Engilman, No Dummy, Returns Cleanly : Coach Resurfaces at Cleveland After Tackling Troubles Last Year at Grant

Arriving about 90 minutes late for practice the other day, Jeff Engilman strode purposefully across the football field at Cleveland High in Reseda.

Wearing dress slacks and a button-down shirt, Engilman didn’t look the part of a football coach. But within minutes, he had taken control of the practice.

A loud, boisterous man with expressive blue eyes that widen almost comically when he’s attempting to make a point, Engilman barked out instructions to the players. He joked with them and, with a rolled-up newspaper, playfully batted them over the head.

Ever respectful, the players hung on his every word.

Clearly, this was a man who was at home on a football field.

Almost 1 1/2 years after he was fired as football coach at Grant High for allegedly drawing a vagina on a tackling dummy, Engilman is back on familiar ground.

And all seems to be forgiven.

Well, almost all.

In the eyes of the Los Angeles Unified School District, Engilman, 35, is an assistant at Cleveland to Coach Steve Landress.

Bill Rivera, assistant to the superintendent for the district, said Engilman is “on a form of probation” and cannot be assigned as a head coach this season. Engilman’s case will be reviewed after the season, Rivera said.

But in the eyes of Landress and the Cleveland players, Engilman and Landress are co-head coaches, equal in stature. They were even listed as such in the program for Cleveland’s season opener last week against Chatsworth.

Said Landress, who was co-coach with Engilman for five years at Manual Arts, including City 3-A championship seasons in 1983 and 1984: “I will not have him on this field as an assistant.”

And if the district protests?

“Let’s put it this way: It’s worth my job,” Landress said. “If he’s not co-coach, then I’m not coaching. That’s how strongly I feel about it. I wouldn’t embarrass him that way.”

No matter his official status, Engilman said he missed coaching and is glad to be back, although he is having second thoughts because he now has less time to spend working on the 5 1/2-acre Acton ranch that he bought last spring.

The incident at Grant and the publicity surrounding it, he said, were “like a rocket being dropped on me.” It was even more difficult for his wife, he said.

“People were bringing up newspapers and saying, ‘This is your husband?’ I got a call from Minnesota, where a friend of mine had bought the L.A. Times. He said, ‘Hey, Jeff, what’s this?’

“I was branded a rapist and nobody had ever taken me to court.”

Still, Engilman said the experience hasn’t changed him--except that he’s now more careful about what he says to his players.

“That’s what got me in trouble before,” he said, “so that’s the big modification. I don’t use famous words anymore.”

By that, he means that he no longer uses a dirty slang word when addressing a player whom he believes is not giving a maximum effort.

Overall, though, “I’m the same Engilman,” he said. “Same coaching style. I still yell. I’m still loud.”

And he still uses tackling dummies with “attack points” on them. At Cleveland, the attack points take the form of a capital C, or a cross, or an upside-down V.

At Grant, the attack point on one bag depicted a vagina, according to Grant softball Coach Beth Winningham. Winningham claimed that Grant players were “simulating a rape” when they hit the bag during spring drills in 1985.

Engilman denied the charges, but the incident created a furor at Grant. While a petition calling for Engilman’s ouster was circulated among faculty members, former Grant Coach Drew Yellen said that Engilman had “unwittingly walked into a feminist buzz saw.”

No photographs of the initial drawing were ever made. A couple of days after Winningham discovered it, Engilman drew a football helmet over it.

Still, Engilman was fired.

He had hoped to join Landress at Cleveland last season, but before the start of fall practice, the district informed him that he could not accept a coaching position during the 1985-86 school year.

Engilman returned to Manual Arts, where he is coordinator of a program that attempts to cut down on truancies.

Last spring, Landress again tried to persuade Engilman to join him at Cleveland.

Despite some apprehension, Engilman agreed and the district gave its approval.

Landress and his players are delighted to have him.

Asked if he had noticed any change in Engilman, Landress said: “You don’t want to change a diamond. He’s a great coach.”

Cleveland strong safety Brian Taylor, the Cavaliers’ defensive captain, said Engilman’s problems at Grant are “something in the past” and don’t affect the team.

“The players love him,” Taylor said of Engilman, who is the Cavaliers’ defensive coordinator. “He’s a winner. That’s what counts.”

Even Winningham said that, as far as she’s concerned, the incident at Grant has been forgotten.

“I felt that what happened was wrong and that it needed to be dealt with,” she said. “It was dealt with and he was given a reprimand. . . .

“I hope he goes on with his life and does well.”

And if Grant wanted to hire Engilman? Winningham would not object, she said.

Through the whole ordeal, Engilman said he believed that everything would work out.

“I was very, very bitter at first,” he said. “I was upset with some of the coverage--of the sensationalism of some of the writers. It really made me look like I was a sexist. . . .

“But after a while, I said, ‘This has to be for the best.’ Somebody up there said I wasn’t supposed to go to Grant and coach. And I said, ‘That’s the way it is.’ ”

He enjoyed being home in the afternoons last fall, but missed the camaraderie of a football team and his relationship with the players.

“I deal with kids at Manual,” he said, “but I’m dealing with the lower 10%, the ones who are always goofing around. And I enjoy coaching with Steve. Going out and having a beer. You can only work on your house so long.”

Engilman said he isn’t worried about what outsiders might think of him.

“I really don’t coach for the people in the stands,” he said. “I never have. It’s nice that they like me and don’t throw things at me. What is it that Lou Holtz says? I walk so much on the sidelines because a moving target is harder to hit?

“The kids are who I coach for, and that’s basically the reason I got back into it.”

Derek Raser contributed to this story.