PULLING THE RIGHT STRINGS : They May Cry, Scream or Plead, but High School Coaches Find a Way To Motivate Their Athletes

The setting sun was splitting the uprights at the Crespi High football field in Encino. School had been out for more than three hours. While their schoolmates were hanging out at the mall or making a buck at a part-time job or, God forbid, even hitting the books, Crespi’s 58 varsity football players were practicing for Friday’s big game, enduring punishment, ignoring pain, missing all those glorious chances to goof off.

When practice ended, the players swarmed around their coach, Bill Redell, who momentarily disappeared in the middle of the huddle. Whatever he said moved them to yell and grind their teeth and raise their helmets in unison. Then they cheered and trotted off through the twilight to the locker room, their dirty uniforms and skinned forearms displaying proof of their dedication, commitment and willingness to sacrifice their bodies for the glory and honor of their dear old alma mater.

Unlike their counterparts in the professional and college ranks, high school football players usually haven’t had the opportunity to become jaded, cynical, greedy, spoiled, moody or egocentric. But they do have something in common with the pros and collegians: a need to be motivated. To win a football game, talent counts, luck is a factor, preparation is important, but motivation often means the difference between victory and defeat.

Getting the players “up” for the game. Lighting a fire under them. Inspiring them to play up to and beyond their ability. Throughout the years, football coaches have tried anything and everything to motivate the troops. Knute Rockne evoked death-bed pleas. George Allen cried on cue. Others prayed, screamed, begged, ranted, raved, intimidated and kicked butts. Last year, one head coach in the Valley thought he knew exactly what motivated 17-year-old boys: He allegedly drew female genitalia on a blocking dummy and is now a former head coach.

“Motivation is a big factor in winning, particularly on the high school level,” said Darryl Stroh, head coach at Granada Hills. “You have to get the kids to want to play--that’s a big key to this game of football.”

Practice does not make perfect--only perfect practice makes perfect.

Coaches, like psychologists, have a lot of theories about motivation. Stroh believes slogans such as the one above can motivate a player. He has a file full of them. They are tacked on bulletin boards all over the Granada Hills locker room and may or may not be a factor in the Highlanders’ great season. Harry Welch, the coach at Canyon High, doesn’t believe in slogans.His Cowboys also are ranked No. 1 in the Valley. When it comes to motivation, even psychiatrists don’t completely understand what works--or why.

The task of motivating impressionable, malleable high school football players falls to coaches. Like the leaders in any organization, they will usually succeed in proportion to their ability to get the most out of their charges. But no two coaches approach the game the same way. They all have their own styles, techniques and philosophies.

“There are basically two types of coaches--the macho coach and the humanistic coach,” said Lewis Yablonsky, a professor of sociology at Cal State Northridge. Yablonsky has studied sports closely over the years and has written a book, “The Little League Game,” based on observations and interviews with coaches, athletes and parents. He went on to explain the difference between the two coaching types:

“The macho coach motivates by continually haranguing and pointing out to a player that if he isn’t effective, he is less than a man. The player’s manliness is always at stake. The macho coach extols the virtues of a pseudo masculinity--a real man always wins, you always have to be totally dominant and aggressive and anything less is feminine.

“The humanistic coach, on the other hand, wants to win but learns something from defeat. He tries to teach a lesson about losing, that life is full of wins and losses, that losing isn’t the worse thing to happen, even though winning is better. He is more of a teacher and wants the kid to have a productive team experience. He has concern for others.”

Most coaches, of course, fall somewhere in between the two extremes. A totally macho coach these days would go 10-0 but need a battery of lawyers to defend him in personal injury lawsuits. A totally humanitarian coach would go 0-10 and quit to write a screenplay about the experience. But if your bottom line in high school football is winning, you go after the macho kind of guy.

“You’re apt to win more games with a ruthless coach,” Yablonsky said. “After all, football is a contact sport.” But Yablonsky feels that the ruthless approach is unnecessary, and often harmful. “Football is not total combat. You’re not preparing the players as if they’re Marines going off to Vietnam. Their lives don’t depend on it. I don’t see high school football as an arena to prepare kids for war.”

It is not what you put on the helmet, but what you put the helmet on.

The legacy of success passes down from legendary coaches like Rockne and Vince Lombardi. They are studied and dissected. “What did they do that I could do?” ask their proteges. What made them a winner? How did they motivate their players to excel? Harry Welch of Canyon idolizes John Wooden, the former UCLA basketball coach who won 10 NCAA titles.

“When it was appropriate, he was a very intense man,” Welch said in his office. “A sustained and appropriate intensity is what I strive for as a coach.” He pointed to a newspaper photo of Wooden who was staring resolutely and pointing with--what else?--intensity. A few weeks ago, The Times ran a photo of Welch. He had the exact same look, from his expression to his posturing.

Although Welch is tough (he yells at his players when they make mistakes and often grabs them by the facemask), he says he motivates by respect and caring. “You have to start off with sincerely caring about them,” he said. “People hear a loud voice or an expletive from me or see a scowl (usually on the sideline during a game) and miss the caring. But the kids don’t. They can feel it. I really care about them.”

Welch takes a bullhorn to practice but usually uses it only to communicate with his assistants across the field. His players seem to genuinely like him. In the vernacular of the business, they’ll play for him.

One of them, senior kicker Ron Lindberg, stayed out of school with the flu but showed up at practice. He was motivated by his feelings of responsibility to the team, a responsibility Welch emphasizes.

“We’re a family,” Lindberg said. “I’m not going to stay in bed and let them down.”

According to Yablonsky, a young athlete is motivated for many different reasons. He could be trying to live up to his father’s expectations. Or, if he has a competitive family, proving himself to them. Peer pressure could be a factor. He could want to get a college scholarship or impress a girl or find an outlet for his hostility, other than joining a gang. Fear also motivates a player. Fear of failure. Fear of the coach.

“We’re not afraid of the coach, but we don’t want to disappoint him,” said Lindberg, who has has been perfect on all 16 extra points this season.

It is better to attempt something great and fail than attempt nothing and succeed.

While Welch shuns pep talks (“I don’t write a sermon”), Granada’s Stroh thrives on them. He starts Monday’s practice with a pep talk and builds to an emotional high during the week. On game day, Stroh sees his players at 2 p.m.--the last period--and carefully cultivates their mood. Right before the game, he’ll take them into a darkened gym and speak to them about their objectives. In the locker room before the game, Stroh is all fire and brimstone.

“I’m a verbal person,” he said. “I’m constantly on them, pushing them. To play football well, you’ve got to play with emotion. But you can’t go out and yell at the players all the time. It doesn’t work. They’ll tune you out. But a coach that doesn’t motivate isn’t going to get the most out of his kids. You’ve got to reach them, but you have to be yourself. If you’re a phony, the kids’ll see right through you.”

At halftime, Stroh’s pep talk will depend on how his team is playing. “I never know what I’m going to say beforehand,” he said. “I express what I feel. If things haven’t gone well, I can be boisterous or demonstrative. But if things have gone real well, I just go over their assignments and goals. But the thing to remember is that you’ve got to touch the right buttons and you don’t always know what they are. You’ve got 50 or 60 individuals and not all of them are the same.”

Stroh’s approach to motivation, while different than Welch’s, has worked for him in both football and baseball. His baseball teams have won five city championships in 11 years (“but you can’t get baseball players as emotional as football players,” he said). Although this year is his first as head football coach at Granada Hills, he was a successful B-team coach who was unbeaten in ’83 and ’84.

Stroh made his reputation as a motivator when he coached the varsity defense. In 1978, the Highlanders were going to play Banning, which had beaten them, 40-0, the year before. Because of a problem with the lights at Bruce Schurr Stadium, the Highlanders had to work out before the game across the street at Devonshire Downs. On the way back to the stadium, Stroh got the idea of having the players march “like the Marines landing at Banning.” The band was warming up as they marched, the players’ synchronized cleats clattering off the pavement.

“It was very inspirational, a very emotional experience for everybody involved,” Stroh said. “We went out and won, 24-14--the first Valley school ever to beat Banning. It was like the Super Bowl.”

Like Stroh, Welch is always on the lookout for anything that will raise his players’ emotional level. It is almost axiomatic in sports that anything you say may be Xeroxed and held against you. Prior to the recent game against Palmdale, an inflammatory newspaper quote from Palmdale running back Tony Edwards was blown up, duplicated and tacked on locker room bulletin boards. The Cowboys beat Palmdale, 14-0, although Edwards rushed for 141 yards.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Crespi’s Redell is coaching again at the high school level after spending two years as an assistant coach in the United States Football League. He was asked whether he approached motivation differently with a professional player.

“You motivate the same way,” Redell said. “It’s no different. They may not admit it, they may say it’s a business, but the pros get just as excited to play a game as a high school kid.”

Redell is a bear of man who doesn’t look as if he’d cry at funerals, let alone football games. But part of his appeal comes from an ability to reach the players emotionally. “I tear up at a good card trick,” he said, adding: “I have a genuine concern for the individual. The players have to know that. If they don’t, you can’t motivate them.”

When Redell gives his team a pep talk, there’s usually music in the background, songs like “America the Beautiful” and “What a Feeling.” He also likes to show the Breakers’ highlight film because “it’s a very emotional film about the first year of the USFL,” he said. “It shows what you can accomplish with hard work. We also want our kids to identity with starting something new.”

When he returned to Crespi last January, the Celts were coming off back-to-back losing seasons--only two victories in 19 games. In 1982, his last year at Crespi before joining the Breakers, Redell coached the Celts to an 8-3 record. His return raised expectations and served as a natural motivator. But Redell knew that he still had to deliver.

“The players had lost confidence that they could win,” he said, “so we knew that our first game against Burroughs was very important. We had to win so the kids would know they could still do it (win). Since January, we pointed everything at the game. So we were really well-prepared to play them.”

The nine-month effort resulted in a 28-8 victory and helped propel the Celts to four straight victories. Their first loss came at the hands of Welch’s Canyon team, 35-0.

“Against Canyon, everyone was so emotionally up,” Redell said. “We talked about how important the game was, but we reminded the kids that, win or lose, the season wasn’t over. After we lost, everybody was down for a couple of days, including me. But what we try to do at Crespi is give the kids something they can carry with them beyond high school. We try to relate the game to what it means in life, that if you do your best all the time, you can lose and still feel good about yourself.”

Great teams are just average teams with an unaverage amount of heart.

Slogans and pep talks and fight songs aren’t very effective if the team seldom wins. Winners like to go to practice. They look forward to the drudgery and the bruises and they’re receptive to anything the coach says. Losers, on the other hand, are difficult to motivate. They become discouraged, their esteem is low, they have self-doubts and probably don’t believe anything the coach says.

Skip Giancanelli is having problems at El Camino Real High. Through the first five games of the season, his Conquistadores were winless and, even worse for morale, they hadn’t scored a point. A coach for 27 years, Giancanelli has never relied on rah-rah tactics or slogans. Mistakes get him mad--”probably my biggest fault,” he says. It surprises his players when he smiles, which doesn’t happen much these days.

“I never had this (not scoring) happen to me,” he said. “I’ve got to try to handle it, but it’s difficult and frustrating. Right now, I feel like quitting. Football is so demanding on a coach.”

To get his players on the right track, Giancanelli is simplifying the offense and appealing to their pride. “I tell them to be proud of their school and community,” he said. “I tell them a lot of kids would like to be in their shoes but can only fantasize about being a football player. But the players are really down. I’m doing all I can to get them jacked up. Nothing is working. I’m driving myself crazy and not getting through to them.”

What’s wrong with his team, Giancanelli says, is a reflection of the state of society. “It’s tough to motivate kids today,” he said. “They’ve changed over

the years. Football doesn’t seem to be as important to them anymore. I don’t know if that’s because of the way they’re brought up. They’re babied and pampered and given too much, so they’re not willing to pay the price.

“A team is not going to win with players who have a passive attitude. When you’re given things, it affects your mind. To be a football player, you have to be mentally tough as well as physically tough. Players today aren’t mentally tough enough to play football. That’s difficult for a coach to overcome.”

Giancanelli may have found the right motivational tactics for his team. To get his players straightened out after five consecutive losses, Giancanelli told them to look within themselves. Said team co-captain Marc Hartford, “It has to come from the heart. The coach said we had to fire ourselves up. And that’s what we did.” The Conquistadores won their next game, 23-7 over Cleveland.

Attitude more than skill determines success.

No one doubts that kids today are different. But does that mean they lack the right stuff to play football?

“I disagree 100%,” Redell said. “Players today want to win just as much as they did in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. They’re as dedicated as they’ve always been if their coach is as dedicated. If a player has a good coach and a role model he can look up to, he’ll be hanging around the football field after school instead of the mall.”

Welch also disagreed with Giancanelli. “It’s a cop-out,” he said, “to say that kids aren’t as tough or dedicated or disciplined. Times change, and an effective communicator recognizes that change and modifies his communication accordingly. Things are a lot different than they were 20 years ago. The world and the culture are different. Family structure is different. And kids respond differently.

“My first year in coaching was 1965, and I worked the kids awfully hard then and I work them just as hard today. Initially, I was an authoritarian because of my position. Today, I better know what I’m saying and find a way to reach these kids (in order) to push them as hard as I push them. Twenty years ago I could say ‘work very hard.’ Kids today are more sophisticated. We don’t have a debate on the field, but they know that behind what I’m saying is reason and logic.”

Remember--excuses are the explanation of a failure.

It is almost taken for granted that coaches are always “up,” that they put on their game faces as soon as they roll out of bed. In reality, coaches often have to motivate themselves to maintain their enthusiasm. Coaching, particularly in high school, is a labor of love. The hours are long, the pay usually insignificant, the pressure to win always there (Giancanelli, for example, makes sure his wife sits in a “safe” section of the stands).

Welch is typical of what a lot of high school coaches go through. He drives for nearly an hour from Marina del Rey and arrives at Canyon High in Canyon Country at 6:45 a.m. to organize his day and prepare for Friday’s opponent. He teaches four English classes, meets with his team at lunch and holds what he calls “the world’s longest practice” from 2 to 6:30 p.m. Then he’ll have a meeting with his assistants or show a film to the booster club. He gets home about 10 and returns phone calls. Fridays, after games, he doesn’t get home until 2 a.m. On Saturday he puts in 12 hours, Sunday six.

In addition to his teaching salary, Welch gets $1,700 a year for coaching football, which doesn’t pay for the gas he burns driving back and forth to school.

“Nobody is asking me to put in these hours,” Welch said. “Not the principal or the booster club. I choose to do it. But I’m doing what I want to do. Most players come back to me after (they’ve graduated) and say thanks. Now how many people have jobs like that?”