BACK IN THE ACTION : Nash Rivera Brings His Wit and Wisdom to Basketball Courts as Santa Ana Coach

Anastacio (Nash) Rivera, the new varsity boys’ basketball coach at Santa Ana High School, is doing what he does best--teaching. He does it in the classroom, on the basketball court, any place will do, and anyone can be a pupil . . . even a reporter.

“Look at this, a perfectly good pen that somebody threw away,” Rivera said, striding around the new campus.

“All you have to do is bend down and pick it up. Kids don’t bend down enough anymore,” he said, pulling out a piece of paper to test the pen. “This will be good for marking papers, because I have to grade a bunch of papers.”

He pocketed the pen.

Rivera is part basketball ambassador, part philosopher--a 54-year-old, lean, 5-foot-10 package of energy and motivational phrases he bounces around like basketballs.

After five years as an assistant to UCLA women’s basketball Coach Billie Moore, Rivera says he has “recharged his batteries” for high school coaching and returned to Orange County. He is one of the hot topics at summer basketball leagues and tournaments among those old enough to have experienced his teams first-hand in the 1970s.

“A lot of the guys know Nash is back,” Westminster Coach Dick Katz said. “A lot of the younger coaches don’t know what Nash did at El Dorado because that was 15 years ago. A lot of those guys, back then they were 15. I don’t think the name Nash Rivera has the same meaning as it does to a coach of my (generation).”

What Rivera did was win Southern Section 2-A titles at El Dorado in 1974 and 1975. El Dorado won five Orange League titles, made the playoffs nine times and had a 206-145 record Rivera’s 14 seasons.

He then coached the girls’ team at El Dorado for three years, taking them to Empire League title in 1983.

During the ‘70s, Katz, then in his early 30s, was a sophomore coach at Orange and a junior varsity coach under Bob Schermerhorn at Canyon when Rivera was pushing the up-tempo game at El Dorado.

“It was more of an admiration thing . . . myself, an aspiring varsity coach, wanting to learn from the masters per se and Nash was one of them,” said Katz, who has been Westminster’s coach the past six years.

What impressed Katz, he said, was the unselfishness of Rivera’s players and the pressing style. “His teams back then did not have the super-dominant one player,” he said. “They were never the kinds of teams you would shake and shiver to go in and play because of their athletic ability, but they were great teams . . . super disciplined.

“The players always seemed to know their roles. They played full-court pressing and I love that. They could really run the break and just did a lot of smart basketball things on the floor.

“They were an excellent program, the finest in Southern California. Nash’s kids would come in with blazers and cropped hair and sit in the bleachers as a team, show pride and class. The moment they walked in the gym, you knew they were a team to be reckoned with both on and off the floor.”

Schermerhorn, 46, was Canyon’s varsity coach for five seasons. He competed against Rivera’s teams when both schools were in the Orange League. “We used to have some real wars,” he said.

“His teams would press after every basket. Offensively, they would run and shoot. That was a great league in those years. Gene Lloyd at Brea, Tex Wallace at La Habra. We all kind of played the same way, but Nash was kind of a step above all of us.”

Schermerhorn will coach at Riverside College this year. He finished last season as interim coach at Arizona State, leading the Sun Devils to a victory over UCLA.

After that game, a reporter asked if it was the biggest victory of his career.

“I told her when I was at Canyon High School one year and we beat El Dorado at El Dorado and the kids threw us in the swimming pool,” Schermerhorn said. “That was as big a win as beating UCLA this year to me.”

Tom Danley, who coached against Rivera for five years while at Anaheim High School, calls Rivera’s return to the county exciting.

“Nash was one of the forerunners and one of the outstanding coaches of the ‘60s and ‘70s and probably will be well into the 90s,” Danley said.

Kevin Heenan played on Rivera’s championship teams at El Dorado. He went on to play at Cal State Fullerton and was drafted by the Golden State Warriors, but decided to play for Athletes In Action.

Of all his coaches, he said he enjoyed playing for Rivera most.

“Thinking back over all the years--playing for all the coaches I’ve played for and being in real estate investment today--the things that Rivera taught me have stuck with me the most of anybody. He used to say, ‘Hard work and you can always hustle.’ “If you made a mistake it was like, it’s over with. Worry about correcting it later, but play your game now. That was the big thing.”

Who is this man who has earned the respect and admiration his players, his peers and John Wooden, UCLA’s legendary former coach? Wooden sent Santa Ana Athletic Director Bill Ross a hand-written letter recommending Rivera.

Rivera was an all-state guard in Raton, N.M., where he was born in 1935. After graduating from high school in 1953, he spent four years in the Air Force, mostly at March Air Force Base in Riverside County.

He played for the base team and earned a grant to play at Chapman College, where he was team captain in his senior year, 1961. He graduated with a degree in physical education, spent a year coaching junior high school sports in Fullerton before going to Mater Dei, where he was the varsity basketball coach for three seasons.

He lives in Anaheim with his wife, Betty, and daughters, Elizabeth, 19, and Ann Marie, 13.

He is the kind of coach who believes winning is a by-product of building character and self-esteem. He is a tireless optimist, a pied piper of basketball who instead of creating followers with music, does it with motivational phrases--sometimes corny, sometimes cliched, often original and always catchy.

Billie Moore said she hated to see Rivera leave UCLA, but understood his desire to run his own program.

“When you think of Nash from a player’s standpoint,” Moore said, “not just from teaching and enthusiasm, what you think of is he always has so many motivational little sayings,” Moore said. “(That) and the sense of humor he has, if you have been around him very much, that is something you notice right off and that is what makes him unique.”

Rivera says he has seen how young people respond to repetitive catchy advertisements for fast-food restaurants, so he creates his own and motivates, cajoles, teaches, instructs, chastises, teases and bombards his players with them. It is his method of teaching his players the concepts and philosophies of basketball and life.

A sampling:

If you don’t have time to do it right, when are you going to find time to do it over?

If it’s worth doing, it is worth doing right.

Guts, determination and a bounce pass.

If you ‘ re good, you could be better . If you are better, you can be the best.

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.

You have to play hard and smart. If you’re only playing hard, you’re playing dumb.

“Nash is the coolest coach,” said Althea Ford, a senior at UCLA.

“If you made a stupid mistake and were really angry, he would say something like, ‘Don’t be bitter. Reconsider.’

“This is one of his stupid sayings: We would be at practice and the ball bounces off your head. He would say, ‘That’s the way to use your head, Althea.’

“If there’s a big game or something you’re looking forward to, he would say, ‘Like the monkey said when he got his tail caught in the door, it won’t be long now.’ ”

He got in his best jibes during preseason conditioning, Ford said. Rivera, who is in excellent physical condition, always led the pack during the Bruins’ 3- and 5-mile runs.

“The thing was, he would rub it in,” Ford said. “He would come by and run with you for a little while and say, ‘Are you doing all right? You’re barely running faster than a dead person.’ ”

Rivera coaches because he was born to coach. He is constantly showing, illustrating and demonstrating.

“He is someone who just loves the game of basketball,” Moore said. “I think he is probably happiest when he’s teaching.”

Rivera can’t say enough about how fortunate he feels to have landed a high school coaching job in Orange County.

“In the coaching profession, I think I have the unique opportunity to come in contact with young people,” Rivera said. “I think back to my coaches, the first coach I ever had when I was 12 years old, Coach Nuss. I think of the great influence that my coaches have had on me as coaches and as teachers. I really believe I have a unique opportunity to impart some carry-over values in life to these young people.

“Those of us who choose to coach are unique, especially those of us who stay in it a long time. I think how many individuals have been helped through the vehicle of athletics. It is a great opportunity to teach a lot of things to these young people that are going to help them in the future. I know I have had so many individuals help me along the way.”

One saying stands out in the memories of those who know Rivera: It’s tough to be important but it is more important to be tough.

“By tough, I mean physically strong, being able to cope with changes life is going to bring, being able to cope with failure and cope with success,” Rivera said.

“I do believe we are here for a purpose, a reason. Mine is to touch these people, to help these people, to motivate them, to be a role model for them.”