As part of the Super Bowl’s 50th anniversary festivities, the National Football League is presenting commemorative golden footballs to every high school in the nation where a former Super Bowl player attended. ALYSHA LIGHT

David Douglas High School alum Claxton Welch, center, surrounded by former teammates from the class of 1965, presented the ball to David Douglas’ student body during an assembly Friday, Oct. 16. Welch attended DDHS in the mid-’60s and was All-State in football and basketball, gaining him a scholarship to the University of Oregon, from which the Dallas Cowboys drafted him in 1969. Welch played in the NFL during the early 1970s and was on two Dallas Super Bowl teams, one that lost to the Baltimore Colts in 1971 but won the championship the following year by defeating the Miami Dolphins. While posing, one of Welch’s teammates asked him, “Remember back when we took team pictures you would have to stand on your tippy-toes to be taller?” Welch replied, “I still do.”