Mission Impossible? : First-Year Coach Tries to Break Losing Habit at Sylmar

His playing days are over now, the basketball sneakers hung up in some dusty closet. The scoring feats are just memories in his mind and scrapbook.

Still, that desire, that passion to win, consumes Billy Reed, the first-year coach at Sylmar High.

“It’s the only way I know, man,” says Reed, 27, the former North Hollywood High guard who was averaging 31 points a game before torn cartilage in his knee ended his high schoolcareer in the middle of his senior season in 1976. “I was fortunate and blessed with natural ability, but I worked hard, real hard. I was a very competitive person. I always wanted to win, any way possible.”

Reed, who helped Oregon State to a Pac-10 title in and later played at UC Santa Barbara before knee and ankle injuries ended his career, usually did.

Now if he could only help Sylmar do the same. That’s a hard, unenviable task.

He inherited one returning player and one downright pitiful fact: Sylmar has not had a winning season since the school opened in 1961.

And this is Billy Reed’s first job as head coach. Why venture where no coach has won before?

“If I am inspired by anybody--in sports or in life--I would have to say it’s my father,” said Reed. He told me never to give anything less than everything. I looked at this basically as a challenge,” he says.

“In the next three or four years, I’ll probably be doing something else,” says Reed, who mentioned that law school could be in his future. “I thought coaching would be a good experience for me. I thought it would be interesting to take a team that’s never had a winning season. I just wanted to coach and see if I could mold them into my team.”

Never mind the “my.” Reed bears no evidence of having a big ego--though one would be helpful in times of doubt on this job. His demeanor is cool, his words deliberate.

“It’s not a glamour thing,” he says. “It’s a whole lot of hours. And it doesn’t pay, that’s for sure.”

No, Billy Reed does not come off as a savior. He’s simply on a mission, one prompted by the same drive that made him a great player.

Billy Reed, who is assisted by his 23-year-old brother Reggie, wants his kids to win the way he did.

“I just want us to play hard,” he says. “If you play hard and can say at the end of the game, you gave all. . . . I just want us to be competitors.”

But consider the problems that plague the basketball program at Sylmar:

It lacks a winning tradition; its best record was 7-7 in 1971-72. His players, Reed says, know about the past. “The kids are used to losing,” he says.

It lacks an abundance of talent. Some of the best student-athletes in the Sylmar district have been drawn to other schools. Some attend magnet schools for special academic programs. But the main reason for the exodus of expertise, Reed says, has been a desire to escape Sylmar’s losing ways.

“We’ve got to get the kids in our area that usually go to the Kennedys, the Chatsworths and Clevelands,” Reed says. “We’re still interested in those kids. You got to have the kids no matter what kind of coach you are.”

Sylmar swingman David Kellogg says that players he grew up with who could be attending Sylmar include Kennedy starters Marcus Malone (averaging 20.6 points a game) and Clarence Williams (11 points, 8.9 rebounds), and Terrell Smith, the starting point guard at Granada Hills who is averaging 13.6 points and 4 assists a game.

Says Williams: “Sylmar is not too good. It’s the people who make the program. Kennedy is a program that gives you exposure.”

Reed agrees. “These aren’t just your run-of-the-mill players,” the coach says. “I can see why they leave. They go to get the exposure, not to a school that doesn’t have a winning tradition.”

Other problems with the Sylmar basketball program include:

It’s facilities do not rank among the best in the Valley. The gymnasium, with dim lights, seems older than its 26 years. The original wooden court, destroyed during the 1971 earthquake, was replaced by a cement slab covered with a Tartan surface, not considered an ideal floor for wear and tear on basketball players’ knees.

“As a kid you may not feel the effect right away,” says Reed, who experienced nagging problems with his own knees during his playing days. “But you will, eventually. You got to have a floor that gives. It also has seams opening up. It’s terrible. Everyone complains about it.”

It lacks successful students. This season, for example, 11 players--including three of five from the football team--were ruled academically ineligible. That left only seven players; only Kellogg, a 5-11 senior, is a returning letterman.

“I had to keep a number of kids just because we didn’t have anybody else,” Reed says. “We had 32 kids come out. Some quit because they weren’t used to running, lifting. They just wanted to be on the team to have a uniform. But I’ve always said, ‘You can’t do the extra things without doing the basics.’ ”

Which is all Reed has tried to teach--on the court and in the classroom.

“I borrowed a lot from Ralph Miller,” Reed says, speaking of the Oregon State coach. “He’s the best coach I ever played for. He gets the best out of his players. He knows his game. He’s crafty. He keeps it simple, but always wins.”

But Sylmar, luckless in 10 games, still hasn’t.

Watch them practice or play, and the reason is obvious. They struggle to do the rudimentary.

“Look at them,” Reed said in frustration during a recent practice. “We run the simplest zone offense, and they can’t remember what to do. That’s what we’re dealing with. But I have to realize that these are just kids.”

If nothing else, Reed has taught most of the players to want to win. They try to, anyway. The look in their eyes during a game shows it.

“If Coach Reed gets the reputation as a hard-working coach who wants perfection, maybe kids will come out and turn things around,” Kellogg says. “Right now, you have to keep telling some of the kids to try.”

That’s something at which Reed is an expert. He spends most of the day teaching at Will Rogers High in Van Nuys, an alternative school for students, he says, who “for one reason or another don’t fit the social life and are not doing well with the structure.” Then he drives 17 miles to Sylmar. The students there are much the same.

But progress is showing already.

“It’s still early, but he’s done an excellent job of instructing,” says Bob Miller, the school’s athletic director. “I think he’s commanded the respect of the young men. He’s a good teacher.”

Says Kellogg: “Coach Reed makes us work as hard as we can, and to be competitive.”

Still, the team struggled to an 0-6 nonleague record.

“We could very easily have been 3-3,” Reed says. “That’s the frustrating thing. I think the kids really don’t know what it takes. I’ve always thought, if you’re going to play, you want to win. And if you don’t win, at least give it 100%.”

The Spartans, hustling, gave that much in the East Valley League opener, a 79-59 loss to defending champion Poly. But, with minimal talent, it wasn’t enough.

“It’s just hard to get everybody, every night, to play hard,” Reed says. “That’s tough to do when kids are used to losing. I think they used to just show up. But you got to want it bad--real bad. That’s something that’s going to change.”

And that’s something, despite the the unimpressive past, you want to believe Billy Reed the coach will change. The way Billy Reed the player did.

SYLMAR’S THREE BEST SEASONS

Year Coach Rec. Pct. ‘71-72 Bob Miller 7-7 .500 ‘79-80 Bob Thompson 10-11 .476 ‘83-84 Bob Thompson 9-10 .474