Longtime Buena basketball coach Vaughan to retire

Joe Vaughan, who over a 32-year career at Ventura Buena High won more girls’ basketball games than any coach in California history, announced his retirement Saturday.

Vaughan had a 761-112 record, an .872 winning percentage and his teams never missed the playoffs. Buena won 110 playoff games, six Southern Section championships in 14 finals, and state titles in 1983 and 1984, the latter during a 31-0 season. Buena won or shared the league title 27 times in 32 years.

According to the National High School Record Book, Vaughan ranks 18th for victories by a girls’ basketball coach.

The victories, though, are secondary to the impact he had on players. An intense coach, he was also a strong disciplinarian from the time he was hired as a teacher in 1967.

“I’m most proud of how so many of the kids I worked with, especially in the girls’ program, graduated from college and how they’ve been successful in their lives,” Vaughan said Monday, his first day at school since making his decision known. “I wasn’t going to treat them any differently than the boys. I wanted them to be able to stand on their own two feet like anyone else.”

One of Vaughan’s keen interests in retirement is appearing on the television show “Survivor,” but the last two tryouts have taken place on days in which Buena played Ventura, games that annually pack whichever gym they are played in and typically determine the Channel League champion.

This season’s team was 23-6 and finished second to rival Ventura, which is coached by Ann Larson, a former Buena player and assistant coach.

A history teacher as well as the school’s athletic director, Vaughan had told Principal Kyunghae Schwartz last summer of his decision, but to avoid being a distraction to this season’s team did not formally make the announcement until after his team was eliminated from the section playoffs.

Buena was beaten, 52-31, by the No. 1 team in the state, Long Beach Poly, in the Division I-AA quarterfinals Saturday.

An icon of Ventura County athletics, Vaughan, 63, was among those who gave the Southland a place in the national picture for girls’ basketball, setting the standard for the competitive environment that exists today along with former coaches such as Mark Trakh of Brea Olinda, James Anderson of Harbor City Narbonne and Wendell Yoshida of Rolling Hills Estates Peninsula, and current coach Ellis Barfield of Lynwood.

However, Vaughan preceded all of them, a figure who grew the sport as it opened up to girls after Title IX. The Southern Section crowned its first girls’ basketball champion in 1974. Vaughan began coaching in 1975, and reached his first title game in 1978, a 77-60 loss to Huntington Beach in the Division 4-A championship.

Vaughan graduated from Ventura High in 1962. After graduating from Westmont College and receiving his master’s degree from Chapman College, he began teaching at Buena in 1967. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968 during the Vietnam War, although he spent a year in the states and a year in Berlin as a teletype operator. He returned to Buena in 1970.

Vaughan also coached lower level boys’ teams for about 10 years, a couple concurrently during the early years of his girls’ program, and went 145-51.

“He’s the bar in Division I,” said Anderson, who coached Narbonne for 17 seasons. “The game that put us on the map was when we beat Buena in 1997 and they were No. 1 in the state and No. 3 in the nation.

“I always thought the two best coaches I’ve faced are Joe Vaughan and Ellis Barfield. [Vaughn] brings class, he’s one of the best game technicians, and he had a blueprint of how to build a program. His kids do well in college, and then they come back and help the community.”

– Martin Henderson

College commitments

Chris Polk, a junior receiver at Redlands East Valley, committed to USC at the Trojans’ junior day Saturday for top football players.

 Honors

Woodland Hills El Camino Real named its baseball field after former coach Mike Maio during its alumni baseball game Saturday. Maio guided El Camino Real to four City championships.