Coming of Age : Mater Dei High Coach Finds Winning Isn’t Everything

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 one evening and 18 boys clad in the red-and-white colors of Santa Ana Mater Dei High School shoot layups inside the Orange Coast College gymnasium at Costa Mesa.

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.

After 6 seasons--some filled with controversy--McKnight, 36, 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 at Mater Dei.

McKnight has a 189-17 record, including 21-2 this season. The Monarchs are 64-2 in Angelus League play. 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 straight titles.

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

McKnight, his wife, Judy, and their young sons, Bryan, Clay, Geoffrey and Matthew, live in a spacious 2-story home in Mission Viejo. The McKnights have two basketball hoops in the backyard.

All is bliss for McKnight these days.

But it wasn’t always that way. There were times in his early days at Mater Dei that McKnight was miserable, which was directly tied to winning.

As Mater Dei won, McKnight and the school became the target of accusations and innuendo.

--Mater Dei recruits players, which McKnight denies.

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

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

McKnight, 29 when he was hired at Mater Dei, his first head coaching position, admits he made mistakes.

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 3 heady seasons full of victories, McKnight found himself with few friends and no respect among his peers.

It was then he knew he had to make peace. He knew he had to mature.

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

McKnight knew how to win. He just needed to know how to handle winning more gracefully.

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

McKnight has mellowed and matured as time has passed. He said he has made overtures to make friends with other coaches.

And because he has, he has taken his rightful place as one of the Southern Section’s most respected coaches.

THE WONDER YEARS

Tony Sisca had no doubts that Gary McKnight would be a success.

In 1969, Sisca coached baseball at San Clemente High School when McKnight was a hard-nosed sophomore catcher trying to make an impression.

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

But when it came to basketball, McKnight 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 continued playing baseball at Saddleback College, under the late Marshall Adair. By then, McKnight knew he wanted to be a coach.

McKnight’s interest in coaching began when he was a junior in high school. He coached baseball, basketball and football in San Clemente youth leagues. He graduated 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 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 Capistrano Valley High School girls’ basketball team, quit in 1976 and McKnight, newly graduated from Cal State Fullerton, became 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, UC Irvine’s coach. “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.”

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

Harris had met McKnight a few years earlier when McKnight was coaching a youth 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 year.

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

He coached the freshman and junior varsity teams to a combined 82-11 record and won a league championship in each of his 4 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 was asked to resign, as Mater Dei varsity basketball coach.

McKnight came to Mater Dei with no varsity 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), Matt Beeuwsaert (California) and Chris Jackson (UC Riverside). The Monarchs clobbered their opponents.

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 runners-up.

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

Other coaches despised him for his tactics: for allegedly recruiting Lewis (though it has never been proven), for running up scores, for keeping the starters in long after games were 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 of these people who are jealous as my friends, I guess I won’t have them as friends.”

Now, McKnight said he could have been 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.”

THE YEARS AHEAD

Clay McKnight, 12, jogged out to the backyard, scooped up one of what seemed to be 3 dozen basketballs lying about, took a couple of dribbles and unloaded a two-handed dunk on one of the two hoops. This one is only 7 feet high, but it still was impressive.

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 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.”

With that contentment and happiness, a new Gary McKnight has emerged. The brashness of the angry young McKnight has faded. What remains is simply the most successful coach of the most successful basketball program in the Southern Section.