Where are they now? Volume 1...

First in a series of stories entitled: Where are they now?

Volume one takes us back to the 1969-70 University of Arizona basketball season and focuses on a hot-shooting, free-throw specialist who lettered four years with the Wildcats. He was an in-state recruit, which is rare and almost unheard of in this day in age.

He was a star player at Catalina High School and received a full ride scholarship to Arizona and fit nicely in UofA head coach Bruce Larson's system.

His name is Mickey Foster.

Where is Mickey now? Foster, 61, resides in Littleton, Colorado,and is married to his college sweetheart, Margaret, formerly Margaret Lang Boice, and they have been together for 39 years, raising eight children (six sons and two daughters) along the way.

Mickey's brother-in-law is Warren Rustand, another well-known Arizonan and star player for the Wildcats in 1965. Mickey also has an older brother, Jamie Foster, who also played at Catalina (1958-1961) and at Arizona (1962-65). A reserve forward for Larson, Jamie played on the same team with Rustand. Jamie is well known to local sports fans. He is the former owner of the sports pub, Home Plate. Now retired, Jamie is a frequent visitor to the NCAA Final Four.

Quite a basketball family.

In an interview over the phone earlier this week, Coach Larson reminisced about 60s basketball at the UofA and what it was like to have coached players like Mickey Foster. "As I recall, Mickey worked hard in making the transition from a forward in high school to the guard position at Arizona," Larson said. "Mickey held the free throw percentage record for a while. His junior year he shot 83.3 percent from the foul line." Foster finished his junior season with a 16.6 scoring average and followed up with a 12.4 scoring average for his senior season. As for Larson, he coached from 1961-1972, posting 136 wins, while losing 148. Fred Snowden took over the head coaching duties at the UofA in the fall of 1972.