A Perfect Strategy : Chapman College’s Brian Berger May Finally Relax . . . Once His Basketball Team Wins Every Game It Plays

If actions expose a the true nature of a person, then any profile of Brian Berger should begin with his 6-foot 7-inch frame galloping through the halls of Paramount High School after some terrified student clutching a spray paint can.

Berger served as an assistant varsity basketball coach at Paramount from 1978 to 1980, a period he remembers as great on the court, and a struggle off it.

“It was a tough school,” he said. “You were breaking up fights all the time. And kids were always writing on the walls with spray paint cans. Stuff like that really drove me up the wall.

“There were teachers who had been there for quite some time, like 20 years, and they didn’t bother those kids. They (the teachers) kind of sold out. They’d see a kid spray something on a wall and they’d turn their head. I would chase a guy for 10 minutes just to grab him and shove that can down his throat.”

If the truth be known, Berger had more contempt for those who watched and turned their heads, than the kid with the can. At least the kid was doing something. Berger doesn’t understand a life without purpose or commitment. Without commitment, he says, there is no need for action. And Brian Berger does not understand inaction.

It figures, because Berger, the wildly successful Chapman College women’s basketball coach, has chased and fought most of his 38 years.

He battled his own body as a gawky eighth grade player at Stanford Junior High School in Long Beach. “I literally could not walk and chew gum at the same time.”

He wrestled with his immaturity and brashness as a freshman at the University of Nebraska. “I’d gone from a big fish in a small pond to a polliwog in the ocean. I couldn’t understand why people didn’t see that I was the greatest thing.”

But, what separates Berger from most of the Picassos of Paramount High is that his chase is more of a quest. He is struggling to capture a little goody known as perfection.

Perhaps you’ve heard the term. Derived from the adjective perfect , as in “Nobody is . . . “

“He’s definitely a perfectionist,” former player Heather Grayburn said. “He emphasizes total commitment, total dedication.”

In his five years at Chapman Berger has not been perfect. All he’s done is compile a 109-29 record (.789) and win two California Collegiate Athletic Assn. co-championships in 1984 and 1985.

Currently, the Panthers are 13-7 overall and 3-3 in conference play.

Not bad. But it may mark the first season that Berger does not win 20 games at Chapman or make the playoffs with the Panthers.

Though success may be more difficult to come by this season, Berger still pounds away at certain concepts. Dedication, commitment, perfection.

“I know there are probably some players on the team this year who don’t understand what he’s yelling about,” Grayburn said. “Some players might think he’s getting too deep into their lives, but that comes out of his genuine concern for his players. He cares so much that it sometimes causes him to overreact.”

Berger said: “I yell as much as my players as Chuck did at us,” referring to his coach at Long Beach City College, Charles Kane. “But I’d like to think they know how much I care about them.

“I guess what motivates me are those normal feelings of insecurity that all people possess to a certain degree. I think it’s probably that along with my frustrating college career, that had a great deal to with the way I coach. I want my players to be an alter ego, I want them to do what I didn’t do.”

Oh, by the way, Berger received his college degree in psychology.

Anyone who’s ever watched him work on the sideline--one minute an icy stare, the next a decibel piercing explosion--it may seem this quest has gotten the better of him. So, it may come as a surprise that he actually enjoys what he’s doing.

In fact, Berger finds it difficult to imagine his life on this planet as anything but a basketball coach.

“Coaching is a roller coaster,” he said. “Everyone likes a roller coaster. You get the hell scared out you sometimes, but sometimes you’re right there at the top with a great view. I guess the highs make it worth all the lows.”

Berger highs include being named the CCAA Coach of the Year for 1983 and 1984. And things never got lower than receiving a public reprimand from the NCAA Division 2 Women’s Basketball committee, in April of 1985, for his actions after a loss in the Western Regional final to Cal Poly Pomona.

His career, both playing and coaching, has run the gamut of emotions. It’s reflected in a face that at one moment can show mild contempt for a person and the next breaks up in laughter.

His eyes, steely in composition, have been known to freeze a player at 20 paces. Combine it all with a thick black mustache, and you have Wyatt Earp in a sweat suit.

He not only looks the part, but sometimes talks it.

In a Orange County Community Register article earlier this month, Berger was quoted as saying, “We should shoot every team that plays us zone.”

He is a true believer in tenacious man-to-man defense. Why sit back in a zone and do nothing, when you can chase your man around the court, right?

Berger started chasing his dreams as an eighth grader. His Stanford Junior High Coach Bob Seymour stayed after school with him, putting him through various exercises designed to improve his coordination. By ninth grade he was a gangly kid who showed promise.

“A project, that’s what I was,” he said.

By his senior year at Millikan the project had taken off. He was an All-CIF performer that year (1966), leading the Rams to their best record to that point, 27-5.

He estimates he played six to seven hours of basketball a day. Monday and Wednesdays he and his friends played at Millikan. Tuesday and Thursday at Wilson. Weekends it was down to the courts at Laguna Beach.

“I thought I was a damn good player,” he said.

So did about 100 colleges. Berger sifted through the recruiting pamphlets and handshakes and decided on Nebraska.

It was a miserable mistake.

“I wasn’t ready to leave home,” he said. “I missed my friends and my family. I didn’t know anybody.

“I guess I was a little immature, I had my self-importance all out of focus. I mean, there were 30 guys there all like me. All-CIF. All-state, All-American, I wasn’t able to make the adjustment.”

He transferred to Long Beach City College after his freshman year at Nebraska. There he was coached by Kane. Now the president of Riverside City College, Kane was a strict disciplinarian. And they say likes don’t attract.

“From a coaching standpoint it was the best experience I could have had,” Berger said. “He yelled at us all the time, but you knew that he cared about you.”

But best soon turned to worst when Berger went to Pepperdine for his last two years of eligibility. Gary Colson, now at the University of New Mexico, was in his first season at Pepperdine. Colson was not the disciplinarian Kane was, and Berger found himself in another bad situation.

“I went from a guy like Chuck Kane to Colson who was really young and casual,” he said. “They had two completely different coaching styles. I was miserable, I wasn’t playing. And this is when I still thought I had a chance of being a pro.

“I worked my butt off as usual in practice just to prove the guy wrong. I didn’t give up the idea that I should have started for 10 years.”

And what about this year? What about not winning 20 games? What about not making the playoffs?

“It’s going to kill me,” he said. “But it’s a process of me learning to deal with my impatience. I want to win ever game right now, and I want to be ahead by 25 minutes into the game so I can relax.”

Relax? Berger?

That might be too perfect.