A Down-to-Earth Coach at Bishop Amat : Under Don Markham, Quarterback Becomes a Pulling Guard, but Team Wins

Bishop Amat, the high school that produced Pat Haden and Paul McDonald, is now proud to present . . .

A running game?

“I personally couldn’t believe when we picked a running coach to come here,” senior quarterback Rick Carter said. “I didn’t think, from all the coaches they had to choose from, that they would go with someone like this.

“It’s strange when you’re a junior and you’re starting and you’re throwing the ball a lot. And all of a sudden, they switch coaches and you have to go with the running game. Last year I was averaging 20 to 25 passes a game. This year I haven’t even been close to that yet.”

That’s what happens to a team that is coached by Don Markham.

Another thing that happens to a Markham-coached team is that it wins.

Bishop Amat, Markham’s third high school team, started the season ranked fourth in the Southern Section by The Times, and after one-sided wins over Riverside Rubidoux, 31-0, and Hacienda Heights Los Altos, 33-6, moved up to No. 3. Los Angeles Jordan (0-1) is the opponent tonight at Bishop Amat.

The Lancers have rolled up 64 points--the defense, led by linebacker Ramon Diaz, has given up only six--and 601 yards rushing in 84 attempts for an average of 7.15 yards a carry. All of which is vintage Markham.

So it’s not real hard to understand how Carter, who had hoped to add his name to the list of famous quarterbacks from the La Puente school, might be a little frustrated with all this. Not only is he not throwing the ball as much as he would like; he also even has specific blocking assignments that turn him into a pulling guard on the frequent Lancer sweeps.

“To me, it’s not the job of the quarterback, as a rule, to go out and block,” he said. “My job, I think, is to roll out or drop back, find a receiver downfield and pass.

“I’m trying to do what is best for the team, what the coaches want. But our views are still different on if we should pass more. And I’m doing what I can to get their plans changed a little.”

Any success?

“I have yet to see it.”

They were calling it dinosaur football even in the ‘70s, this no-nonsense approach to the game that has since become Markham’s approach. And to think it all started at L.A. Baptist High of Sepulveda in 1970 while he was still working at the Los Angeles Police Department.

He spent five years coaching Pop Warner football before that first high school job came along, and before the first in a long line of workhorse running backs would appear.

Steve Tetrick was the first, and you can still find his name in the Southern Section record book: second in career rushing with 5,181 yards; fifth in yards in a season with 2,371 in 1972; third in career scoring with 440 points, and fourth in career touchdown runs with 62.

Markham spent three seasons at L.A. Baptist before going to Colton, but the script did not change. Only the names--Ted Smith, who ran for 2,000-plus yards in Markham’s first year at the new school, and then Rene Vallejo, who gained 1,996 in 1975.

At the same time, Markham had his team in the playoffs 10 of the first 11 years, a 120-39-1 mark in 14 seasons and five trips to the Southern Section final, where he won twice.

But, as always, he longed to move up.

The decision to leave L.A. Baptist in 1972 after a 9-1 season, Markham said, was prompted by school administrators’ vetoing of his plan to have the area’s best youth players funneled to him to play for the Knights.

“We could have had the No. 1 team in the country,” he once said of the then 525-student school. “But the administration decided it didn’t want to emphasize football that much, and that was when I left.”

He left without another job to go to, so Markham went to work right away to find a new one. He knew he could coach high school football, and he knew he wanted to stay in California.

But who would hire him? No winning school would dump their coach to hire someone whose experience consisted of Pop Warner and a free-lance team such as L.A. Baptist. Markham realized that, so he sent resumes only to schools with losing records--all 500 of them throughout the state.

“I still remember the stack of envelopes on the bed,” he remembers. “Piles and piles of those things. I really did not know how to get a job, I was so new at this thing.”

He got three responses. Colton was one of them.

But after 11 seasons with the Yellowjackets, having taken them from perennial losers to the 3-A Division championship game in a couple of years, he figured it was time to move on. Move up is more like it.

He set his sights on coaching in college, and, having been turned down for openings at San Bernardino College and the University of Redlands, made it clear that money was no object by offering to start a team and fund the program himself at UC Riverside. Motion denied by the administration.

So he ended up as an assistant at Pierce College, and the offense there flourished, too. Head Coach Jim Fenwick, who had played for Markham in a Northridge youth league 20 years earlier, combined his passing scheme with Markham’s running game to give the Brahmas the No. 2 junior college offense in California.

It was only supposed to be a one-year working relationship, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Markham was just sort of passing through on his way to other things.

“He gave me a lot more than we gave him,” Fenwick said. “So much of what we did was his running game, his organization, just his whole positive influence in making things work out.”

It was the same positive outlook that led Markham to believe he would again be able to move up another notch in coaching.

“I looked all over the country--head jobs at small schools or as an assistant at majors or Division II. I sent out resumes and made calls. Nothing ever happened.”

Then Jim Patricio, 49-19-1 in six seasons, went for a new challenge and more money by leaving Bishop Amat, a parochial school, for Walnut High.

Markham sat in his office two weeks before the season started and talked of learning the passing game from Fenwick and of his plans to implement it at Bishop Amat.

“I hope to pass about half the time, which is certainly a departure from what I’m used to doing,” said Markham, ironically, a wide receiver at Birmingham High in Van Nuys and later at Cal State Northridge. “But I don’t remember having enough skill to ever worry about the pass. . . . I never even taught more than one pass play in a year.”

“Shoot,” he said, flipping the papers on to his desk. “Look at this stack here, and this is only the passing. There must be 40 pages here.”

But Markham’s 50-50 plan for running and passing went awry from the beginning, and Carter will start play tonight with 15 completions in 31 attempts for 216 yards, 2 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. By comparison, Eric Bieniemy, a talented 5-9, 175-pound junior, has 502 yards in 61 carries for an 8.23 average, and 6 touchdowns. He rushed 36 times for 305 yards in last week’s win over Los Altos, breaking the 18-year old school record.

On the other hand, it’s not as though running the ball is anything new for a Lancer team. Hardly, Patricio is quick to point out. Randy Tanner, now at USC, is the school record holder with 1,305 yards and Pernell Taylor, now at Notre Dame, isn’t far behind with 1,223 and 1,150 in consecutive seasons. But the Lancers never abandoned the pass altogether. Tanner averaged 16.1 yards a reception in his career.

Last season, they had one of the best wide receivers in Southern California in John Jackson, now also at USC. He caught 55 passes, which is nothing compared to the school record of John McKay Jr. of 106, but still enough to move him into the No. 3 spot.

So as Markham goes into the third week of the season with one of the best teams in Southern California, he finds himself still playing against the ghost of previous Bishop Amat teams. It’s no doubt something he expected when he took over as coach, and not just from his starting quarterback.