Self-Improvement Pays Off With Playoff Spot : Bell Coach Leads Eagles Back to Heights

He once thought he knew it all, but time told him he was “a lousy coach.” So, with his pride in hand, the teacher went back to school and studied and learned until the coach in him was reborn.

For Bell High School Coach Tosh Nitta, the reincarnation of a career is finally paying dividends on the football field. Carting a 10-0 record, the Eagles have finally landed.

Not that Nitta, the consummate scholar of the game, will let down with two games to go in a season that could produce the school’s first Los Angeles City Section title of the 1980s. Bell must first defeat visiting Westchester (9-1) Dec. 6 before it begins to think about the 2A title. All City Section teams in the playoffs had a bye this week because of Thanksgiving.

Practice Rained Out

At a recent practice, the team, chased into a dank campus gymnasium by rain that had obliterated all but the center of its home field, listened intently as Nitta unveiled a plan for the semifinal game.

His businesslike approach was reflected in the faces of the players, who listened intently as he went over the opponent’s personnel. Nitta spoke as if he knew the thoughts of each of the Westchester players and his own team responded with interest, but not overconfidence.

Those who know Nitta say he spends so much time preparing for games that he might as well know what the opposition is thinking. Those who know the personnel he has to work with say he needs every advantage he can get.

“He’s very predictable,” said South Gate Coach Gary Cordray. “He does not change a thing. He just tries to get better with what he does.”

Even Nitta admits that only three or four of his players have a chance to play even community college-level football.

“We have tough, skilled kids,” he explained. “We’re not very good or talented, but we don’t make mistakes. We play with everything we have.”

Nitta, who was hired as an assistant coach at Bell in 1973, used to think that coaching was easy. He was spoiled, he admits, by the caliber of athletes that Bell attracted in his early years at the school. He took a throw-out-the-ball-and-let-them-play attitude, and for a while, it worked.

But time wore on. Bell’s last league championship before this year came in 1976. The program began to slip and gained a reputation as a pushover. The athletes entering the school weren’t what they once were and Nitta found himself dealing with his own feelings.

“In 1981 I realized that I was not a very good football coach,” he said. “I decided that if I was going to be a head coach here I should be the best coach I could be.”

Nitta, who lives in Cerritos, was appointed as the school’s head coach in 1982. He spent much of his time at off-season clinics, where he says he became “a student of the profession.”

“I would talk to other coaches and ask them what they did, see what they were doing,” he said of his retraining. He studied other programs. He borrowed from the good and learned from the mistakes of the bad.

The Bell football program grew to reflect those changes. Nitta and members of his family personally funded additions in the weight program, of which Nitta says, “I credit with the turnaround in this program.”

He took several players to summer passing tournaments. The effort raised the level of camaraderie and the expectations of key players.

Both outsiders and insiders also credit the addition of defensive coordinator Ray Rodriguez as being crucial to the team’s comeback. Rodriguez, a member of USC’s 1972 national championship team, has directed a defense that has allowed only two touchdown passes this year. The team allowed an average of 5.3 points in nine regular-season games.

Nitta, sidestepping hiring freezes, also expanded the coaching staff with four “walk-on” (volunteer) coaches. The move allows him to run split practice sessions and maintain a more intense effort during full practice sessions.

He also instilled a new philosophy in his players.

“We believe in the work ethic,” Nitta said. “The kids--they know it is not going to come easy.”

One of the volunteer assistants is Bob Reza, a California Highway Patrol officer in the morning, a coach of the Eagle wide receivers in the afternoon.

“Tosh is a great communicator,” Reza said. “He has no big ego. He’s a student of the game.”

Inside the detached stucco shed that serves as the team’s locker room, a battered sign reads, “Commitment to Excellence.” It has become a tradition for each Bell football player to touch the sign as he goes out to the field,

Some say Nitta’s commitment has touched the players, too.

Huntington Park Coach Dwight Muskrath says: “He deals with the same type of kid we have in the Eastern League--not real big. They (Bell) play hard football. They’re well coached and well prepared with a good game plan. He (Nitta) does a fine job.”

In rearranging his own philosophical approach, Nitta hoped to raise team morale this year by using as many players as he could.

“If we get ahead by two touchdowns, I pull the horses,” he said. Of the 67 boys suited for last Friday’s first-round playoff game with University, 45 played.

“It wasn’t always that way,” he said. “But we weren’t winning and I wanted to be respectable.”

A backlash developed from his efforts to see everyone play. Nitta blames himself for a lack of individual statistics that would indicate Bell’s real strength.

Without the numbers, Bell and many of its players have been overlooked and underrated. Nitta still finds it hard to swallow that area polls failed to rank his team in the top 10 for most of the season.

It’s been a fast climb to the top for Bell. In 1982, Nitta’s first year, the team finished 1-8. A year later the Eagles were 2-5-2.

When the City Section reclassified its football teams in the late 1970s, Bell was aligned with teams it found difficult to compete against. A more generous reclassification in 1983 helped, and finally in 1984 Nitta’s hard work paid off.

Last year Bell was 7-3-1 and advanced to the 2A semifinals, where it was eliminated by eventual champion Roosevelt, 3-0.

This year Bell trailed in only three games, quarterback Eliad Pacheco was named the Eastern League’s Player of the Year and the Eagles survived their first playoff game last Friday with a harder-than-expected 38-28 win.

As a coach has been reborn, so has a program.