Doug Adams was a 1968 graduate from Stagg High School, where he participated in basketball, baseball, and tennis. Doug excelled in tennis but he also played basketball at Stagg High School and Delta College. Before high school in 1965 he pitched for the Calaveras Babe Ruth All Star baseball team, which was the 1st team from Stockton to make it to the Babe Ruth World Series held in Anderson, Indiana. He also pitched for the 1966 Western Amateur Baseball Team, the Calaveras Cubs, who went on to win the State Western Amateur Baseball Association Championship in 1968.
He went to Fresno State, where he won the Pacific Coast Athletic Association singles championship as the number one tennis player in the conference. He may be the only native Stockton resident to win a college league tennis tournament. His career was interrupted and eventually ended after having his spleen removed in 1976 and continuing treatment for cancer. He continued to play tennis and compete in tournaments. He made it to the finals of the Stockton Tennis Club singles championship which he won four times in seven years. After a three-and-a-half year battle with Hodgkin’s disease and leukemia, he passed away in April 1978 at the age of 28. He had refused to quit playing even as his body started to fail. He insisted on playing the same competitors he had faced before his health failed.
