Fountain Valley High Names Billingsley Basketball Coach

Gordon Billingsley, an assistant coach at Fountain Valley High School for 11 years, has been named the school’s varsity basketball coach. He succeeds Dave Brown, who resigned three weeks ago.

Billingsley, 38, has coached on the freshman, sophomore and junior varsity levels and was a varsity assistant under Brown for two seasons. He began coaching the Barons’ freshman team in the 1978-79 season and won four Sunset League titles in five seasons.

He coached the school’s sophomore team in the 1983-84 season and finished second in the league. He then moved up to the junior varsity level the next year, winning two league titles in three seasons.

“I feel a little pressure replacing a highly successful coach like Dave Brown, but I also feel I’m ready,” Billingsley said. “Dave ran an overall excellent program that was successful from the freshman to varsity level, so I don’t plan on changing much.

“You’ll probably see us use a little more man-to-man defense as opposed to Dave’s matchup zone, but other than that, why change?”

Among the standout players Billingsley coached on the lower levels at Fountain Valley were Rolf Jacobs, Brent Martin, Simon Thomas and Tom Weaver. Fountain Valley will have three returning starters in Billingsley’s first year as varsity coach, including all-league center Mike Merli.

Billingsley played basketball at Mt. San Antonio College and Azusa Pacific and has been teaching mathematics at Fountain Valley since 1978.

Brown resigned to become varsity basketball coach and athletic director at Laguna Hills. Brown won 350 games and seven Sunset League championships, advancing to the Southern Section playoffs 16 times in 21 years.