‘New’ Vollnogle Still Wins : Prep football: Carson coach seeks his 10th City championship tonight against Dorsey.

Carson football Coach Gene Vollnogle says that he has mellowed in his 37 years of coaching. After 298 prep football wins, he says that does not get as up-tight as he used to, and that he is much less hostile toward officials.

At 59, he is the winningest coach in state history. In his last eight seasons, Vollnogle has won four of his nine City Section championships and has an 85-10 record.

If Carson defeats Dorsey in tonight’s City 4-A Division final at 7:30 at El Camino College, it will be Vollnogle’s 10th title, breaking his tie with Jim Blewett of Manual Arts for the most in City history.

But after next season, the man who has known he wanted to be a coach since his football playing days at Fremont High, will be calling it quits. But to the people who know him, that is difficult to imagine.

“When I see it, that’s when I’ll believe it,” said Paul Huebner, who gave Vollnogle his first coaching job at Wilmington Banning in 1953, directing the Pilots’ B team. “He is still a young man and my advice to him would be to coach until he was 65.”

Huebner also gave Vollnogle his first varsity job, naming him co-coach in 1957 to replace Willard (Lefty) Goodhue, and says that Vollnogle deserves all the success he has enjoyed.

“He was a coach who always worked harder than everyone else and always stressed discipline,” said Huebner, retired and living in Santa Barbara. “But, to imagine him being mellow is hard because he had a far way to go.”

Vollnogle won two City titles with Huebner at Banning, but in 1963, when Carson was built to accommodate Banning’s overflow enrollment, he left to coach the Colts and has been there ever since. He won his first City title for Carson in 1966, and in 1971 and ‘72, with Huebner once again his co-coach, the Colts went 24-0, winning consecutive championships.

The legend grew in the late ‘70s when Chris Ferragamo, a former All-City lineman under Vollnogle and Huebner at Banning, started coaching City championship teams at Banning. Losing championship games to his former school and player got him labeled as a coach who couldn’t win the big ones.

“Fans just did not understand that when we played Banning in the finals, we always went for the win because the City does not play overtime,” said Vollnogle, whose car windows once were smashed after a loss to Banning. “Three times we went for two-point conversions instead of a tie late in the game, and lost.”

Stories abound on Vollnogle the disciplinarian. “I am very stubborn and in the early days, I would have a team practicing at night until at least the fourth star could be seen,” Vollnogle said. “Now, I have found out that you get better results with less time spent.”

This season, Colt practices never lasted longer than two hours.

In 1982, thanks in large part to the play of Al Washington, City player of the year, Vollnogle won his sixth title after a 10-year drought. Washington, who went on to play at Long Beach City College and USC, remembers his first impression of Vollnogle.

“I was in seventh or eighth grade when I used to go to Carson’s practices to see my brother Lenny play,” said Washington, who was an assistant coach at LBCC last season. “I thought Vollnogle was a drill sergeant because of his crew-cut hair style. When I started to play for him, nothing changed. He was the man I thought he was until my senior year, when he started to soften up.”

Vollnogle seems puzzled when he hears that he was perceived as intimidating.

“I just try to be honest and treat everyone fairly,” he said, adding that he patterned his coaching style after Goodhue’s. “I compliment players when they do something right and correct them when they are wrong.”

Tim Finney, who has worked as Carson’s statistician for 21 seasons, respects Vollnogle’s style.

“Gene is a man of integrity,” Finney said. “He doesn’t shave any corners and is always more interested in the ultimate than a win.”

Vollnogle may claim that he has mellowed, but he still has a certain reputation among his players.

Nkosi Littleton, Carson’s standout 6-2, 220-pound linebacker, was called Littlejon for nearly two months by Vollnogle until Littleton’s stepfather set the coach straight. Littleton wasn’t about to correct Vollnogle.

“Can you believe that?,” asked Vollnogle’s wife of 38 years, Lucille. “As big as Nkosi is, he never said anything because he was afraid. I guess I am the only one who knows that Gene is not as mean as he looks.”

After next season, Carson will have to find a replacement for Vollnogle, something he says should not be a problem.

“There are several coaches on the staff now who could all do the job,” Vollnogle said. “It will all boil down to who really wants the job.”

One thing is certain. Carson will not be the same without him.