JOHN PONT IS FINDING THAT THE TRANSITION FROM COLLEGE FOOTBALL : COACHING TO BUSINESSMAN TO HIGH SCHOOL COACHING IS . . . : All in a Day’s Work

HAMILTON, Ohio — John Pont used to break up fist fights on the practice field when he was the football coach at Yale and Indiana years ago.

But he wasn’t ready for his first fight this year at Hamilton High School, where he coaches now.

Standing in the school’s main hallway during a recent noon hour, Pont was startled to see two girls start swinging at each other.

As the two tumbled to the floor, pulling hair and punching, an English teacher jumped in to separate them, and Pont thought the worst was over.

But it wasn’t. One teacher couldn’t handle it. Thus, diving in to take charge, Pont soon made it four on the floor. And like a wrestling referee, he pulled one of the girls away as the English teacher pulled the other, separating them at last.

“All in the day’s work,” Pont said as he stood up, flicking dust off a knee. “It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”

Life was never like this at Indiana, or even Yale. But monitoring the halls is a daily ritual for him at Hamilton. Each time the school bell rings between classes, all teachers--and coaches--are required to stand in their doorways as the throngs of students surge back and forth noisily.

“We’re a peace force,” Pont said, smiling. “There aren’t many confrontations anymore, though--not nearly as many as there used to be. They tell me the tension was really bad here three or four years ago.”

That’s when Hamilton’s two public high schools were consolidated. Previously, there had been schools on opposite sides of the river that divides the town--Garfield High on the bustling, sprawling east side, and Taft High out west in Hamilton’s quieter, high-income residential district.

Taft, renamed Hamilton, survived. Garfield is now a junior high.

“This was a real lively town in the days when we had two high schools,” said a Hamilton businessman, John Cole, an executive at Mehas Music Store. “The Taft-Garfield games were like World War II. You have bad blood between the two sections of this town, and it all came out when Taft played Garfield. We lived for those games.”

The authorities didn’t. Instead, they consolidated the belligerent schools, hoping to unify the citizenry in this city of 60,000. And when that didn’t quite do it, Pont was brought in to develop a winning football team--which seems to unify any American community.

Here, it hasn’t happened yet. Hamilton lost last week’s game in a driving rainstorm as Pont finished his first season with a 4-6 record, prompting many townspeople to grumble openly.

“The team isn’t going over,” said Barry Sherrow, the night manager of a Hamilton service station and an east-side partisan. “Pont did well in college, but not with this team.”

Innkeeper John Pendergest, who lives on the west side, said: “We’re disappointed. Here’s a guy who coached at Yale and Northwestern--and in the Rose Bowl. You’d think he could coach a high school team.”

But things aren’t all that simple, in the opinion of a neutral observer, Bob Walker, who is the managing editor of the Hamilton newspaper, the Journal News.

“As a rule, football coaches don’t win instantly, anywhere,” Walker said. “Many people are overreacting. They remember we had a winning team last year and they expected Pont to improve on that right away, in his first year. But they didn’t notice that our competition in the conference played very well last year, too. And it’s a tough conference.”

One of Walker’s sportswriters, Pete Conrad, said: “It’s the Greater Miami (River) Conference, the toughest in the state. The top team, Princeton, is nationally ranked every year, usually in the top five. And two or three others are close. You don’t catch Princeton with a quick fix, and Pont didn’t try.”

Measuring the strength of Pont’s new league, Conrad said:

“He won his first four games--all nonconference--then lost five straight in the conference. In the last game he could have made it a .500 season but didn’t.”

Pont’s primary objective in his comeback season as a coach was simply to get a solid new football program in place. This is the kind of thing few fans could be expected to understand, but the movers and shakers of town, approving, appear at the moment to be content.

“John Pont is a class act,” editor Walker said. “I’d want any sons of mine to play for him.”

Pont’s boss, the superintendent of schools, Robert Quisenberry, seems even happier.

“John is the greatest thing that’s happened to Hamilton football,” Quisenberry said. “He’s as moral and dedicated a person as you’ll ever meet--a classy role model who has already had a beneficial effect on our students, their parents, and our (football) boosters.”

At the same time, the school superintendent realizes that he can’t keep the boosters in line indefinitely unless Pont wins.

“A winning football team is very important to any school district,” Quisenberry said. “It generates interest, pride, the involvement of parents and the city, and support for the school system--particularly here in southwest Ohio, which is a hotbed of high school football.”

For these reasons, Quisenberry looked up Pont and hired him.

“We haven’t had a winning program here for 25 years,” Quisenberry said. “We’ve had some winning teams, but not a strong program. It takes awhile to get that, and John has our confidence that we’ll have it.”

Sounding a word of warning, Walker said: “Anything under 9-1 will be unacceptable to the red hots (down the road). He’ll feel a lot of heat if he doesn’t get it.”

The subject of all this community attention is an exuberant, outgoing, 57-year-old ex-football player who after eight months in Hamilton calls every school employee by name and many of the students.

“You can’t know 2,000 students, but I try,” Pont said.

Years ago at nearby Miami University, he was a 5-foot 7-inch, 167-pound halfback who played so well that the university retired his number. It has retired only one other. Comfortable in the Hamilton school district’s prescribed coat and tie, Pont, who is 5-7 now, bears a growing resemblance to two former coaches, Hank Stram and Bernie Bierman.

Pont’s wife also teaches school, and his brother is an assistant football coach at Yale. John and his brother were born in Canton, Ohio, where their father was a factory worker who migrated from Spain. Their mother migrated from the Soviet Union.

A college head coach for 22 years, John had a record of 43-22-2 at Miami of Ohio, 12-5-1 at Yale, 31-51-1 at Indiana and 12-43 at Northwestern. At the time--in all four places--he won about as often as a man could.

Indiana, for example, has never gone to the Rose Bowl except with Pont, whose Hoosiers were 15-point underdogs in 1968 and held USC to 14-3. USC had O.J. Simpson.

High school football, however, is something else. Prep people like to say their winners have to meet three conditions in fiery football states such as Ohio and Texas:

--All teams in the entire school district, from the sixth grade up, must be organized to benefit the high school team.

--The coach must excel as both coach and organizer.

--The coach must be exempt from teaching to concentrate on football, at least in the fall semester.

In Hamilton’s conference, Princeton’s perennial winning team meets all three conditions. But with Pont, Hamilton meets only the first two.

Pont spends much of his time teaching students, organizing study and vocational programs for his sophomore classes, and monitoring the hallways to discourage fighters, boys as well as girls.

He seems to thrive on it, but is this any way to win football games?

“We’ll have to see,” Walker said at his Journal-News desk. “The political reality here is that (other teachers and taxpayers) won’t stand for a full-time football coach--yet.”

For the same reason, the editor said, a town that pays teachers an average of $18,000 will pay Pont $23,000 annually to put Hamilton on the map.

He and other top coaches were making that much 15 years ago in the Big Ten.

If that bothers Pont, nobody knows it. He is bringing to his new job at least as much enthusiasm as Texas A&M; gets from Jackie Sherrill today for an annual $230,000.

Making speeches and personal appearances, Pont works hard for support from civic groups, parent groups and such campus segments as the Hamilton High School band.

By the end of the football season last week, the bandsmen were blowing so hard at Hamilton games that the team often couldn’t hear the signals.

The drum major, worried, came up to Pont and asked: “Should I get them to blow softer?”

Pont shook his head vigorously. “No, no, the band is great,” he said. “Tell them I love them all.”

Then, turning to a visitor, he said: “I meant that. I’d rather blow a play than lose the band. You haven’t got a winning program if you haven’t got a band.”

That’s Pont.