Final Gun Will Sound Soon on Al Dellinger’s Coaching Career

Could that be boyish-looking Al Dellinger, the Venice High School football coach, saying that “the end is in sight” to his coaching career with Westside prep grid teams?

Why it seems like only 20 years ago that Dellinger got his first coaching job. Not only seems like, it was. And 20 years is a long, long time in the life of a coach. Long enough for the crows to leave telltale imprints about the eyes.

Was it really as long ago as 1966 that Dellinger began working with the Palisades High School junior varsity?

It was, and he received his first on-the-job tips from the late Dick North and from Merritt Stanfield, who shared coaching at Palisades. North died last summer, and Stanfield retired from coaching a couple of years ago.

Dellinger said that after a year at Palisades, “on a lark,” he applied for the vacant head coaching job at Fairfax High and was hired. The Fairfax principal who gave him the job was Jim Tunney, a top football man who went on to a long career as an official in the National Football League.

From an 0-8 season in Dellinger’s first year, when he said his team scored “about three touchdowns,” he coaxed the Lions into the playoffs in his third year.

At Fairfax, Dellinger began his long association with Art Harris, who was an assistant in football and the head baseball coach at Fairfax.

“Artie really broke me in,” Dellinger said. “He’s such an organized guy.”

Harris left Fairfax for Venice High in 1969. Two years later Dellinger followed him and served as a football assistant to Frank Cullom. When Cullom retired after the 1973 season, Dellinger and Harris became co-coaches of the Venice football squad.

When Harris left Venice in 1976 to become the first baseball coach at West Los Angeles College, Dellinger shared the football coaching duties for a couple of years with Bill Fairbanks. When Fairbanks got out of football, Dellinger took over the program.

If Harris got him started, Cullom kept him--and Venice--going. Dellinger said that Cullom was “the Tom Landry of high school football” and that Venice still uses much of his system, including a multiple offense.

On his own or with someone, Dellinger has had winning teams. He said that his overall record as a Venice head coach, “at least the closest I can come to it,” is 63-48-4, including three league championships and four playoff appearances.

His two best teams, he said, were probably the one that went 9-1-1 in 1977 and won a title in the old Western League and last year’s Pac-8 League champions, who finished at 9-2.

In a 1977 pre-league game, the Venice Gondoliers fought to a 21-21 tie with Kennedy of Granada Hills, which was led by quarterback Tom Ramsey, who became UCLA’s career passing leader and is now with the New England Patriots. Venice’s only loss that season was to powerful Banning in the semifinals of the Los Angeles City playoffs.

Some of the better-known players from the 1977 squad:

- Defensive back Dana McLemore, who starred at the University of Hawaii and was recently released by the San Francisco 49ers.

- Running back Keyvan Jenkins, who played for Nevada Las Vegas and is with the Canadian Football League’s British Columbia Lions.

- Quarterback Angelo Gasca, who played at Santa Monica College and Cal State Long Beach, tried out with the Los Angeles Express and was a volunteer coach with Dellinger until he returned to Long Beach to get his degree.

- Offensive lineman Darryl Moore, who played at USC, had tryouts with the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns and was a volunteer coach at Venice until recently.

The 1985 team lost only to Moorpark in a pre-league game and to City champion Roosevelt, 14-7, in the 2-A semifinals. Some of the players from last year still on the squad are quarterback Ernie Soto, the Pac-8 player of the year last season, flanker-cornerback Eric Crawford and split end-safety Roger Serafin.

Dellinger said that his two top teams were in some ways much alike. “There must be some correlation between smart, hard-working kids and the type of football they play,” he said. But there were also many dissimilarities between 1977 and 1985. In 1977, Venice played at the strongest level of competition, 4-A, and had more students than it has today, when the football team is in 2-A.

Dellinger said Venice had an enrollment of about 3,800 in 1974, compared to about 2,200 today.

Fewer students are turning out for football today, Dellinger said. About 110 used to come out for the Venice B football teams, which recently set a record of 38 straight victories over several seasons. About 70 players would try out for the varsity; this year there were 42.

He said that another reason for the lower numbers is the district’s stricter eligibility requirements for athletes. Today students may participate in sports or other extracurricular activities only if they maintain a C-average and do not fail any class. Things used to be looser, and more people played sports.

Dellinger said he thinks that the “C-average, one-F rule” is “fair, and it’s one of the reasons whey we’re getting fewer jerks” in the program. But he also thinks it unfairly penalizes the student who fails one class but gets above-average grades in other subjects. It might be fairer to permit a student with one F to play if he still has a C-average or better, he said.

Busing, he said, “has its positive aspects,” but “from a football standpoint it has destroyed local rivalries.” In the old Western League, Venice’s rivals were Palisades, Hamilton, University and Westchester. In the Pac-8 League, only University and Westchester remain.

Dellinger said that he is glad that students who live outside the Venice area are not bused to the school because it makes for a stable student population.

Because of this stability, athletics and other activities at Venice High are matters for strong community pride, which is reflected in good attendance at school events, he said. It has also made coaching football something like a family affair, he added.

For example, six volunteer coaches with the varsity football team are ex-Venice players, and so are six volunteers with the B team. Head Coach Kirk Alexander of the B team was an offensive tackle for Dellinger in 1975, junior varsity Coach Mark Malconian was a defensive end and so was Tony Chretin, Dellinger’s top assistant.

“Pound for pound, Venice kids are very, very tough,” Dellinger said. And make tougher coaches.

Drugs, mostly alcohol, are more prevalent today, he said. He has two rules for his players: No stealing, and no drugs. If a player needs help with a drug or alcohol problem, he said, he is referred to a school program run by George Rose, who was a successful gymnastics and B-football coach at the school.

Though there are more headaches for Dellinger, his heart is where it wants to be. Born in Cleveland 46 years ago, his first football hero was Ohio State’s All-American running back Howard (Hopalong) Cassidy. “I have wanted to coach football in a school like Venice since I was 12,” he said.

His family moved to Los Angeles and Dellinger was a guard and linebacker for a University High team that won the first league championship in the school’s history, and in 1958 he played on a national championship team for Coach Jim Powers at Santa Monica College. He did not play at UCLA, where he got his degree, because “I was a very poor player.”

If he is where he wants to be, there have been days lately when he has wished he were not in coaching. Like the time he left school after practice, and it took him three hours to get home to his wife Mary Jo and his two children, 18-year-old Kristi and 23-year-old Craig. Pacific Coast Highway was blocked by an accident and Dellinger had to detour on the Ventura Freeway and then over Malibu Canyon Road to get to his home in Agoura.

His wife is a top administrator with an insurance firm, his daughter a Pierce College student, and Craig, who used to be his dad’s ball boy at Venice, works part-time as a film editor and is finishing degree work at Cal State Northridge after studying at San Francisco State.

Dellinger tends to wish he had a different job at the school when pre-season practices begin, he wakes up at 5 a.m. to go to school and his wife bids him goodby by saying, “See you in three months.”

In recent years, he has gotten spring fever when he begins thinking of his off-season coaching load, besides teaching assignments: two days a week with players working in weight training, another day supervising them in workouts at positions and Saturday mornings with his players in passing leagues.

In this type of spring fever, Dellinger starts to think of other places he’d like to be: on a golf course, backpacking in the mountains, fishing in a clear mountain stream. Not many headaches in those places.

“Most coaches have narrow interests. Since I started, there hasn’t been a day when I’m not thinking of football. It becomes a god, all-consuming, and coaching is my mistress.”

But as he said before, “the end is in sight.” A few more three-hour journeys home and he just might dump his mistress and go back to his wife.