THESE GUYS JUST WANT TO COACH : ASSISTANTS

Take everything a high school football assistant coach is not--well known for one, appreciated for another--and the profession still is a peach for one unwritten line in the job description.

Being an assistant coach means never having to say you’re sorry . . . to the booster club.

Let the coach explain why the team ran a draw on fourth and 12, why Tommy is playing instead of Richie. And while he’s at it, let him deal with administrators, budgets and reporters.

“A head coach is more of an administrator these days,” said Bill Backstrom, coach at El Modena High School.

Backstrom made the leap from defensive coordinator to coach and in that time has discovered aspects of the job that many lament. Aspects that many an assistant coach have considered and decided to remain an assistant coach.

“I’m not able to work with kids on an individual basis anymore,” Backstrom said. “I miss that.”

So here are assistant coaches, basking in the anonymity that allows them to concentrate on individuals.

“I would never want to do anything in football besides be an assistant,” said Dave Clark, offensive line coach at Mission Viejo. “I don’t want to worry about public relations, I just want to coach.”

They may just want to coach, but there are assistants, then there are assistants . Though they share the same title, there’s a big difference between the guy who returns to his alma mater after a knee injury to throw passes to running backs, and the Ben Haleys and Bob Salernos of high school football.

Haley and Salerno are defensive coordinators--Haley at Santa Ana, Salerno at Foothill. Each may be described as the power behind the throne. Indeed, Ted Mullen, coach at Foothill, seems embarrassed to label Salerno an assistant.

“For all practical purposes, this team has two head coaches,” Mullen said.

Haley has been with his present boss/best friend, Dick Hill, for 26 years.

“I’m closer to Dick than I am to my own brother,” Haley said.

Hill and Haley have won Southern Section championships at Santa Ana Valley and Santa Ana.

“When Dick retires, I retire.” Haley said. “It’s already been set up.”

Hill said: “I count myself absolutely lucky to have Ben. When you know and respect a man as well, you can communicate thoughts without words. I don’t think either of us could do without that. That’s why we’re leaving together.”

Haley and his wife, Inez, Hill and his wife, Jackie, even take vacations together, though Ben and Dick’s first meeting, as players at Pepperdine in the early ‘50s, was less than spectacular. “Actually, I didn’t like Dick at first,” Haley said. “I thought he was a little too cocky.”

But when Hill asked Haley to join his staff at Santa Ana Valley in 1959, Haley jumped. Haley describes Hill as a no-nonsense man who doesn’t mince words.

“I respect Dick as a boss,” said Haley, who lists loyalty as the key ingredient for an assistant coach. “But I’ve never felt subservient to him. On defense, I know, I’m my own boss.”

Salerno said of Mullen: “We respect each other a lot. I take care of my side of the ball. Whatever decisions I make are accepted. I’ve never felt pressure from our friendship to change. If anything, being friends has made our working relationship that much easier.

“I think it helps to be friends. Actually it’s almost bound to happen. You spend so much time together.”

That’s easy for Salerno to say because he has only worked under two coaches, Mullen and the legendary Clare VanHoorebeke of Anaheim. What about the oft-traveled coach?

“I’ve been on some staffs that got along great, and others that just kind of punched in and punched out of work,” said Mission Viejo’s Clark, who has worked at Troy, Buena Park and Sunny Hills among other schools. “Sometimes you work for a coach and your ideas mesh. Sometimes they don’t. That doesn’t mean you quit. You work within that.”

Marty Spalding, offensive and defensive line coach at El Toro, has been an assistant and a head coach. Though he disagrees with Backstrom’s assessment of a head coach--”You just have to budget your time, you can remain close to your players and be a head coach.”--he does agree with Clark.

“I’ve been on staffs that got on professionally and that was it,” he said. “But I’ve found most staffs, most good staffs have personal relationships. Those relationships are so sound because you risk failure together every game night. That’s a lot to go through together. It strengthens bonds.”

What Haley remembers of his only head coaching job, a four-year stint at Saddleback, he describes as “disappointing,” in that he never thought he had the support of his assistants.

“I didn’t feel I got the cooperation I needed,” he said. “Whether you like a person or not, if you are going to assist you have to be loyal to that person. If I had a few Ben Haleys on that staff, I probably would still be at Saddleback.”

Salerno became Anaheim’s head coach in 1972 when VanHoorebeke retired. He joined Mullen at University High in 1980. In 1981, they went to Foothill, and won a Southern Conference championship.

“I’m happy doing what I’m doing,” Salerno said. “My days as a head coach are over. I’ve closed that chapter of my life.”

So, who makes a good assistant coach? Is it a guy who can’t take the heat of the head coach’s kitchen? Or does it have something to do with the reasons a person gets into coaching?

Haley thinks it’s a little of both. He says he just doesn’t have the temperament to be a head coach and ignores the offers he has received. “I got into coaching to help kids, not to get a big name.”

Dealing with a limited number of kids for long hours allows Haley and others to get to know their players. The Haley household has been home to seven players at various times in Ben’s career.

Clark is known as Wally the Walrus to his offensive line because of his bushy mustache. His offensive line is known as Wally’s Walruses. They eat together, have had Wally T-shirts made and even hold an annual Wally golf tournament.

“I don’t think you can have that kind of intimate contact when you’re the head coach,” Clark said. “You get spread real thin.”

As far as Wally the Walrus and his coaching brethren are concerned, thin is definitely not in.