NO PRESSURE FOR BILL ERVIN : Retiring El Modena Coach Found There’s Much More Than Winning

At a time when too many coaches seem to emphasize winning above all else in high school sports, it is refreshing to hear Bill Ervin, El Modena basketball coach, describe the philosophy that has kept him in the business for 25 years.

Ervin, 49, who will retire after this, his 18th season as the Vanguards’ coach, has never felt pressured to win or to produce championship teams.

Veins don’t pop out of his forehead when he’s coaching. He doesn’t suffer from stress. His blood pressure is normal.

“I really don’t get overly excited about wins and losses,” he said.

What excites Ervin is seeing his players do the best they can with the ability they have--even if that doesn’t always add up to victories on the basketball court.

“If my players do the best they can and lose, they really haven’t lost,” Ervin said. “My parents helped me develop a philosophy of doing the best with what I have and not being concerned with what other people think.”

In his 25-year teaching and coaching career, which began in Oklahoma and had a brief stop in Barstow before settling in Orange County, Ervin has seen his share of coaches come and go.

“Sometimes they’ve gone because the whole thing to them was winning,” he said. “Sometimes they don’t have the material and they lose, and that hurts their ego. Sometimes they win with super material, and they think they can coach. But even winning gets old after a few years.”

Winning never got too old for Ervin, but neither did losing. He entered his final season at El Modena with a 208-208 career record, and the Vanguards are 5-5 going into tonight’s Century League game against Foothill. Counting the seven years he coached at Oklahoma and Barstow, he is 351-235 overall.

Under Ervin, the Vanguards advanced to one Southern Section 3-A championship game, losing to Camarillo, 73-71, in overtime in 1972. El Modena advanced to the semifinals in 1973, made it to the quarterfinals three times, and qualified for the playoffs 10 times.

Ervin has had his share of excellent players, including Steve Trumbo, The Times’ Orange County Player of the Year in 1978 who is currently playing professional basketball in Spain, and All-CIF selections Tim Tivenan, Larry Johnson Bobby Gray and Greg Allen. But he doesn’t judge success by the number of Division I college players he produces.

“I remember players more for what they’re doing now--what they’ve made of themselves outside of athletics,” Ervin said. “I had one kid, Pat Westerbeck, who is now an assistant district attorney in Texas. Another guy who played for me at Barstow, Pat Douglass, is now the head coach at Eastern Montana University.

“Such a small percentage of your kids go on to play pro basketball, and it’s great when they do, but it’s just as great if a kid does something else good with his life.”

It’s been a tough year at El Modena. First, Bob Lester, beloved Vanguard football coach for the past 20 years, the only football coach the school has ever had, retired after the 1985 season.

And now, just months later, El Modena will lose another of its coaching institutions--Bill Ervin--who has headed up the Vanguards’ basketball program since 1968, when he replaced John Kratzer three years after the school opened.

Ervin won’t be remembered for having great basketball teams the way Lester will be for having great football teams. Lester had a career record of (157-58-8) at the school and won three Southern Section football championships.

Lester also was known for his sense of humor and his quick wit. He was a favorite speaker at banquets and loved talking to reporters.

Ervin, on the other hand, isn’t the type to break you up with one-liners, and he’s not as exuberant as Lester. But he has a good, subtle sense of humor.

How big was your high school, Bill?

“My senior year we moved to Pond Creek, Okla. There were 21 in my senior class and that was larger than my other school.”

Ervin on his wife, Donna, who he says is different than most coaches’ wives because she goes to all the games and keeps statistics: “A lot of times, coaches’ wives do something different on the nights their husbands have games . . . a lot of them are divorced.”

Ervin’s own coaching adage: “I told my wife once that for each year in coaching, you lose about five points off your I.Q. That means most of us in the business for a long time would be operating with a negative I.Q.”

The drier side of Ervin’s humor has obviously rubbed off on his son, Bobby, a senior starting point guard at El Modena.

Reacting to his son’s desires to major in architectural engineering in college, Ervin said, “That’s totally his idea. I’ve suggested that he go into teaching.”

“But I want to make money,” Bobby interrupts. “I want to drive a Porsche.”

Bill: “That’ll be nice. You can take care of me in my old age.”

Bobby: “Nursing home.”

As far as publicity and exposure goes, coaches in high school often overshadow classroom teachers. Their pictures and comments appear in newspaper sports sections, and they are often the high-profile figures on campus.

But at El Modena, Bill Ervin has gained as much respect for his teaching as he has for his coaching. Ervin, head of the school’s math department for 17 years, teaches pre-calculus and will continue to teach after his coaching days are over.

“Public education is richer because this man chose this profession,” Lester said. “He’s a helluva teacher. He could multiply his salary in industry because of his math abilities.”

Ervin, however, has never actively pursued another job. He knows he could make more money in the engineering field, but he has always felt that it is best to do what keeps you happy.

“I’ve been teaching for 25 years, and I cannot remember a single day getting up and thinking I didn’t want to go to school,” Ervin said. “I look forward to going to school, and I enjoy my classes and working with the students. I know there are a lot of other jobs that pay more that people dread going to every day.”

Ervin knew when he graduated from tiny Pond Creek High in 1956 that he wanted to be a teacher and a coach. The three-sport star was good enough to earn scholarship offers in football (as a quarterback) and basketball (as a point guard) to Oklahoma University.

He also could have attended college on a music scholarship because of his ability to sing and play the trombone, but he chose basketball.

Ervin’s basketball career never panned out--he suffered a lower spine injury in his freshman year and made several unsuccessful comeback attempts--but his academic career did.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and then went on to earn a master’s degree in student personnel and guidance at Oklahoma State. He began teaching and coaching at Moore High in Oklahoma City while he was completing his master’s degree and then moved to California to teach and coach at Barstow.

He’s been in California for about 20 years, but you can still detect a slight Oklahoma accent.

Ask Ervin about the summer of 1978, when he spent six weeks on an Ambassadors of Education tour to Afghanistan and Bangladesh to work with their national basketball teams, and he’ll tell you: “That was a tree -mendous experience.”

Ask him why he moved to California, and Ervin will say: “I knew teacher’s salaries were tree -mendously higher there.”

Ask Ervin what it takes to be a coach, and he’ll say: “Why, it takes a tree -mendous amount of energy.”

Ervin also plans to have a tree -mendous time when he retires from coaching. He’s not ready for a rocking chair just yet.

Ervin wants to become more active in his church, and he wants to visit his son, Jim, in Oklahoma City and his daughter, Vickie, in Northern California more often. He wants to watch Bobby, also a distance runner, perform in track wherever he decides to attend college.

Ervin says he plans to take winter and summer vacations, which he hasn’t been able to do because of conflicts with basketball. He wants to travel, work on his golf game, and attend the theater in Los Angeles on a regular basis.

It sounds like a great retirement, but he’ll never be able to escape the pressures of coaching.

That’s because, for Bill Ervin, there never were any pressures.