of his hair having turned gray during his 20s, retired to private business following the 1952 season. In his 22 seasons as coach at the school, his football coaching record was 147-50-18. Eric did win a state championship in track and field with the Demos in 1944.
Eric Waldorf is a member of the PIL Hall of Fame.