Cuccia Recommended for Poly Job : Decision on Former Hoover Football Coach Due Next Week

Fred Cuccia, former coach at Hoover and South Pasadena highs, will be recommended for the Poly High football job when school administrators return to work next week, Poly Athletic Director George Tideback said Thursday.

Tideback will make the recommendation to Principal Virginia Holt, who is expected back from vacation Tuesday. The job became vacant when Kevin Kennedy, Poly’s coach for the past three seasons, resigned this week to become an assistant coach at L. A. Southwest College.

“He’s got good credentials and I’m positive he can do a good job,” Tideback said of Cuccia. “He’s been a winner and he’s got experience. With the right help, maybe he can turn things around.”

Poly was 7-21 under Kennedy and has had only three winning seasons in the 1980s, none since 1984. Although Cuccia would inherit a program that has no coaches on staff with the start of two-a-day drills less than three weeks away, he is excited about a new job.

“I’m still in a little shock because I just talked to Tideback last (Wednesday) night,” he said. “But I’m sure it will be a lot of fun. It’s a new adventure and I’m looking forward to it.”

Cuccia, 44, has coached high school football since 1980 but this would be his first job in the City Section. He was head coach at La Puente in 1981-82, at Hoover from ’83 to ’85 and at South Pasadena in ‘86-87. He coached last season at California High in San Ramon in Northern California.

Cuccia’s Hoover and South Pasadena teams qualified for the Southern Section playoffs five consecutive times, but twice his teams were bumped from the playoffs for use of ineligible players. In 1985, Hoover was scheduled to open the playoffs against Simi Valley but learned two days before game day that a reserve who played sparingly was academically ineligible.

Tideback knew of Cuccia’s availability through Fred’s wife Carol, who taught and coached girls’ track at Poly for 10 years. She is a charter member of the City Section Coaches of L. A. Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in recognition of her work as a pioneer in girls’ track.

Cuccia was a running back and defensive back at Cathedral High and Glendale College and played at Utah State for two seasons before he enlisted in the armed services. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam and then joined the Glendale College staff as an assistant in 1972. He served in that capacity the remainder of the decade except for one year when he worked at Notre Dame High.

“If the big if is removed and I get the job at Poly, my big concern is to get a staff together that is going to be well-coordinated,” Cuccia said. “We want to give the kids an opportunity to be successful and reach their full potential. We want to be sound fundamentally, well-organized and in position to win football games.”

Cuccia made no prediction about this season’s won-lost record but joked about the schedule.

“I just hope we don’t schedule Banning and Carson,” he said. “Instead, we want to schedule those eight-man teams like Flintridge Prep.”