Guyer Is a Living Legend in Laguna Beach : Former Coach Represents Formative, Glory Days of School’s Athletics

If a classic is defined by simplicity, staying-power and admiring imitators, then Maurice “Red” Guyer surely qualifies.

Though Guyer, 76, hasn’t coached a sport in 19 years, his reputation shines more brightly around Laguna Beach with each passing season.

Many residents view Guyer as one of the few surviving symbols of the years when Laguna Beach High School was the home of an athletic program to be reckoned with.

“He’s a legend,” said Norm Borucki, an NCAA basketball official and longtime Laguna Beach coach. “I respect him--as a gentleman, a coach and an athletic director--as much as any person I’ve ever met. He’s been a role model for me.”

Guyer came to teach elementary school at Laguna Beach in 1932, a red-haired sprint star freshly graduated from USC, where he had been a member of the Trojans’ world-record 440-relay team.

That relay team included Frank Wykoff, known in the 1932 Olympics as “the world’s fastest human.” Guyer, who ran the 100-yard dash in 9.7 seconds and the 220 in 21 seconds, was also on the Olympic team as a sprint alternate.

Guyer greeted students at the new Laguna Beach High School in 1934, and coached football, basketball, baseball and track during the school’s infancy.

For a few years, he was a one-man athletic department in a school with so few athletes that baseball season couldn’t begin until track ended.

In fact, when the school opened in the fall of 1934, its letterman prospects were nearly nil.

Though there were 225 students in the school, the senior class contained only one boy--because the others had accepted an option to finish their degrees at Tustin High.

Guyer molded the one boy, Willie Christensen, into a shotputter, and by the time spring rolled around, 15 other senior boys had migrated down from Tustin. Guyer polished them into a “really respectable” team, an unexpected runner-up to the Orange League title.

That was the first hint of things to come. During his 30-year reign, Guyer’s track teams won more than 15 league championships, including a streak of eight in a row around 1950.

His football teams won eight league titles and competed in the Southern California championships three times, winning one CIF title. He had the basketball program for about five years, and won a league title in that sport as well.

“Back then, coaching was our whole life,” Guyer said. “It was all we wanted to do. You couldn’t wait for fall to come along. I know there are still a lot of coaches like that today, but it seems like there aren’t enough.”

Today, the football field bears Guyer’s name, and the gymnasium is named after one his protegees, Laverne Dugger, a favorite student who went on to become the Artist football coach.

But Guyer, a member of the California Coaches Hall of Fame, seems to have aged more gracefully than the athletic program he fathered and raised to such a productive maturity.

Athletics at Laguna Beach have foundered since Guyer’s retirement in 1969, while he has continued on to a second career as one of Southern California’s best college and high school track meet officials.

“Right after Red left (the school), things began to change,” Borucki said. “He was there for the golden years, when things were really good.”

Guyer also held the post of superintendent of recreation for the City of Laguna Beach. But the fortunes of Laguna Beach High are even closer to his heart; even now, when he speaks of the school, he still tends to use the word “we.”

“I coached there forever,” he said. “Oh, it was fun. I’m really proud of Laguna Beach, but I’m disappointed at the situation there.

“Since I left, they’ve had I-don’t-know-how-many athletic directors, and I don’t think they fired any of them. They all quit because they weren’t able to accomplish what they wanted to do.

“Maybe the administration, the school board and superintendent just don’t share the goals of the athletic department anymore.

“Maybe they say, ‘So what? We want our kids to be scientists,’ and they don’t realize how much value a school gets from a good athletic program. It can’t be beat.

“I believe in academics--that has to come first. But not only.

“If you all have the same objectives and everyone is for everyone else, I know the situation could be a damn sight better than it is.”

Ron Davis, athletic director at Corona del Mar High School and another Guyer protege, says the deterioration of the Laguna Beach sports tradition “is just killing Red, like it’s killing a lot of us.”

“He’s a rare individual,” Davis said. “He’s always had a handle on people. He’s the kind of guy who looks you right in the eye, and he can find out a lot about a person in about five minutes.

“If there are any people down there (in Laguna Beach) who still care about their athletic program, I’d like to see them get together and have Red talk to them.

“If anybody could straighten them out and make them see their mistakes, it would be Red Guyer.”

Saids Guyer: “I know the cause of the problem, but not the remedy.

“The last 10 years, we (Laguna Beach) haven’t had very much success. It’s going to take a lot of work from a lot of people to bring it back to the place where it used to be . . . where it ought to be.”