Barnett Will Stick Around for Shrine Game--and Then Some : Football: After outpouring of support from community, Trabuco Hills coach decides not to return to Montana.

For a week in June, it looked as if the Shrine All-Star football game would be Jim Barnett’s last hurrah as a California football coach.

After five successful seasons at Long Beach Poly High School and four at Trabuco Hills--including consecutive Southern Section Division VIII championships in 1988 and 1989--Barnett had a chance to return to his native Missoula, Mont., to coach football at Missoula’s Big Sky High School.

Barnett, who is co-coaching the South in the 39th Shrine All-Star football game Saturday at the Rose Bowl, seriously considered the opportunity to go home again. But when Barnett had trouble getting credentials to teach in Montana, he decided to stay at Trabuco Hills.

“My conscience started bothering me, too,” Barnett said. “I didn’t think it was going to be a big thing if I left.

“There were some parents who were threatening to transfer kids to other schools.”

Trabuco Hills principal William Brand said he fielded phone calls from community members all day after a newspaper reported that Barnett had accepted the job in Montana.

“We were fighting very hard not to lose him but every year he’s been here he had opportunities to go to other schools,” Brand said.

The reaction to Barnett’s possible departure surprised the coach, who is the only football coach the school has had since opening in 1985. Returning players from his football team, in an effort to get him to stay, greeted him with a cake before a class.

Barnett and Paramount Coach Ken Sutch are sharing the coaching duties for the South, which is holding workouts at UC Irvine.

“These kids are so sharp,” Sutch said. “We put something in and most have done something exactly the same only with another name.”

Barnett said the players are ready to play, and certain coaching techniques and drills that he commonly uses with his high school teams aren’t applicable to the all-star team.

“We’re probably past the point of really accomplishing anything,” Barnett said. “They want to play a ball game. They don’t want to crawl like a dog or hop like a frog.”

Restless youth: The South players and coaches are staying in a dormitory at UC Irvine between practices twice a day in the Anteater track and field stadium, and Barnett said the staff must be chaperones as well as coaches.

“We’ve got to worry about them morning, noon and night,” he said. “UCI is a great place to do this, but there are distractions. We’ve got these cheerleading camps going on.”

Golden Bears: Defensive back Tim Manning and linebacker Jerrott Willard met on a recruiting trip to California in January. They hit it off as roommates on the trip and have decided to room together when they enroll at Cal in the fall.

Willard, a Corona del Mar graduate, is taking a break from summer school at Cal to practice and play in the Shrine game, and Manning, from Trabuco Hills, said he is glad for the advance reconnaissance.

“He knows all the places to go and the things to do, so he can just show me,” Manning said.

A recurring topic of dorm-room conversation is bound to be whose high school team was better. Trabuco Hills and Corona del Mar each won consecutive Division championships in the pair’s final two seasons, but they never played each other. In 1988, Trabuco Hills was 12-2 and Corona del Mar was 12-0-2; in 1989, Corona del Mar was 10-3 and Trabuco Hills was 13-1.

Willard said the dispute is already raging.

“The key word is undefeated ,” he said.

South Team Notes

Barnett and Sutch each coached their teams to consecutive Divisional championships . . . Mater Dei offensive lineman Ryan Motherway didn’t practice Wednesday. He is still suffering from a sore back.