The Preps : Burton Weighs In With a Successful First Season as Fullerton’s Coach

Most high school coaches judge success by wins and losses, league titles and playoff berths.

Chris Burton?

“I’ve lost 14 pounds since November.”

It’s been a successful season.

“It seems the less weight I lose, the more successful the season has been,” said Burton, as he drained a protein drink, which he hopes will help slow his annual weight loss.

At 23, Burton of Fullerton High School is the youngest high school varsity basketball coach in Orange County.

So young, that more than one referee has approached him before a game and asked, “Where’s your coach, son?”

Burton, who started the season at 157 pounds, looks as if he just walked off the set of “Happy Days.” But the bottom line is, this guy can coach.

In four previous seasons, all with lower-level teams, Burton had a record of 72-22. He won a freshman league championship at Ocean View and two at Rolling Hills.

The move to the varsity level this season has been a snap. The Indians are 16-6 and won 16 of their final 19 regular-season games to finish tied for the Freeway League title with Sunny Hills. They will be at home tonight to play Pioneer (12-10) in the first round of the Southern Section 4-A playoffs.

Burton runs a program that is sustained by positive energy. The players feed off him, and in turn feed on opposing teams.

“I’m very much a positive person,” Burton said. “I want every kid on the team to feel special. They go out and do the work, I just give them a positive direction.”

Positive direction, as in, “Ain’t no mountain high enough,” or deficit too great. Fullerton has rallied to win five games after trailing by 20, 11, 14, 16 and 19 points.

Against La Habra, Fullerton was down 21-2 after the first quarter. The Indians were 0 for 13 from the field and didn’t even score until the final 22 seconds of the quarter.

In that situation, most teams might call it a day. Not a team coached by Burton, though.

Fullerton ended up winning, 73-71.

“He’s like a pied piper,” Ocean View Coach Jim Harris said. “I think kids would follow him to Mt. Whitney and back if he asked.”

Burton applied for the job at Fullerton and, despite his age, fully expected to be hired. He had letters of recommendations from several high school coaches and one college coach.

But it was his sharp wit that made the difference.

During the interview, Greg Bice, Fullerton’s assistant superintendent for personnel, asked him about his age.

“Greg said, ‘We’ve interviewed older and more experienced coaches, who have a track record, why should we take a chance on you?’ ” said Dr. Sally Gobar, Fullerton’s principal.

“Chris’ reply was classic, he said: ‘I’m already a varsity coach, I just don’t have a team.’ That comment, on top of everything else we knew about him, clinched it.”

Said Burton: “They called me on a Friday at 4:52 (p.m.) to offer me the job. I accepted at 4:53.”

Burton, who teaches comparative global studies at Fullerton, still had to convince people at Fullerton that he was the varsity coach, not a player. The players believed him from the first practice when he presented them with a student-athlete handbook. A book Burton designed.

The faculty? Well . . . it took some time.

On his first day, Burton was painting the team locker room when Bob Van Voorhis, the Indians’ basketball coach from 1963-83, walked in.

Said Burton: “He asked me, ‘Do you like your new coach?’ I said yes, he was a great guy, who really knows the game, a genius really. Bob said, ‘Well tell him to stop by my class to say hello.’ ”

Said Van Voorhis: “What can I say? He looks 16 years old. I was very embarrassed.”

But every victory ages Burton a little, at least in the eyes of his peers.

Not that it matters to Burton, who is just doing what he has always wanted to do.

“I sleep about four hours a night and I’m loving every minute,” Burton said. “The high school level is where I belong.”

Burton has wanted to coach basketball for as long as he can remember.

In the fourth grade, he was assigned to write an essay on his life’s ambition. Burton selected coaching as his life’s goal and has stuck to it.

Burton was a starter on the San Marino varsity from 1981-83. He averaged 17 points per game as a senior, although he missed much of his team’s Rio Hondo League games because of a stress fracture in his foot.

Despite Burton’s drive to be a coach, he still found it hard to give up playing. He went to St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., and tried to make the team as a walk-on.

He couldn’t. But Coach Bill Oates allowed Burton to remain as the team manager/practice player.

“I would work out with the team during practice, I just didn’t suit up for games,” Burton said. “It would have been too much of an ego-crusher to just have my career end. This gave me a chance to ease out of it.”

At the end of the season, Burton decided to leave St. Mary’s.

“I wanted to be a coach, so I could either take care of the towels for three more years or get started with what I wanted to do with my life,” he said.

Burton enrolled at USC and began looking for a job--any job--as a coach. He was introduced to Harris by Lee Jackson, who had been an assistant at San Marino.

Harris took an immediate liking to the 19-year-old Burton and hired him as the freshman coach. The Seahawks went 22-1 that season and Burton lost 14 pounds.

“I could see right away that he would make a great freshman coach,” Harris said. “But there were a lot of times when he got mistaken for one of the freshman players.”

However, not only did Burton look like a freshman, he acted it sometimes.

He had a knack for picking up technical fouls, which continued when he left Ocean View to take the freshman job at Rolling Hills.

His first season, Rolling Hills went 17-5 and Burton lost 14 pounds.

However, he also collected 10 technical fouls.

“I wouldn’t get them for saying anything rude or cussing, nothing like that,” Burton said. “I would get them for one-liners.”

One time, Burton tried to send one of his players into the game as a substitute--for the referee.

“I told the kid to go in and tell the ref to give him the whistle, that he was replacing him,” Burton said.

But Burton isn’t proud of his antics, although he feels that it was part of his growing process as a coach. After all, he was only 20.

“It was a sign of my immaturity,” he said.

Cliff Warren, the Rolling Hills varsity coach, finally called Burton in for a little chat.

“He told me I was too positive a person to have people saying negative things about me,” Burton said. “It was really tough for him to talk to about it, but he said I had to calm down or I couldn’t coach at Rolling Hills anymore.”

Burton calmed down and has had only four technicals in the past three seasons.

His 1986-87 team was 17-7 and Burton lost 16 pounds.

Warren, who returned to coaching in 1985 after 20 years, became a mentor to Burton during his two seasons at Rolling Hills. Besides coaching the freshmen, Burton assisted with the varsity.

After games he would go over to Warren’s house and watch the game film, sometimes until the wee hours of the morning. Burton also ran the summer-league program and did most of the paper work.

“I think Chris worked a lot more with me than I did with him,” Warren said. “I hadn’t been in coaching for 20 years, so basketball was newer to me than it was to Chris. My ideas were 20 years old.

“Chris even designed a condition program for us that we still use. Although, I don’t really understand it.”

Said Burton: “He doesn’t. Every September, I get a call from Cliff to explain (the program) all over again.”

After graduating from USC in 1987, Burton was a student teacher at University, where he also coached the junior varsity and assisted with the varsity.

The junior varsity finished 16-9, but didn’t win the league title. Burton lost 18 pounds.

Although he was coaching at University, he spent a lot of time with Jackson, who was an assistant coach for Mater Dei.

Like with Warren, Burton would stay up nights analyzing game films with Jackson.

“Cliff Warren taught me about loving the game and being tough, Lee taught me the X’s and O’s of basketball,” Burton said. “Those are the two guys who made me what I am today.”

A little thinner and very successful.