Spiker Coach Has Way of Serving Surprises

In 1973, before sanctioned high school volleyball, Inglewood High physical education teachers Gene Popko and Pete Fields went looking for teams to participate in their boys intramural leagues.

They were finding it increasingly difficult to schedule matches. But they knew volleyball, particularly the beach variety, was popular in the coastal communities. So they mailed letters to 18 schools in the Southland and waited to see how high the interest ran.

They figured on good responses from beach schools such as Palisades and Santa Monica High and knew that more than a few Orange County schools would get involved.

But they didn’t figure on Mike Cook, a Serra High teacher and a proficient and enthusiastic beach volleyball player who had been swatting balls over nets stuck in Manhattan Beach sand for several years.

Cook was teaching at Gardena’s Serra High during the week and digging in on the beach volleyball courts on weekends. And he was willing to share some of his experience, so he showed up at the first meeting.

“We were a little surprised when Serra responded and then came up with a pretty good team,” said Popko, who along with 11 interested parties formed the Southern California High School Volleyball Assn. in his living room that evening. “But you could tell even then that he was a real worker, and he turned out to be my right-hand man in putting this thing together.”

That evening signified the beginning of a long relationship between Cook and California boys high school volleyball.

Cook coached boys volleyball at Serra, his alma mater, until 1980 when he moved to Mira Costa. At Serra his teams were competitive, and then he moved to Mira Costa High. The Mustangs became a force and have been one of the South Bay’s strongest teams.

Now in his 10th season, Cook guided Mira Costa to a CIF championship in 1984, a second-place finish in 1987 and seven league titles. The worst the Mustangs have man aged during Cook’s tenure was two second-place finishes, and none have missed the playoffs.

This year things look even better for Mira Costa. The 4-A Division’s No. 1 team raised its record to 9-0 overall and 7-0 in Ocean League play with a victory over South Torrance on Tuesday.

Santa Monica has since moved into the Bay League and Mira Costa figures to be tested best by North High this season.

“We traded one good opponent for another good opponent,” Cook said earlier this season.

The Mustangs return four starters from last year’s 14-6 team that reached the second round of the 4-A playoffs: setter Jason Stimpfig, outside hitters Scott Stoops and Kevin Burd and middle blocker Zach Small.

Mira Costa has seven players 6-4 or taller, and competition for playing time has been fierce. David Swatik, Terrence Stevens, Greg Shankle, Brett Coordt, Pat Ivie, Mike Ashenfelter and Canyon Ceman have competed for court time.

It’s a dilemma Cook does not mind.

“We have 11 talented kids who have a chance to play major-college volleyball,” said Cook, 46, whose team has been ranked No. 1 in 4-A since defeating Loyola in the season opener. “We throw all kinds of different lineups at our opponents, and there are no kids on the team that we rely on exclusively. I think that makes it difficult to play us.”

He added: “Over the years you take what you get and try to do the best with it. And it’s kind of rare that we have this kind of talent. I’ve just had to alternate all of them in and out of the game.”

Mira Costa, because of its proximity to the beach courts, gets quality players. About 50 are involved in volleyball on the frosh-soph, JV or varsity levels.

But that energy must somehow be bridled, bad habits must be broken and proper techniques must be taught.

Sometimes it doesn’t happen.

Cook has been more successful than most in accomplishing these objectives. But his philosophy on those issues is a little different than one would expect from a winning coach. He’s not that concerned with teaching his players the proper way, as long as they’re proficient with what they’ve got.

“We’re lucky because we live in a beach community where kids are swatting volleyballs by the time they’re 5,” he said. “They come in with good skills, but a lot of them do things differently: They either pass weird or spike in a way that we call goofy-footed . Sometimes we try to change that and teach them the right way, but sometimes you just screw them up.

“Occasionally you find someone who’s terrible when they do it the right way, and then it’s worse to change them.”

Cook started playing beach volleyball when he was 7 and continued, though not interscholastically, at USC. Most weekends you could find him at the Marine Street courts in Manhattan Beach.

He said volleyball, despite the recent interest fostered by the successes of American teams in Olympic play, remains a beach game. According to Cook, that’s where the good players learn the game.

Some learn better than others, including pro beach volleyball players Brent Frohoff and Scott Ayakatubby, Mira Costa graduates who were all-CIF selections when they played for Cook in 1981 and 1982. Cook calls them the young lions on the tour.

“He’s been a friend ever since I’ve known him,” said Frohoff, who will be playing in doubles competition with Olympian Karch Kiraly this weekend in Phoenix.

“He’s a great organizer. We had a lot of talent and he distributed it pretty evenly. Everybody played for the team and there were no real cliques, and you’ve got to say he had a lot to do with that because he was loose but firm.”

Popko says there’s more to Cook’s style than teaching his players what he’s picked up playing at Marine Street. He says it’s something intangible:

“He’s an excellent coach because he gets along with kids well. He understands them, they respond to him and they don’t quit on him.

“He keeps the kids together during the summer and, even now, you’ll be at a tournament on the beach and you’ll see Mike down there.

“Not only do they not quit on him, they come back to help him because he gets them interested in continuing their sport.”

After the first year of the SCHSVA, 45 more teams joined, and in 1975 the CIF took over and sanctioned the sport.

At this point, the CIF championship is the end of the road--it’s as far as a team can advance--but Cook said it may not be long before there is a state championship in volleyball, even though he’s not holding his breath.

Standing in the way is Title IX, a California law that dictates that for every boys championship there must be a girls counterpart.

“It’s all politics,” Cook said, “and all politics is disappointing. It keeps things from growing the way they should grow.”

So he’ll content himself with the beach volleyball tournaments he sponsors each weekend at Marine Street. This Saturday he’s involved with a boys high-school tournament and men’s AA play. Popko will sponsor one on the weekend of April 29.

Volleyball players, it seems, never give up their sport. They just take it to another level. Or sponsor tournaments.

And Cook is just as happy with the game today as in 1973 when he established himself as one of the sport’s founding fathers on the high school level.

He doesn’t see himself as a volleyball pioneer, although that’s what Papko calls him.

“It’s always been my favorite, probably because I was decently proficient at it,” Cook said. “But mostly, I just never got tired of it.”