How Coaches Make the Summer Pay Off : Some Take On Extra Jobs to Help Make Ends Meet

Dan Fukushima, past president of the California Coaches Assn., remembers the summer he spent driving a dump truck brimming with peach and apricot pits to be processed into charcoal briquettes. And then hauling the leftover fruit out to farms for cattle to chew.

“That was 1951, and in those years the base pay for teachers was $3,150 per year,” said Fukushima, a retired teacher and current assistant basketball coach at Independent High School in San Jose. “And that was almost enough.”

Some 36 years later, a coach’s life has greatly changed. Sports are played less over single seasons, more over entire calendar years. The pressure on coaches to win seems to have swollen along with the national debt. And although the state Department of Education says the average teacher in Orange County now makes $33,295, most coaches are still looking for ways to enhance a salary that’s still just almost enough.

Many coaches, such as Laguna Hills’ Jack Hodges, earn extra money in their areas of expertise. Hodges works at the Angel Country Baseball Camp at El Dorado High School, training 13- to 17-year-old players.

For other coaches, the summer is just an extension of the sports season, since many players continue training throughout the year. High school baseball coaches continue working unofficially with their players by becoming American Legion coaches. Some coaches oversee weightlifting and help out in other unofficial summer programs.

But then there are those who do something completely different in the dry season. Gerry Sedoo, who coaches baseball at Foothill High School, spends summers hopping throughout the country, hawking pitching machines at various expositions. Paul Bottiaux, who coaches basketball at Sonora, paints houses in the summer. Capistrano Valley baseball assistant Craig Anderson works as a security guard. And then there’s John Miklas, the brawny strength and defensive-line coach at Dana Hills, who sells maternity clothes at swap meets. Even Hodges, who remains tied to baseball in the summer, has a greeting card company on the side.

“Most of the coaches I know really scramble for ways to make ends meet,” said Mike Dodd. He spends his summers working as a salesman in his family’s trophy-engraving business when he isn’t coaching the Huntington Beach football team in the early morning or the Suns, a Metro League team composed mainly of Huntington Beach players, in the evening.

Bob Zamora, whose Capistrano Valley baseball team won the Southern Section 2-A championship, drives a beer truck.

“In earlier times, driving was definitely a needed supplement,” Zamora said. “I was taking my teaching supplement on a 10-month basis, and in the summer we were basically starving. In the earlier days, when the kids were younger, I had to drive five days a week. Now, I work to make weekend money or just pass the time.”

Zamora had other reasons for his other work. Because teachers do not work all year, they are not eligible for Social Security benefits. Instead, they have a pension plan of their own. Zamora, though, wanted Social Security benefits as well, so he once worked on an oil rig, and he has been driving the beer truck for 12 straight summers in an effort to qualify for minimum Social Security benefits.

Zamora begins driving at 6:30 a.m. and delivers 500 to 600 cases of beer to stores by 11:30 a.m. He then returns for another load.

“The day goes by incredibly fast,” said Zamora, who teaches Spanish. “At school, you’re using your mind all day long, pushing a pencil correcting papers. With this you get to use your muscles.

“It’s an ideal situation because the job is only temporary. In the summer the beer sales go up, so they need more drivers. Beer sales then fall off in September, and they don’t need as many drivers. That’s ideal because I have to go back to school.”

Zamora is a man who works for eight dollars an hour and escape, but Huntington Beach’s Dodd is a man whose schedule begins red-lining in the summer.

“With football, baseball and work, I’m busier now than at any other time,” said Dodd. “By the time I get home, it’s 11 at night, and the summer isn’t supposed to be like that. But I have a house, and the bills still come.

“We’re our own worst enemies. Winning is more important to us than sitting in Palm Springs. It’s terrible, but there’s something about it that we like.”

The jobs aren’t without their problems. Dodd says he sometimes can’t wait for September. Zamora says he is sometimes ordered around by store owners.

“Here I am with a master’s degree from the University of California and some of these people treat you bad, like you’re lower than human,” Zamora said. “You bite your tongue and say, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”

Other coaches, especially those who have working wives, don’t see why the Zamoras and Dodds don’t spend more time relaxing and concentrating on their teams in the summer. This is especially true at a time when coaches are having to work longer and harder merely to keep up with their rivals.

Mike Curran, whose Esperanza baseball team was ranked first in the country in 1986, spends his summers with his team and family.

“It’s kind of a low-key way to regroup mentally and do something you like,” Curran said.

Dave White, who coaches football at Edison, doesn’t see how coaches come up with the time for other jobs.

“I’m at school from 8 to 12 every morning, and we have passing league games at night, so it’s almost a full-time thing in the summer,” White said. “I don’t do anything else.”

The way many coaches combine outside work with coaching is to accept jobs whose hours are extremely flexible. Doug Domene, an assistant baseball coach at Esperanza, sells real estate. With the help of his parents, he can even sell some houses during the school year.

“The one thing I did not want to do was be tied to a job where there was no freedom,” Domene said. “I still do summer baseball, and that’s important. I like a job where I can take a day off when I want, or, if I want to work all day and into the night, I can.”

Ron Inman, who coaches girls’ basketball at Bolsa Grande, has painted houses in the summer because he could tailor his schedule any way he wished.

“The good part is, it allowed you to get to summer league games and you didn’t have to report to anyone,” Inman said. “You could leave when you wanted.”

Even when they’re working, though, most coaches never lose sight of what is important to them.

Ken Millard, who coaches baseball at Estancia, works as a weekend bartender at the Costa Mesa Country Club. He has to cater to a rather hostile crowd that chases sliced balls in carts. Especially when their chase brings them to the bar’s television set.

“I have trouble getting the golfers to turn off their games and turn on baseball,” Millard said. “But even if it’s golf on, I convince them it’s really baseball.”