SAN DIEGEO HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL : NAPOLEON RETURNS : Lincoln High, Looking for a New Image in Football, Brings Back Tough-Minded Coach Vic Player

Nobody can accuse the Lincoln High School football team of standing pat after a successful season.

But then, a team--even one that won a sixth San Diego Section 2-A championship for the school last season--doesn’t have much choice when the school gets a new principal who hires a new football coach.

Have the changes had an adverse effect on the team? Hardly. Lincoln opened the season with a 71-0 victory Saturday night over San Francisco Wilson.

Lincoln scored before the offense ever had the ball when Patrick Rowe ran a punt back for a touchdown. Lincoln led 48-0 at the half, and Lincoln held Wilson without a first down in the game.

“It was almost a little embarrassing,” said Ruby Cremaschi, who was hired as the school’s principal last May and is the person most responsible for the new-look Lincoln football program.

“But, I have to admit, I loved it.”

At first, Cremaschi wasn’t in love with the football program.

It was easy to understand why. In September 1985, Lincoln did not have a football coach and only 14 students came to the first day of practice. Assistant coach Skip Coons stepped in. And all Coons did was lead the Hornets to the championship.

But Coons--who doesn’t have a teaching credential--didn’t fit Cremaschi’s image of a head football coach.

“I wanted a coach who had a teaching credential,” she said. “If you’re trying to preach to athletes that they have to study, I want a coach who exemplifies excellence in athletics as well as academics.”

So she selected Vic Player, who not only serves as the school’s social studies department chairman but who also had coached Lincoln to three Section titles in the 1970s, as the new head coach. Player had stepped down three years ago because of differences he had with another principal.

“Lincoln is a school in transition and I guess I have a lot of loyalty to this place,” Player said. “I wanted to be a part of it on the field as well as the classroom.”

Coons was retained as an assistant. And Lincoln has continued to win.

While Player was at the school in the 1970s, Lincoln never lost a league game and won three 2-A titles. And Player was a tough coach. Marcus Allen of the Raiders, who played for Player at Lincoln, called him “Little Napoleon” in a recent biography.

“We didn’t see eye to eye on everything,” Player said. “He didn’t want to play quarterback and I wanted him to.”

But Little Napoleon won out. And quarterback Allen was named the CIF Player of the Year in 1977 as Lincoln defeated Kearny, 34-6, for the Section championship.

“I still talk to him once or twice a year,” Player said.

And Allen obviously still remembers his days at Lincoln. Just recently, Allen donated $6,000 to the football program, which helped the team finance a four-day trip to Seattle and Vancouver. The players and school supporters raised the rest of the necessary $30,000 themselves.

Lincoln plays O’Dea High School in Seattle on Saturday.

“This trip was important because it taught the kids that if they want something really badly they have to go out and earn it,” Cremaschi said.

Player, meanwhile, is trying to make sure the players earn high marks in the classroom. He’s instituted a study hall each day for two hours before practice.

Hopefully, Player says, this will help cut down on the number of players--20 of the 70 who tried out--who were forced to sit out this season because they were unable to meet grade requirements.

“It’s important to keep doing well because it would give those who couldn’t play something to shoot for,” Player said. “This school cares a lot about its football and it cares a lot about winning.”