MELLOWING : McKnight Has Learned How to Enjoy Life While He Piles Up Victories at Mater Dei

Gary McKnight, the Empire Builder, stands with his hands thrust in the pockets of his gray trousers surveying his latest masterpiece.

It’s nearly 8 o’clock on a Wednesday evening and 18 boys clad in the red-and-white colors of Mater Dei High School shoot layups inside the gym at Orange Coast College.

McKnight, dressed in a brilliant red sweater with “M.D. basketball” emblazoned over his heart, is stationed near the end of the Mater Dei bench.

At 36 years of age, McKnight is a portrait of success. He’s a 5-foot 10-inch, chubby genius of a basketball coach, having transformed a very good Mater Dei program into a juggernaut, the likes of which has never been seen in the Southern Section.

He has won five Southern Section and Angelus League championships and a state championship in his six seasons at Mater Dei.

To date, McKnight has a 184-17 record, including 16-2 this season. In Angelus League play, the Monarchs are 59-2. Despite a 21-8 record (McKnight’s worst) and losing the league title to Bishop Amat last season, McKnight rallied the Monarchs to a fourth consecutive 5-A championship. He’s the only coach in the 76-year history of the Southern Section to win four titles in a row.

McKnight has turned out more top-flight players than any other coach in Orange County. He has sent players to such high-profile colleges as California, Brigham Young, Kentucky, Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine and Syracuse.

Under McKnight, the Mater Dei basketball program has become nationally ranked and recognized. The Monarchs have played against some of the country’s top high school teams in tournaments in Arkansas, Cincinnati and Atlantic City, N.J., in recent seasons.

McKnight, his wife, Judy, and their young sons, Bryan, Clay, Geoffrey and Matthew live in a spacious two-story home in Mission Viejo. The McKnights have two basketball hoops in the backyard.

All is bliss for McKnight these days.

It hasn’t always been that way, though. There were times in the early days at Mater Dei that McKnight was miserable. The funny thing was that the unhappiness was directly tied to winning.

As Mater Dei won, the accusations and innuendo flew at McKnight and the school:

--Mater Dei recruits its players, and that’s why the Monarchs are so good.

--McKnight keeps his star players in lopsided games just so they can pad their scoring averages.

--All McKnight cares about is winning, regardless of the consequences.

McKnight, who was 29 when he got the Mater Dei job, his first head coaching position, now admits he made mistakes in those first seasons.

In his zeal to make Mater Dei a powerhouse, his teams often won games by 40 or 50 points, when he could have given his reserves more playing time and still won by 20.

Mater Dei won its first Southern Section championship in his first season, its second 2 years later.

But after three heady seasons chock full of victories, McKnight found himself with few friends and zero respect among his peers.

At that point, he knew he had to make a peace offering. He knew he had to mature.

“My problem was I was 29 at the time,” McKnight said. “I was young and heading the most powerful athletic program in Orange County in the largest Catholic high school west of Chicago.”

McKnight knew how to win, there was never any question of that. He just needed to know how to handle winning more gracefully.

He has since learned that sometimes it pays to be a nice guy, to show a little compassion for the other team, to be humble in victory, to be graceful in defeat.

McKnight has mellowed and matured a bit as time has gone on. He said he has gone out of his way to make friends with other coaches.

And because he has, he has taken his rightful place as one of the most respected coaches in the Southern Section, as well as nationally.

“I personally admire and look up to the man,” Bishop Amat Coach Alex Acosta said. “I just hope my program can be as successful as his some day.”

THE WONDER YEARS

There was no doubt in Tony Sisca’s mind that Gary McKnight would be a success.

Sisca coached varsity baseball at San Clemente High School when McKnight was a hard-nosed sophomore catcher trying to impress in 1969.

“You could see he wanted to learn as much as he could about the game,” said Sisca, a government and economics teacher at San Clemente. “I thought he was very, very serious. I remember remarking that I hope this kid makes our team because he’s so serious.

“When he took batting practice, he didn’t joke around. He tried to hit the ball hard every time and was deeply disappointed if he didn’t.”

McKnight made the varsity that season, but an injury limited his playing time. He also played varsity football.

But when it came to basketball, McKnight was a washout. He was cut from the junior varsity.

“He was a good kid, but baseball was his best sport,” said Stan DeMaggio, former San Clemente basketball coach.

McKnight stayed with baseball and played two seasons at Saddleback College, under Coach Marshall Adair. But by then, McKnight knew he wanted to be a coach.

“My dad said do what you want to do,” McKnight said. “He was a postman for 28 years and he was miserable. So I went the coaching route.”

McKnight’s interest in coaching began as a junior in high school. He coached baseball, basketball and football in the youth leagues in San Clemente. He moved on to coach traveling all-star youth basketball teams, something he continued to do until he took the Mater Dei job in 1982.

In 1973, DeMaggio hired McKnight as the freshman coach and varsity assistant. McKnight jumped at the chance, though it wasn’t everything he expected it to be.

“Actually, I started working for him as a volunteer the year before,” McKnight said. “All I did was take the last five down to the other end of the court and teach them the other team’s offense.”

DeMaggio, who now coaches the girls’ basketball team at Capistrano Valley, quit in 1976 and McKnight, newly graduated from Cal State Fullerton, hooked on as an assistant to Bill Mulligan at Saddleback College. McKnight had coached Mulligan’s son, Brian, on the freshman team at San Clemente.

“I first saw him when my sons were playing on a Riverside traveling team,” said Mulligan, now at UC Irvine. “There was this little fat guy coaching Mission Viejo. And they were beating everybody by 50 points. My first reaction was not to like the guy.”

That changed as Mulligan got to know McKnight.

“The guy can coach,” Mulligan said. “Above all, he can coach.

“He helped us for a couple of months, and then I helped him get the job at Ocean View.”

Mulligan introduced McKnight to Jim Harris, who had just been named the coach at a new high school in Huntington Beach called Ocean View.

“I must have called Harris seven or eight times trying to get an appointment to see him,” McKnight said. “I thought this guy doesn’t want to hire me.”

Said Harris: “He tells me now that he was scared to death of the interview.”

Harris had met McKnight a few years earlier when McKnight was coaching a traveling all-star team that played a game at Ocean View.

“He was very quiet, very gentlemanly and very young,” said Harris, who officiated the game.

Harris remains McKnight’s closest friend. Their families take summer vacations together and make a point of attending the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Final Four each season.

It was at Ocean View that McKnight got a taste of winning and winning big on the high school level.

“Gary was immediately ready to win,” Harris said. “He’s demanding, like most great coaches.”

He coached the freshman and junior varsity teams to a combined 82-11 record and won a league championship in each of his four seasons.

In 1981, McKnight, who taught science at Ocean View, was laid off by the Huntington Beach Union High School District and a subsequent job search yielded a teaching position at Mater Dei. He continued to coach at Ocean View and was one of the finalists for a vacancy as the Seahawks’ varsity baseball coach.

He didn’t get the job--”It’s funny how things work out,” he said--and 2 months later, he was named to succeed Bill Alexander, who had been asked to resign, as the Mater Dei varsity coach.

McKnight came to Mater Dei with no varsity coaching experience. But with Adair, Harris and Mulligan as his mentors and a gymnasium full of talented players awaiting him, he was seemingly headed straight to the big time.

THE BLUNDER YEARS

“I thought, ‘Is this how easy it is?’ ” McKnight said of his first few seasons at Mater Dei.

The answer appeared to be a resounding yes.

McKnight had Tom Lewis (now at Pepperdine), Mike Mitchell (Brigham Young), Matt Beeuwsaert (California) and Chris Jackson (UC Riverside) in those early seasons. The Monarchs clobbered everyone in sight.

His first season, Mater Dei was 29-3 and won the 4-A title--then the large school division. In his second, the Monarchs were 28-2 and were the 4-A runner-up.

But at a time when Mater Dei was bringing new-found respect to Orange County high school basketball, McKnight was a lonely man. At a time when he should have been hailed for his efforts, he was assailed for being victory-hungry.

Other coaches despised him for his tactics: for allegedly recruiting Lewis and Mitchell (though it has never been proven), for running up scores, for keeping the starters in long after games had been decided to pad his stars’ statistics.

And they hated him for winning.

“It’s hard not to have a little arrogance when you win all the time,” said Mark Ramstack, last season’s point guard. “A lot of that comes from people’s perception because you win. A lot of people judge you because you win.”

As Mater Dei continued to win, McKnight continued to lose friends.

“He called me at that time, and said, ‘You’re the only friend I’ve got,’ ” Harris said.

“There were a lot of pressures and mistakes,” McKnight said. “We ran up a lot of scores. We had a lot of false values, it seems now as the years have passed.”

Former Dana Hills Coach Steve Thornton was particularly critical.

“McKnight says that Mater Dei is great for Orange County basketball,” Thornton was quoted as saying in a 1984 Times story on the ethics of the Monarch basketball program. “I think it’s terrible for Orange County basketball myself. It makes a mockery of what high school sports is supposed to be.”

Countered McKnight in the same article:

“I think it comes with winning. It’s part of the territory. We’re 51-4 in 2 years. I wonder if some of these people would be upset if we were 4-51. If we need to have a mediocre program for me to have some these people who are jealous as my friends, I guess I won’t have them as friends.”

Looking back, McKnight said he could have been a great deal more diplomatic.

“I don’t think I had the right attitude,” McKnight said. “I don’t think I handled some things very well then. I didn’t have the maturity at the time. It bothered me that coaches in the county didn’t like me. That I was alienating them.

“There was a big change that third season. I took a step back and tried to sit down and talk with other coaches. Since then it’s been so much better.”

THE YEARS AHEAD

Clay McKnight, 12, jogged out to the backyard, scooped up one of what seemed to be 40 basketballs lying about, took a couple of dribbles and unloaded a two-handed jam on one of the two hoops. This one is only 7 feet off the ground, but it was still an impressive show of skill.

Marv Marinovich built it for his son, Todd, a former Capistrano Valley and Mater Dei football quarterback and basketball player, now at USC. He passed it on to McKnight when Todd outgrew it.

The other basket is the regulation, 10 feet. The pole is set into a 5-foot deep block of cement to ensure it weathers jamming by McKnight’s other kids--the varsity players at Mater Dei.

Clay is quickly followed by Bryan, 8, Geoffrey, 7. Matthew, 5, lags behind.

“He only looks like an angel,” Judy McKnight said rolling her eyes.

Each boy had a ball in hand, dribbling and shooting in a mini-Monarch shoot around.

Despite the pounding of the basketballs, it’s an idyllic scene.

The McKnight family is highly visible at every Mater Dei game. Judy stands with Gary for a few moments in front of the bench before the game starts. After a few quiet words and a peck on the cheek, she’s off to take her seat in the stands. The McKnight children are ballboys.

But to get the full effect, to find McKnight at his happiest you have to come here, to see him and his family at home.

“My family gets cheated,” McKnight said. “Especially during the season. It would be nice if my home was closer to school. My sons could come to practice every day.

“It’s kind of fun. They’re starting to understand now what dad does. I’m looking forward to the day Clay is a freshman. It’s not just the basketball, but riding to school together in the mornings.”

His devotion to family life is one of the reasons McKnight said he would not accept a college assistant coaching position. Though it seems to be the next logical step in McKnight’s rising career, he says he can’t bear the thought of flying around the country scouting and visiting recruits without the company of his family.

Nor can he fathom the idea of knocking down doors to get a head coaching position at a college.

“I’ve been offered several assistant jobs, usually it’s to nail a recruit,” McKnight said. “I’m very content. I’m very happy at Mater Dei.”

McKNIGHT’S RECORD AT MATER DEI

YEAR RECORD LEAGUE PLAYOFFS 87-88 21-8 Runner-up 5-A champion, lost in first round state Division I 86-87 31-1 Champion 5-A champion, state Division I champion 85-86 30-1 Champion 5-A champion, state Division I semifinalist 84-85 29-0 Champion 5-A champion* 83-84 28-2 Champion 4-A runner-up 82-83 29-3 Champion 4-A champion, lost second round state tournament

*Southern Section did not participate in state tournament in 1984-85.

Mater Dei is 16-2 going into tonight’s game against Bishop Montgomery.