Mira Costa Won Only Once Last Year : Strong Coach Takes Over Weak Program

Larry Petrill, the new football coach at Mira Costa High, was arranging an interview on the phone. The reporter asked how Petrill could be identified on the practice field.

“Oh, you’ll know who I am,” Petrill said.

By the end of the season, Petrill hopes everyone will know who he is. He takes over a Mustang football program that won one game last year, only three the year before and has not appeared in the playoffs since 1980. Last year’s coach, Dave Brown, lasted only five months.

Petrill is not discouraged. “I think we can compete for a playoff spot this year,” the 44-year-old coach said. To make the playoffs, the Mustangs have to finish at least third in the tough Ocean League, where the top teams are West Torrance, North Torrance and Morningside.

A playoff appearance might shock South Bay football fans, but not Petrill, or those who know him.

Redondo Head Coach Les Congelliere has no doubts about Mira Costa’s new mentor. “He’s an excellent coach, “ Congelliere said. “I was a freshman at Morningside High when he was a senior, I idolized him from that point on. He was a super football player and now he’s a super coach.”

After a recent practice, Petrill said:”We can compete if the following things happen: we, as a coaching staff, don’t screw up the kids; if we stabilize our quarterback situation--we have to have confidence in the guy who’s running the ship, and if we avoid injuries.”

Petrill said it is important that the coaches bring the players through adversity. “These kids have had the rug pulled out from under them.”

Staying healthy may be the most important factor for the Mustangs. Of 40 players on the roster, nine were not suited up for the team’s fourth day in pads. Petrill says most are healthy now and will be ready for Friday night’s opener against El Segundo. One, all-league running back Mike Clairmont, has recovered and performed well in scrimmages, Petrill said.

Offensive guard Bret Fletcher, who has been on the varsity roster for two years but has not completed a season due to knee injuries, is back from surgery and appears ready to finally fulfill his potential.

In addition to healthy bodies, the Mustangs need to show more grit. “They looked flat all the time last year,” one observer said. “It was as if the game was over before the coin toss.”

If the Mustangs take on the personality of their coach, they will be anything but flat. The gray-haired yet youthful Petrill runs around the Mira Costa practice field urging his players to pay attention and his assistant coaches to conduct the correct drill.

“Come on, Kenny Shibata!” he yelled at one of his defensive backs. “I know you can do what I tell you!” Petrill then back-pedaled with Shibata while shouting to his assistants: “Coaches, we should be on inside run!”

When discussing man-to-man defense, Petrill demonstrated his point by lining up against a receiver and daring him to go inside.

Though he says he is a gardener, counselor and janitor as well as a coach, he never seems to tire of his work.

Petrill runs his practices like a train schedule: organized and on paper.

“We have a lot more discipline this year,” offensive lineman and all-star candidate Paul Berdnick said. “Everything is more organized. Last year practices were longer, but this year we get more done in less time.”

Said Fletcher: “Coach Petrill is more exciting. We’re more into football this year; we feel we have a better chance (of winning).”

Petrill looks forward to his first head coaching job. Raised in Inglewood, he attended Serra and Morningside high schools, where he was an offensive lineman and defensive tackle. From there, he went to El Camino College, where his life turned around, he said.

“I wasn’t a sweetheart of a kid,” Petrill said, almost apologetically. “But when I got to El Camino, Bill Vincent and Don Jurk (his football coaches there) turned me around, they gave me some direction.”

After El Camino, Petrill “was lucky enough” to be offered a scholarship to USC, where he became a starting defensive tackle for John McKay’s Trojans. He played in the Rose Bowl loss to Bob Griese and the Purdue Boilermakers in 1967. That same year he graduated and contemplated professional football but realized as a 220-pound lineman he was “a little man playing a big man’s game.”

After earning a master’s degree in physical education from USC, Petrill began coaching at Loyola High, then at Aviation from 1969 through ‘75, then at El Camino as a defensive coordinator until 1984.

“Then I made a poor, poor, poor decision,” Petrill says. He went north to San Jose State to become the defensive back coach. There he saw the Spartan program go from the “low end of the football spectrum to the California Bowl.”

Though he would not elaborate much on his experience at San Jose State, Petrill said he was disenchanted with the whole experience of football at a four-year college. “I saw the whole spectrum, and I said, ‘This is not the way I want to coach. I can’t go on compromising myself in the approach of how you teach kids.” He lasted two years at San Jose, resigning in the spring of ’87.

For the next two years, Petrill became, in his words, “Mr. Mom.” He stayed home with his children in Northern California until he was hired by Mira Costa in June. The move back south has caused non-stop confusion in the Petrill household, but the Mira Costa football program seems to be taking shape.

The strength of the team is the offensive line. In addition to the 6-4, 220-pound Berdnick, Mira Costa returns Mark Toumajian (6-0, 240) at center and guard Tom Rodriguez. “They are all excellent high school linemen,” Petrill said.

Along with Clairmont, who rushed for more than 800 yards, junior Simi Fonua returns at running back. Junior quarterback Jeff Diussa will battle senior Damon Galindo for the quarterback job.

For the season, the team has adopted the motto STEP-UP, an acronym thought of by Petrill to represent what he believes are the qualities of a good football player: Self-respect, team, enthusiasm, poise, unrelenting and pride.

The motto is emblazoned on the back of the team’s T-shirts, but if it’s too long for opponents to remember, they can just heed what Petrill says: “We’re gonna knock some people down.”