His Innovative Offense and Community Support Are Intact, but George Contreras Searches for a Solution to Right : Westlake’s Wayward Course

The Contreras family was having dinner in their Camarillo home on a winter night in 1978 when Andy Contreras, son of the new football coach at Westlake High, piped up.

Andy, then 5 and the eldest of George Contreras’ two sons, peered over the peaks of mashed potatoes on his plate and announced: “Dad, I want to play football at Westlake someday.”

Caught somewhat off guard but filled with fatherly pride, Contreras, whose team had just completed the school’s first season with a 1-8 record, gently explained to Andy that because of where they lived, he’d have to attend Rio Mesa. Undaunted, Andy’s eyes sharpened, and he asked: “Well, Dad, will we play you guys?”

Told Rio Mesa and Westlake likely would face each other, Andy said: “Well, Dad, we’re going to beat you.”

Nearly nine years later, Contreras still laughs at the recollection. “In about two bites he had gone from wanting to be here to beating our butts,” he said. “So we look to be 0-1 in the 1992 season, by Rio Mesa.”

That might be what the Westlake program is looking for--another steppingstone loss. Contreras, who twice has been involved in defeats that immediately and drastically changed the course of the Westlake program, would prefer not to wait another five years to get it.

The first pivotal defeat was in 1978, in the inaugural season, against defending and eventual Frontier League champion Rio Mesa. The woeful Warriors, with a defense manned by six sophomores, were 1-7 entering the game. They lost, 28-14, but the score had been tied, 14-14, at halftime. Rio Mesa had to scramble to win.

“I really think that loss against that quality of opponent the last game of the year was kind of what we built on,” Contreras said. “Everybody knew, hey, we could play. That pretty much laid the foundation for things.”

Upon that foundation, Westlake built a mini-dynasty: a 9-3 record and a Frontier League championship the following year, and Marmonte League titles in 1980 and 1982. Westlake was 32-13 in the four years after the Rio Mesa loss.

“Those were great years,” Contreras said. “We’d go on the road and we had more people in the stands on our side than they had on the home side.”

The success on the field was a boon to more than the Westlake program. Contreras was hailed as somewhat of a hero, transforming the program into a winner just one season after relinquishing his job as an assistant under Bob Richards on the Thousand Oaks sophomore team.

“I think people will always want to be part of a winner,” he said. “There was tremendous support. The community was alive and things were going quite well.”

Then, in the 1982 quarterfinals of the conference playoffs, fate cold-cocked Westlake football. The Warriors lost to Oxnard, 20-19, after holding a 13-point lead at halftime. Westlake, which had what Contreras called, “the best all-around team we’ve ever had,” finished 10-2. Oxnard advanced to the semifinals. Contreras retreated into the doldrums.

“It was a loss that, quite frankly, took me two years to get over,” he said. “There was a lot of nights replaying the end of that game. I felt that team had the ability to be a CIF championship contender.”

Westlake still could be waiting to recover. Since that night, the Warriors have compiled a 19-25 record, and Westlake is the only Marmonte League team in the past four years to fail to make the playoffs.

Westlake’s football program is hardly crumbling, but the question remains: What has happened to transform a perennial contender for league titles to a team struggling to reach the playoffs?

Pose that question around Westlake and the response--from administrators to boosters--is inevitably a reference to the Warriors’ perpetual lack of size.

“You walk around campus, and you just don’t see many big guys,” Athletic Director Bob Fisher said.

“The biggest problem that Westlake has had is that they’ve never had a team with any big kids,” said longtime booster Sue Wellman, whose son Gary played for Westlake and now is a scholarship player at USC. “Hey, the kids play with heart, but what are you going to do?”

Contreras’ answer upon his arrival was to institute the Delaware wing T, an offense based on deception--finesse rather than brute strength. The smaller linemen were instructed to use speed and savvy to their advantage.

Once a conundrum for perplexed defensive coordinators, the wing T has lost its surprise element. Camarillo Coach Carl Thompson admits it was more difficult to stop when Westlake was the only team running that type of offense. Royal and Channel Islands, also Marmonte League schools, now employ the wing T.

“When George was the only one running it around here, it was tougher,” Thompson said. “In fact, for $3.95 you can buy a book on the Delaware wing T.”

Thompson isn’t convinced that the offense is outdated.

“That’s a very difficult offense to stop,” he said. “It’s ideally fit for Westlake. You don’t really have to be big to run it. In fact, it helps if you’re not.”

Channel Islands, which historically has fielded big, physical teams, scrapped its wishbone attack shortly after the departure of Ventura County career rushing leader Hilria Johnson in 1979. Coach Joel Gershon apparently had his eye on the wing T for some time.

“When we first played against it, I thought what the heck is this thing?” Gershon said. “As we tried to defend against it, the more intriguing it became.”

Gershon said he adopted the wing T because it allowed him to utilize more players, unlike the wishbone, which needed one exceptional athlete--like Johnson.

Contreras’ camp, which teaches the intricacies of the Delaware wing T, each summer draws players from more than 30 schools. Obviously, coaches are still enamored of the offense, despite the absence of the surprise factor.

Still, the wing T has not been Westlake’s passport to the playoffs, although the Warriors have been consistently close.

Contreras, 40, has pondered Westlake’s turn toward mediocrity. He is troubled by the number of players who transfer out of Westlake, the death of the Westlake youth football program and a large turnover in his coaching staff.

Westlake’s 1984 freshman team was 8-1. Of that 58-man team, 47 no longer play football at Westlake. Rob O’Byrne, the quarterback, left after his freshman year to attend Crespi, a private school where he has started the past two seasons. Others transferred to schools within the Conejo Valley Unified School District, of which Westlake is a member.

Contreras asserts that the Conejo Valley’s intradistrict transfer policy is too relaxed.

“Right now, as I understand it, there are about 98 kids that are transfers from here to other schools in our district,” he said. “There were maybe 30 coming in. So, there’s an imbalance there.”

Carol Erie, director of secondary education for the district, said transfer statistics would not be available until a district report is released later this month.

This season is the second since the disbandment of the Westlake Athletic Assn., Westlake’s youth football program. According to WAA supporter Sue Wellman, the number of participants in the program dwindled from 150 to none in a five-year span. The Conejo Cowboys, a youth program that serves Thousand Oaks, Agoura and Westlake, is now the only game in town. For that reason, few of Westlake’s incoming freshmen have even played football.

According to Wellman, apathy wiped out the WAA.

“People want their kids to play,” she said, “but they don’t want to help.”

Getting help has not been Contreras’ problem as much as getting his coaches to stay.

“I think the No. 1 key in a successful high school football program is consistency and continuity in the coaching staff,” he said. “It’s just like any profession. I would like to think that a doctor is a better doctor after 20 years than his first year.

“This year is a good example. Off our staff of last year, on the three teams, we lost five of those coaches. When we were winning to begin with, our staff was very stable.”

One member of that earlier staff was Larry Stonebraker, the offensive coordinator through 1984. After a year off, he’s been the freshman coach and keeper of Westlake’s gate for two years. Despite his varsity experience, Stonebraker serves at the freshman level because of his ability as a recruiter--from the hallways of Westlake--and as a teacher.

During the first week of school Stonebraker added 15 prospects to the freshman team’s original 25-manroster. The kind of stability Stonebraker exemplifies is exactly what Contreras is seeking.

“Larry’s a very, very important part of the program,” he said. “We think things are turning around with him working with the freshmen. He’s really, really patient.”

With only three varsity coaches this season, Contreras has spent the past two games in the press box; he’d prefer to be on the sideline.

Despite the stumbling blocks, Contreras is still as fond of Westlake as he was in 1978, when the relationship easily could have been as rocky as a marriage to Elizabeth Taylor.

His first team was forced to practice at Newbury Park High from 5 to 7 p.m., which was fine for the first few months. With fewer hours of daylight because of the changeover from daylight savings time, however, Contreras must have thought more than once of fastening miners’ lamps to helmets.

Instead, Contreras had a janitor flip on all the lights in a two-story building adjacent to the practice field. It cast enough light to keep third-stringers from wandering away from practice and kept receivers from running post patterns into the parking lot, but not much more.

Obtaining the practice field, even during the evening, was the easy part. Working with a meager budget, Contreras turned to the booster club, which, he said, “went wild.”

Among other things, the boosters sponsored a punt, pass and kick-a-thon, for a penny a yard. The cash raised bought the necessary equipment but not the storage facilities Westlake High lacked. So when the trucks came rolling in with their cargo of blocking sleds, helmets and shoulder pads, Contreras just swung open the garage door to his home. “This is Westlake High School?” the drivers inevitably would ask.

Now, the program not only has sufficient storage facilities, the team may soon have a place to play.

The Warriors always have played home games at Thousand Oaks High, but a group called Community Action for Westlake Stadium has taken up a collection to build a stadium on the Westlake campus.

Committee chairman Mike Chopp’s son, Steve, was a quarterback for the 1982 Warriors, the team that lost to Oxnard in the quarterfinals.

“Every time I went to a game it just tore me up to go to Thousand Oaks to watch him play,” Chopp said. “Our guys dress in the girls’ locker room at Thousand Oaks. That makes you feel real macho, right?”

Chopp said that a “playable facility,” including lights and home seating, will cost about $540,000 and might be completed by next season. CAWS has collected $380,000 through individual and corporate gifts as well as special events. Visiting stands, a field house and restrooms will be added later, at an additional cost of about $650,000.

This year’s homecoming game is scheduled for Oct. 16. Westlake plays Thousand Oaks--at Thousand Oaks.

“To me, that is ridiculous,” Chopp said. “We’ve been shortchanged.”

Perhaps in terms of the home field, but no one appears to be complaining about the product Contreras puts on the field. Rather than cooling toward the energetic coach, the community rallies around him.

“I believe in the school, I believe in the program because I like what it did for my children,” said booster Molly Slavin, whose sons Craig and Gary played for Contreras. “If there’s grumbling, I just don’t hear it.

“In fact, with the CAWS group, I think the community is more behind the program.”

Contreras, who has been booster club president for the past five years, would prefer to win more games, of course, but he is hardly a wreck because of worry.

“I’m frustrated we haven’t done better,” he said, “but it hasn’t become an ugly, negative situation. The booster club is still very, very supportive of us, both financially and morally.

“I think the thing that’s made the situation bearable, where you just don’t go wacky with the losses we’ve had, is the kids. The kids have been great kids. By and large, when the season’s over, it’s disappointing not to make the playoffs, but you’ve kept your sanity.”

Bob Richards, now the varsity coach for Thousand Oaks, cannot understand what all the fuss is over. Westlake has defeated Thousand Oaks two of the past four years; one of the losses was in double overtime.

“I think they have a very solid program,” he said. “I know one thing, that George Contreras is a great coach, and he runs a top-notch program. I don’t see anything down over there.”

Westlake, teetering on the edge of another mediocre season, is 2-2 entering Friday night’s game against Simi Valley. But don’t feel too badly should the Warriors lose. It could be the loss Contreras is looking for.

The one that pushes Westlake over the edge--again.