College of Marin

Dan Lucia, who played five seasons in the minor leagues, played just one year at College of Marin in 1976-77, but says it was there that he matured as a player and learned the importance of athletic discipline.

He’d had other opportunities to play football but decided to come to College of Marin to play baseball because it seemed like the right fit.

“I think Coach (Vic) Petreshen was surprised to see me,” Lucia says.

He was still green as a pitcher and learned a lot that year. Petreshen, he remembers, coached by telling stories. 

“He wanted you to listen,” Lucia says. “He came more from the mental side of it, the preparation and the benefit of working hard, which was huge. I was a young athlete who thought I was pretty good. He put me on track to knowing that I needed to work hard and would reap the benefits if I did the work.”

In 1977, Lucia was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, more on his potential than on his stats, he says. He still remembers getting off the plane in Tennessee as a new draftee.

“I was scared to death,” he says. “I didn’t realize how much of a mama’s boy I was.”

He went on to play all over the South. He was a major league prospect for about a year and a half but did not get the opportunity to move up.

 “It was an incredible growing up process,” Lucia says. “The experience was second to none.”

When the Braves released him, he thought initially that he would keep playing. He told the personnel director of the team, Hank Aaron, that they would regret letting him go because he was going to bounce back and haunt them.

“But, that didn’t really come true,” he admits now. 

Instead, with a host of nagging injuries, he went to work for Coca Cola where he ended up in management. Then he went on to work with Boggeri Sales and Marketing where he is currently vice president of sales and marketing.

For the last seven years, he has coached the girls varsity basketball team at San Marin in Novato. He has also been inducted into the Marin Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame.