Carson Coach Takes 250 Wins in Stride

‘I’m pretty sure I’ll retire from teaching at 60, but I’m not sure I’ll ever stop coaching. . . . My idea is to coach football.’

Gene Vollnogle, who last week became the first California high school football coach to win 250 games when his top-ranked Carson Colts thrashed Fremont, 44-0, figures on retiring from Carson High in five years, when he turns 60, but says he will undoubtedly continue coaching, either as a volunteer somewhere or working with youngsters.

He doesn’t care what level it’s on, or even if they’re keeping records. He just likes coaching.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll retire from teaching at 60,” he said, “but I’m not sure I’ll ever stop coaching. I could be just as happy coaching a junior All-American team in the neighborhood. I doubt I’ll ever stop coaching. It wouldn’t bother me if the principal said, ‘You’re the assistant B coach.’ My idea is to coach football.”

It might not bother Vollnogle but it would certainly raise some eyebrows if he was made a B coach. Vollnogle’s 250 wins are a milestone only as a round number; according to Cal Hi Sports he has been the state’s all-time winningest coach since passing Manual Arts’ Jim Blewett at 233. The only other California coaches with more than 200 victories are Dwight (Goldie) Griffith, who won 208 at Bakersfield, and Bennie Pierce at Saratoga, still active at 202.

National Record 397

Vollnogle may not challenge the national record of 397 held by Gordon Wood of Brownwood, Tex., but at the rate he’s going--averaging 9.9 victories a year over the last seven years--300 is a realistic target. Not that it means much to the stocky, plain-talking ex-lineman.

He said he was surprised to learn he’s the state’s winningest coach and didn’t feel No. 250 was very special. “I don’t really keep track of it,” he said. “There was nothing big about 200 either. It’s just a matter of I enjoyed coaching. When it isn’t fun I’ll quit.”

Vollnogle isn’t surprised, though, that he ranks with the veterans. He has been a regular at coaching clinics since he took over the Banning B team in 1953. He still likes clinics, he said, but has noticed “the more I go to, the less and less people I know. There’s only two or three of us (longtime veterans) left.”

Vollnogle went into coaching immediately after completing his college career at Pepperdine, joining the Banning staff in 1953. Four years later he joined Paul Huebner as varsity co-head coach, forming a partnership that would produce two City titles at Banning and four more at Carson. Vollnogle added another City title last year, after Huebner retired.

Sleeps Better Now

Vollnogle says the only real difference in attitude between the youngster who began coaching 32 years ago and the 55-year-old veteran of today is that he sleeps a little better. “I still get the adrenaline before the game,” he said. “I don’t lose as much sleep as I used to, though I still do after the game, even when we win. You lie there replaying it, thinking about the things you could have done. But I used to have to get up at one in the morning and ride my bike.”

Vollnogle suspects he was born to coach and he is certainly the right coach in the right place. Like the harbor area, he’s not fancy but solid, a little rough around the edges. He holds two qualities in high regard--loyalty and effort. At Carson, he sees himself more as another foot soldier--though a highly placed one--than as the warlord.

“We’re all struggling together trying to make the school better, the team better, the kids better,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll ever hear me say ‘my team.’ This team belongs to Carson. I’m just a member of the team.”

Vollnogle’s dream at one time was to coach his alma mater, Fremont High, but when the chance came to rejoin his old high school coach in the 1950s, Vollnogle wouldn’t leave Banning. “I like the kids in the harbor area,” he said. “They’re tough kids. There’s black kids, white kids, Mexicans, Samoans. I like the mixture. They get along well and they make for good athletic teams.”

Favorite Went 2-6

His favorite team isn’t one of the title winners, but his first team at Carson, where he was transferred in 1963 and was handed a varsity schedule to be played entirely with underclassmen. The team went 2-6 but Vollnogle said, “That was probably my best coaching job. We never got beat by more than two touchdowns and we scored a touchdown in every game. The kids would come off the field every game and say, ‘Coach, what do we have to do to win?’ ”

Three years later Carson went 11-0 and won the City title. Carson has since added four more as Vollnogle has won nearly 75% of his games there.

Vollnogle was born in his parents’ house in Watts near Roosevelt Park, where he spent most of his nonschool hours. His father was a laborer, his mother a teacher. “They didn’t really encourage sports. Neither of them ever saw me play football,” he said.

But Vollnogle grew up playing sports. “I could never make it by that damn park,” he remembered with a laugh. “By the time I got home dinner was always up. When I got a job I’d walk by the park and see somebody playing and the next thing I knew I’d be out there, I’d show up for work four hours late. I could not walk by a playground and stand and watch.”

Vollnogle became a star lineman at Fremont and briefly considered a future in chemistry. “Then I started taking the classes and I hated it. My mother encouraged me to stay in sports in high school and said maybe I could be a coach.”

Football Scholarship

Vollnogle obviously had more chemistry with a pigskin. He graduated from Fremont in 1948 and received a football scholarship to Pepperdine. By then he knew he wanted to coach.

These days Vollnogle oversees a staff of nine assistants, coordinating the offense with Ernie Simon, Saul Pacheco and Malu Tupuola and pretty much leaving the defense to coordinator Jim D’Amore and assistants Bob Suekawa, Willie Guillory, Randy Morris and Alex Vienna. He also has a kicking coach, Ismael Ordonez.

But in 1953 Vollnogle was on his own. “I’d played offensive tackle and defensive tackle,” he recalled. “I didn’t have the slightest idea what a quarterback did, or a defensive back. You learned rapidly.”

Vollnogle has generally tailored the offense to the skills of the players, running a pro-style passing attack some years, a veer option in others. But his stress at all times is on fundamentals and repetition.

Key Is Simplicity

Banning Coach Chris Ferragamo, who was an All-City lineman under Vollnogle and Huebner at Banning, said Vollnogle’s great coaching quality is “simplicity, and doing it over and over and over again. We used to run (practice) this one play till I couldn’t hike the ball anymore. I guess that’s what made for perfection.”

In fact, Vollnogle says high school coaches probably have to do more with less raw material than college coaches. He says that on the teaching level the high school game appeals more than college. “I really feel the coaching is on the high school level,” he said. “If you don’t have some guy 6-4, 200, you can’t go out and recruit him. You’ve got to do it with a guy 5-9, 180.”

Despite his success, Vollnogle said he has considered moving up only twice. In 1959 he and Huebner applied for the opening at Harbor College. In 1967 they heard about an opening at Long Beach State and thought that was an attractive job. “We decided over the weekend to put in. We had it all laid out,” Vollnogle said. “Monday they announced they’d hired Dave Currey.”

So Vollnogle will finish his career at Carson. “I’m not gonna move and I’m not really excited about college coaching anyway,” he said. “There’s no way I would enjoy the recruiting.”

Two-Platoon System

Vollnogle was sent to Carson when Huebner decided to stay at Banning. They were reunited in 1969. “I really could have been happy at either school,” Vollnogle said. One of their decisions was to go two-platoon. “We decided if we were gonna compete with the big schools the kids would have to go one way,” he said.

It worked.

In 1971 and ’72 they produced powerhouses that went 12-0 each year. The 1971 team, Vollnogle’s choice as his best ever, outscored its opponents, 482-147. That team featured receiver Wesley Walker, now a star with the New York Jets. “We had everything,” Vollnogle said. “It wasn’t whether we’d win or lose, it was by how much. It was unreal.”

Since then the school has produced a steady stream of standout players--quarterbacks Samoa Samoa, John Moreno and Al Washington, defensive back Darrell Hopper and numerous others playing at colleges throughout the country.

The game has changed somewhat and the players are different, but Vollnogle isn’t one of those old-timers who dwells on the good old days. Some modern youths do surprise him: One player missed a day of school and practice recently--to have his hair styled. “That really frosted me,” Vollnogle said. But he adds, “The kids have different priorities. When I went to Fremont they didn’t believe in weight-lifting. Now they lift all year and there’s summer passing leagues. You really didn’t play year-round like now. It’s a much stronger commitment.”

Vollnogle’s commitment remains as strong, and he can’t picture the day when he won’t be down on the field demonstrating stances and putting the offense through its paces. No houndstooth hat or tower and megaphone for him.

“I can’t be the kind of guy who rides the golf cart or sits in the stands and looks over,” he said. “I’ve got to be down there, working with the kids, coaching.”

Vollnogle’s Record CARSON

Year Won Lost Tied 1963 2 6 0 1964 2 6 0 1965 3 5 0 1966 11 0 0 1967 7 1 0 1968 3 5 0 1969 6 3 0 1970 4 4 0 1971 12 0 0 1972 12 0 0 1973 8 3 1 1974 6 4 0 1975 9 2 0 1976 7 4 0 1977 8 3 0 1978 11 1 0 1979 7 3 0 1980 8 3 0 1981 11 1 0 1982 11 1 0 1983 11 1 0 1984 10 2 0 1985 to date 6 1 0 -- -- -- Total 175 59 1

BANNING

Years Won Lost Tied Nine 75 10 0

COMBINED

Years Won Lost Tied All 250 69 1