1987 PREVIEW : VALLEY FOOTBALL : BUILDING A POLISHED PROGRAM

A coach trying to build a championship football program can be compared to a chef conjuring up an award-winning meal. There are many combinations to consider, of which only a few will produce the desired result.

Chicken cordon bleu has the same basic ingredients whether it is bought at the frozen-food section of a supermarket or a fancy French restaurant. So why does it cost $2.95 at one place and $29.50 at another?

For the same reason that one Santa Clarita Valley high school football team is 25-2 over the past two years and another is 1-17-2.

It’s called preparation.

Does Wolfgang Puck fling a pizza crust onto the counter at Spago, slap on some tomato sauce, sprinkle cheese on top and stuff it into the oven? Not a chance. Every step is taken with care and purpose.

Coach Harry Welch does the same thing with a football player. He thoroughly marinades the athlete in the Canyon High system, tenderizes him with a little conditioning, gives him a gentle pregame pep talk until his attitude is adjusted juuust right, and sends him onto the field in a screaming rage on Friday nights.

Unlike the world’s great chefs, however, a football coach doesn’t keep secrets. Mathematically, there are more than 39 million ways to arrange 11 objects and coaches seemingly have found all but a couple of them.

There are, however, a few key ingredients common to most of the best programs, including support from the school administration; continuity within the coaching staff; good local youth football programs; and an influential head coach.

And yes, a couple of linemen the size of Chef Boy-ar-dee doesn’t hurt, either.

When it comes to cooking up a winner, Nick Hyder is perhaps second only to master chef Paul Prudhomme.

Hyder is the coach at Valdosta (Ga.) High, which means he has probably the most enviable job of any high school coach in the nation.

Since 1913, Valdosta has completed 71 football seasons (two were canceled because of World War I) and lost a total of 129 games. It has won 20 state championships, five national titles and 619 games in the same span.

Hyder, who is 143-24-1 in 13 seasons as coach, has at his disposal:

A 7,320-square-foot weight room and about $100,000 in weightlifting equipment.

A 1,200-member booster club that raises an average of $70,000 a year.

A football camp and training table for the varsity team during two-a-day summer workouts. (The players sleep on cots set up in the school’s gym).

A junior high system that allows 10 of his assistant coaches to tutor 200 seventh- and eighth-grade boys on the basics of Wildcat football.

“If a player has some talent and he stays in our program from the seventh grade on, by the time he reaches varsity age he should be ready to play for us,” Hyder says, understating the point.

Such a system couldn’t work without the support of the school’s administration, and Hyder says developing and maintaining that relationship is his No. 1 priority.

“It’s a two-way street,” he says in a thick, Southern drawl. “We make sure that God and family comes first, academics comes second and football is somewhere down the line after that. As long as we don’t forget what our priorities should be, I think we’ll always get along.”

Administrative support has a domino effect on just about everything from a team’s public image to the size and continuity of its coaching staff.

“The desire to have a good program has to start at the top--whether it be the athletic director, college president or high school principal--and permeate all the way down,” Cal State Northridge Coach Bob Burt says. “If our student body and administration didn’t care to put forth some effort to develop a good program with deeds and not just words, eventually the attitude of the players and coaches is affected.”

Darryl Stroh, football and baseball coach at Granada Hills High, says that administrators can choose to either support, ignore or destroy a program. “I’ve always had good support,” Stroh says. “I don’t know if that makes the program any better, but I know it makes my job easier. The devastating thing is when you come up against an administration that sees no value in what you’re trying to do. That’s a fast way to kill a program.”

A school’s support for a program usually can be measured by the stability of its coaching staff; an abundance of walk-on coaches with no previous ties to the school is the sign of a program with little continuity.

At Carson High, Coach Gene Vollnogle has six full-time instructors on his varsity staff of 10. Of the four walk-on assistants, two are former players. The B team head coach and his two assistants are also former players.

“What we really have is a staff of head coaches,” says Vollnogle, who is 55-5 the past five seasons. “I can step aside and our program would continue without missing a beat. We’ve been together so long that our staff meetings are over in less than an hour.”

Vollnogle is also aided by a group of former Carson players who coach Jr. All-American football in Long Beach.

George Malauulu, quarterback of the Carson varsity, his backup Fred Gatlin, as well as the school’s B and freshman team quarterbacks are all products of the same Long Beach-area youth team. “The team runs Carson offense and defense,” Vollnogle says. “The quarterbacks have all run the veer before coming here, which is invaluable experience.”

Vollnogle, who is on the board of directors of the youth-football organization in Carson, tried to better his situation by persuading coaches in that program to run the same offense and defense of the high school.

He failed. The system was too complicated for many of the coaches to learn.

“I’ve had clinics for them. I’ve had workshops for them. I’ve done all these things but they still weren’t comfortable,” Vollnogle says.

He would get little sympathy from the vast majority of coaches.

Welch, whose Canyon teams won 46 consecutive games and three Northwestern Conference championships from 1983-86, says designing a youth-football program around a high school team would be ideal. And, in most cases, impossible.

“We did it without having anything like that,” he says. “Pop Warner does nothing like what we do. Even our freshman and sophomore programs have a great deal of liberty from what we do. I’d like to have total continuity, but it’s not realistic.”

Says Stroh: “I didn’t like to have to run somebody else’s plays when I was a B coach. You have to have some freedom. At Granada over the years they’ve thrown the ball a lot at the varsity level. That’s great if you have a B kid who can really throw the ball, but you don’t find many of those.

“The main thing I ask them to do is have a disciplined situation to help weed out the donkeys. That, teach the fundamentals, and hopefully teach them how to win a little.”

Like grandma’s favorite family recipe, a good football program stands the test of time.

Ask Bill Redell, whose Crespi High team is ranked No. 1 in the nation by one publication, and he’ll tell you that the Celts have a good team but not a great program.

“We’re just beginning to build a football program,” says Redell, who is starting his third year as coach. “We’re putting in the right blocks. You can’t judge a program on the wins and losses of one year.”

That’s because loss of players to graduation or injury can decimate most high school and small college teams. Take tailback Russell White away from Crespi and you have a better than average team. With him, you have a championship team.

At Canyon last month, Welch was in the middle of an interview when he saw first-string quarterback Ron Baltau stroll into the practice area wearing a cast on his throwing hand. “Oh-oh. Wait a minute,” Welch said, losing his train of thought. “You may be watching an entire program crumble before your very eyes.”

That, opposing coaches say, is highly unlikely.

Canyon has seen its share of major college prospects in Welch’s five years as coach, but opposing coaches say he’s one Cowboy who could win even without a stable full of thoroughbreds.

Dick Flaherty, who is in his first year as Saugus High coach after spending nine years as a Canyon assistant, says Welch is a little shorter on talent than usual, but it shouldn’t make much of a difference.

“He’ll win,” Flaherty says. “This is probably not his best year as far as skill people, but he has a good line and he’ll work to his team’s strength. When you’re a good coach, you know how to hide your minuses and accentuate your pluses.”

Welch is the architect of what is generally considered the Valley-area’s model high school football program.

“He’s got his athletes to set a very high level of expectation for themselves and they’re willing to work to achieve it,” Burbank High Coach Dave Carson says. “He may have that one blue-chip kid, but the majority of his players are just good high school players.”

Indeed, Welch says he has never had an offensive line that averaged more than 200 pounds a man. Last season Canyon went 11-2 with a 140-pound tailback and a 150-pound fullback. Welch identified quarterback Ken Sollom and receiver Chad Zeigler as standouts on last season’s team, but, “after that everyone was real average.”

But, as Westlake High Coach George Contreras says, “You can coach your rear end off and you still need some talent to win.” Westlake has won three Marmonte League titles in Contreras’ nine years as coach, but he says his two best coaching jobs were accomplished in 1978, when the team was 1-8, and last season, when the Warriors were 5-5. Conversely, he says, “If you’re at a school long enough, you’ll win by accident.”

Carson is widely recognized as a knowledgeable football coach, but his teams are 19-23 in four years at Burbank. He says many times a program is at the mercy of the talent in its area.

But a team doesn’t necessarily need choice ingredients to be consistent. Stroh, who has a 16-3-1 record since taking over a traditionally powerful program at Granada Hills, says a John Elway (Granada Hills class of ‘79) doesn’t make a program great. Stroh says the credit should go to the dedicated Waldo Clucks of high school football.

“You don’t have to have great athletes to have a fundamentally sound team,” Stroh says. “The key is finding kids who are willing to work hard enough to develop to a competitive level even though they’re not blessed with great ability. Then, when you get the good kid who really has some talent and he’s willing to do those same things, that’s when you get the great players.”

And, like ants at a picnic, talented players seem to show up wherever certain coaches may roam. It’s not a coincidence.

“Some coaches are winners wherever they go,” says Welch, citing Coach Chuck Knox of Seattle as an example in the National Football League. “I’ve never seen a good, consistent program that didn’t have a strong coaching staff, or at least one exceptional coach.”

Redell first coached at Crespi in 1982 and had an 8-3 record. He left the school and became a United States Football League assistant the next two seasons. When he returned to the school in 1985, Crespi was coming off an 0-9-1 season. Since his return the Celts are 19-5.

Canyon was 51-60-2 in 12 years of football before Welch took over in 1982. Since then, the Cowboys are 60-7.

With success, however, comes expectation.

In 1985, after Canyon won its third consecutive conference title, 9-7, over Antelope Valley, the crowd response was less than enthusiastic.

“It was the first time nobody came down on the field and really got excited about one of our victories,” Welch says. “It was like we only beat them 9-7.”

A few days after the game Welch received a letter from a former Canyon principal. It was not a letter of congratulations.

“He said I wasn’t coaching the same,” Welch says, shaking his head and laughing it off. “We’d just won our third consecutive championship. He had been the principal here for 15 years and no team in any sport had ever come close to a CIF championship and we had just won our third in a row and he wrote a letter saying how I lacked some fire and the team lacked fire and I was coaching different. . . . “

As recently as last month, a man sizing draperies at Welch’s new home in Canyon Country said to him, “What happened to you guys last year? All those good teams, and then last year.”

Was the man serious. Welch was asked. He was. And what was the coach’s reply?

Silence.

“What could I say to that? I just walked out of the room. I went 11-2, lost one game, 21-20, and lost to Muir. We lost to Muir,” Welch says, his voice rising from tenor to alto to soprano. “So what? Big deal. They had six kids sign Division I scholarships. We had one. We had a good team. They played better and beat us.”

The experience taught Welch a lesson.

“The expectations are so unrealistic,” he says. “This is not going to be a great year for us, but I think we’re going to play good football and we’ll be good over the next five years. This just may not be the year. I can live with that.”

It is mid-afternoon on a hot, dry summer day at Canyon High, but Sean Wheeler is not enjoying the sun or anything else at this particular moment.

He is crouched outside the Cowboy weight room giving the heave-ho to what’s left of his past few meals. Finally, he slowly straightens and makes his way back inside to hoist a few more bars with his football teammates.

And a few minutes later, he is back outside again. Same spot. Same purpose. Another player pats him on the back. “You OK, Sean?” he asks.

“I had to show up today,” Wheeler says, “That’s just the way we do it here. I might be sick or whatever, but I feel a lot better being here with the team.”

He is asked if all Canyon players are this dedicated.

“We know that for us to be good, we have to come together,” he says, “and you can’t come together when you’re sitting at home.”

Coaches cannot explain this type of dedication. It is possible that these players are inspired by fear. Would you like to play on the first Harry Welch team to finish below .500?

Tradition, a term coaches often use but rarely explain, does not allow for mediocrity.

Valdosta has tradition. School enrollment is 2,000 and the population of the city is 38,000. Attendance at home games is about 14,000. “Youngsters around here grow up wanting to be Wildcats. On Friday night, everything stops around here for the football game,” says Hyder, whose teams have gone 15-0 three times this decade.

Canyon has tradition. “I have kids come back to me and tell me, ‘I weigh everything I do now by Cowboy football standards.’ I really like that,” Welch says. “I don’t know what tradition is, but I know we have it.”

Having a winning tradition is one thing. Building one is another.

Flaherty is Saugus third coach in three years. His predecessor was 0-10.

The biggest task for Flaherty is restoring the shattered confidence of his players. “Right now we have to get the kids to believe they have the ability and coaching to compete with anybody,” he says. “I have people come up to me and say, ‘Gee, it’d be great if we could just win three or five games.’ That’s nice, I guess, but those people have no concept of what type of kid we have here. We have some talent.”

Coach Chuck Ferrero, who is in his eighth season at Valley College, says building a program from the ground up tests a coach’s patience and resolve. He was 1-9 in each of his first two seasons at Valley but has had four winning seasons in a row.

“We took our lumps,” Ferrero says. “It’s a long, tedious process when you come from the bottom. My own human philosophy is that if you’re doing the right things, good things will happen.”

Because he works hard to place his players at four-year universities, Ferrero has succeeded in attracting a higher caliber of athlete to his program.

“You measure some of your success by the amount of scholarships that come out and the number of kids who are able to transfer and go on and get an education,” Ferrero said. Last season, 21 Valley sophomores signed letters of intent and Ferrero had one of his better recruiting seasons.

At Northridge, Burt restored order to a program that had six different coaches and seven winning seasons over a 24-year span.

Northridge “was a team crying for help,” according to Chris Parker, last season’s quarterback, and Burt answered the call.

Burt, who likes to say “there is a winning way to do everything,” asserts that the players didn’t understand what the difference was between winning and losing. “They didn’t have a bad attitude,” he says. “They were bewildered.”

Specifics of Burt’s first speech to the team are sketchy, but players say by the time he was through everyone was in a frenzy for the season to start.

The coaches nurtured that feeling by making several cosmetic changes to improve the football program during the off-season.

Air conditioning was installed in the team locker room. Funds were raised so the team could have a first-class summer training camp. The practice and stadium fields were improved. Athletic Director Bob Hiegert even hammered down carpeting in the football press box.

“We gave the players hats, we always had good equipment, but that’s as far as it went,” offensive coordinator Rich Lopez says. “Now the kids can really see something happening. And when they see that happening--when they see the coaches out there working for them--they have a little more loyalty.”

Part of Burt’s first speech also dealt with Northridge’s 61-24 loss to Portland State in its last game of 1985. Burt told the players he never wanted to be associated with a team that would lose a game by that many points.

Later, the coach found out that the game had been played in an icy rain and the Northridge players hadn’t been given long underwear and coats to stay warm.

“He apologized to us,” tailback Mike Kane recalls. “And the next thing we knew, he had bought us the equipment. Just like that.”

Says Burt: “Everything you do is a conscious effort. It was common sense. I didn’t do it for effect. I did it because it needed to be done. You need to give them what they need to be successful. They don’t know whether you can draw up a play worth a damn, but if you don’t care they can sense it.”

Northridge finished Burt’s first season 8-3, equaling the best record in school history. The Matadors were ranked as high as eighth in Division II and were in the top 20 most of the season.

So what’s the secret to a program’s success, the spice that makes the blend just right? Hyder at Valdosta says he gets two or three calls a week from coaches asking him just that.

Welch says trying to answer the question is an exercise in futility. “I never get into analyzing that,” he says. “People say, ‘How do your practices compare with other teams?’ I don’t know. I’ve never seen another team practice. I didn’t play college ball, so there’s no one I’m trying to be like.”

But tell us, Harry, what in Gene Autry’s name goes on out there on that Canyon Cowboy football field?

He finally relents, leans over and whispers, “Honestly, I just try and do the best I can.”