Joe Kominski

Tackle / Defensive Tackle

Tacoma Tyees

In a year that had an edgy quarterback duel between Portland's Charlie Ganter and Tacoma's Jerry Thacker, the 1962 Player of the Year, honors went to a massive addition on the line for the Tyees in Joe Kominski.

A native of Yelm, Washington, Kominski had been a two-sport standout at Centralia Junior College before becoming a two-time, two-sport All-Evergreen Conference perfomer at Central Washington in both football and basketball.  Named UP Little All-American as a senior in 1957, the 6'5" 235lb lineman was picked up by professional teams and bounced around training camps with the Oakland Raiders, Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers before landing with the Tacoma Tyees for the 1963 season.

As a defender, there was no rushing up the middle on Kominski, even when going head-to-head with the Seattle Rambler's 285lb Dick Hard (GNFA Hall of Famer).  The former pro put on some enormous battles with Hard, who would be signed in 1964 by the St. Louis Cardinals.  Offensively, he was a key to protecting Thacker's passing and grinding out a path to the endzone for Dan Wheatley and Thacker as the Tyees defended their North Pacific title.  The only blemishes on the season, were a tie to the prison team at Walla Walla, where Kominski, Wheatley and 4 other starters did not play, and in California to the Humboldt Foresters dropping a 7-0 decision for the North Coast Championship in a Thanksgiving Day battle.

Throughout the 1963 season, Kominski was given top billing in game promotions right alongside his MVP QB Jerry Thacker, a testament to the value of the two-way line-playing ironman during the 1963 Tyee championship season, his only semi-pro season.

Kominski retired from football but continued to play basketball for 2Js in Tacoma. In 1975, Centralia Junior College named it's 50-year All-Time Team, Kominski being named to the 11-man squad as a defensive/offensive end.  Joe was killed in a Lakewood-Parkland sewer project accident in 1979.