Coach With the Mountain Home Has the Drive to Succeed

Steve Vukojevich has had a passion for coaching since he was a teen-ager. As coach of University City High’s football team, he has the only kind of job he’s ever wanted. He takes the victories and losses, the ups and the downs, in stride. It’s all part of a rich and fulfilling experience, he says.

But if there is one detail he truly dreads, it is the lonely drive home after a loss on Friday night. It’s a journey that might seem endless if he lived in University City or University Heights.

Vukojevich, however, lives in Julian.

The daily trip Vukojevich (pronounced: Va-KOY-o-Vitch) takes to get to and from work has never been simple, and it’s not getting any easier. The Centurions have lost their past nine night games, dating to a 42-6 defeat to El Camino in the 1988 playoffs.

For Vukojevich, traveling 120 miles round trip on a narrow, circuitous road has become part of what for him is a his wonderful job. Some say it’s made him a better coach. The football careers of many have been marked by unforgettable events that have been dubbed The Catch, The Comeback, The Immaculate Reception. Vukojevich’s career has come to be known by The Drive. He makes it in a 1990 Honda Civic that already has 31,000 miles.

. . . from Genesee Avenue to Highway 52 east, north on Interstate 15, east through Poway onto the narrow, twisting passage that becomes Highway 67. He switches his headlights to bright. Soon the boulder-strewn hills of Swartz Canyon and the satellite summit of Mt. Woodson appear in the night sky . . .

Friends used to plead with Vukojevich, 50, to stay in the city after particularly long work days, like those night-game Fridays, which last 21 hours if he decides to drive home. They offer their couches and spare bedrooms.

But Vukojevich usually rejects such options, and it’s not hard to understand. He lives in a hillside hideaway with a breathtaking picture-window view west just above the timberline. It is a 1,500-square-foot house with a high-sloping ceiling and a giant fireplace and a surrounding redwood deck complete with an outdoor hot tub.

The coach has often awakened to discover fresh fallen snow covering the pine trees or deer nibbling on wildflowers that grow on the chaparral and manzanita brush below his deck. Yet, this is a picture postcard that never would have caught his eye.

“If it was up to me, I’d still be in La Mesa,” he said. “There are times when it’s nice to walk outside and you’re the only one there. But I’m here because my wife wanted to be here.”

He was completely happy with the La Mesa home on Morocco Drive, but he bent a little to make Beverly happy. But he didn’t bend much. He told her if she really wanted to move to Julian she’d have to sell the house, which was appraised at $115,000, for $130,000. And she’d have to do it on her own, without the help of an agent.

Beverly was raised in rural Ellwood City, Pa., where her grandfather owned the area’s first dairy. She calls herself “a farmer” and “a hick” and conceded she never could accept the city life. So, in August, 1984, she moved her husband into a place smack in the middle of the Cleveland National Forest.

“Bigger than hell, she did it,” he said. “She did everything I asked her to do. She wanted very badly to come up here. I mean really badly.”

So now the coach, born in Los Angeles and reared in Laguna Beach, now occasionally finds himself victim of “mountain fever,” a craziness that comes with the solitude.

. . . steep canyons replace roadside shopping centers. Roadside filling stations and convenience stores yield to craft fairs and nurseries. Apartments and condominiums vanish into barns, brown pastures, ranch homes and open meadows. Oaks replace palms. Deer crossings replace overpasses. Ramona, elev. 1,440, pop. 12,500 . . .

Vukojevich jumps out of bed each day at 4 a.m. and is warming up the car within 15 minutes. He’s usually the first one on the highway, descending from the mountain. He’s usually at school by 5:40 a.m., nearly two hours before the first bell rings. There he showers, shaves and dresses for the day, drinks a cup of coffee, eats a doughnut and reads the morning paper.

Only once has he missed a work day because of bad weather. Last winter, he was just a few hundred yards from the main highway after creeping over 5 1/2 miles of steep, snow-covered back roads when he slipped off an embankment. He had to walk back in the dark and chill of the early morning wearing shorts and tennis shoes. By that afternoon, he was on campus to run practice for the varsity girls basketball team.

“There’s nothing there when it snows,” he said. “There’s no tracks. It’s another world.”

Vukojevich has joked to his assistants that he wants a helicopter.

“We said, ‘That’s a project you ought to put before the boosters,’ ” football assistant Ed Yandall said. “A one-man helicopter would be perfect for him.”

As it is, he has little time to spend with Beverly during the week. But that’s OK, she says. Both admit they’re independent of one another. Once, during one of the frequent strolls to a nearby Girl Scout campground, Beverly asked Steve how his football team finished. That was in May, five months after the season ended.

On the weekend, Vukojevich takes frequent naps, so that by Sunday afternoon he’s refreshed and once again ready for The Drive.

. . . the grade steepens, the air cools. All is still but the swaying double-yellow line. An antique shop here, a cabin there. A Christmas tree farm, an avocado orchard. Sutherland Dam to the north. Stone Mountain to the south. Santa Ysabel 15, Julian 22, Brawley 95 . . .

Vukojevich says he never once considered teaching at Julian High. He’s too close to his staff and has too much respect for UC’s administration. The feelings are mutual. On campus, the coach maintains such a low-key presence that a physical education student asked him one Friday, “Are you going to the football game today? I hear we have a pretty good team.”

UC is 37-43-3 under Vukojevich, who left La Jolla High in 1982 to head the staff at the new school. The Centurions have had four winning seasons in eight years. They have not won a playoff game in four attempts, and their futility in night games has translated to 11 losses in their past 12 attempts. That, and that UC is 2-5, 1-2 in the City Western League, has made the drive home seem longer than its 60 miles.

But winning never has been a priority for Vukojevich or the administration at UC, a school that prides itself on having an academic curriculum that is tougher than most.

“(Football) is part of education and that’s all it’s going to be,” Vukojevich said softly. “I’m not going to lie about grades to keep (players) eligible. I’m not going to try to recruit kids.

“I’m a little bothered this weekend (after a recent 42-12 loss to La Jolla) because we’re not playing well. (So when he gets back on the road) I’ll be rehearsing what we’ll be doing for practice, how I’m going to attack trying to get our act back together.”

. . . 3,000 feet. Grassy meadows surrounded by the first sloping mountains of the Laguna range are illuminated by the stars in the sky. There’s a chill in the air. The autumn leaves have fallen. Seven miles from Julian. Almost home . . .

His colleagues say the daily journey and the dramatic change in lifestyle haven’t changed Vukojevich as a person. But he can no longer hang around during the spring to watch his old friend Allan LaMotte, the athletic director, coach baseball.

“I catch myself saying, ‘I should be going; that damn traffic,’ ” Vukojevich said.

“We were very close friends in that we would stop at each other’s houses after practices. Steve and I shot the bull an awful lot for a lot of years,” LaMotte said. “Every time there’s a storm in the mountains, I wonder if he’s going to make it.”

Vukojevich knows not whether he will someday leave his mountain behind for a return to the city life. He’s quick to point out he has doesn’t like to hunt or fish. He has no inherent attraction to the wilderness, other than occasional snow and the fall colors.

“I could fight it, I guess,” he said. “But I said, ‘Hey, I’ll try it.’ Here I am. I’m as happy as I can be.”