Poly’s Pied Piper : Football Coach Fred Cuccia Effects Turnaround With Persuasive Sales Pitch, Compassionate Touch

It is difficult to miss the biggest symbol of the turnaround in the Poly High football program. Eddie Moreno, a 6-foot-2, 260-pound senior tackle, has helped improve the Parrots as much as the program has transformed him.

A year ago, the Parrots stumbled to a 1-8-1 record as part of a legacy of futility.

A year later, Poly has forged a 10-3 record and takes a four-game winning streak into the City Section 3-A Division championship game. Poly will play Lincoln (9-3-1) at 7:30 tonight at East Los Angeles College.

But Poly’s turnabout pales in comparison to the transformation of Moreno. Two years ago, he was an admitted campus bully who found himself inside a juvenile detention center.

He already had been shot three times and figured more bullets were headed his way.

Now, he’s an All-East Valley League selection and so popular on campus that the student body voted him homecoming king last month.

Moreno says it’s easy to explain his new life style. Like many at the Sun Valley school, he’s become a member of the Fred Cuccia fan club. Cuccia, 45, has worked his rebuilding magic at his third high school in the past decade as the second-year Poly football coach and has enjoyed the Parrots’ resurgence so much he might even stick around for a while.

“They like me and I like them,” Cuccia said of the players. “It’s like a family and I’m the big daddy--I’m the old man. They know I care about them. I chew their butts out and I holler at them, but we always try to do everything in a positive manner.”

The recruitment of Moreno attests to the Cuccia method. He spotted Moreno on campus and asked him to try out for the football team.

“It was the first time anybody ever asked me to do something,” Moreno said. “Usually everyone is always telling me what to do.”

He soon joined the team even though he was a stranger to football. He tried out at linebacker but soon moved to the offensive line where he has emerged as one of the area’s top players.

Moreno is just one of the positive stories associated with the team. Glance down the roster and more abound, even among the assistant coaches. Bob Mesa, who works with the offensive line, graduated from Poly in 1975. He has been an assistant for 12 seasons under four different head coaches. No coach has taught him more than he’s learned under Cuccia.

“The way this program is run now, it’s like night and day,” Mesa said. “(Cuccia) has brought back pride. I finally know what a program is.

“I’ve learned more in the last two years with him than I’ve learned maybe in the last six, seven years. I remember going home and calling my father on the phone and saying, ‘You know what, dad? We got a program at Poly High.”

Donald Senegal, who coaches the running backs and graduated from Poly in 1987, echoes Mesa’s sentiments.

“If I could have played for him, I’d probably be in college (playing) somewhere right now,” Senegal said.

Cuccia has always loved a good challenge but the Poly program gave new meaning to the word. He was hired just days before practice started in 1989, inheriting a team that had won just four games the previous two seasons.

In addition, Poly did not have a strong football tradition, qualifying for the playoffs just five times in 33 years and advancing to the championship game just once.

“I guess I like the challenge . . . the challenge of building a program where no one thinks it can be good,” Cuccia said.

He’s been there before. He turned around programs at Hoover and South Pasadena in the 1980s, but moved on once the task was complete.

At Hoover, he took over a team that scored just seven points in league play in 1982. Three years later, the Tornadoes posted an 8-2 record and were ranked second in the Coastal Conference at the end of the regular season. They were bumped from the playoffs after they were forced to forfeit games for use of an ineligible player.

South Pasadena came calling after the 1985 season. He inherited a team that had won just one of 19 games in two previous years and led the Tigers to a 7-2-1 record in his second season. Cuccia was unhappy with the administration at South Pasadena and when the athletic director at California High in Northern California called to offer him a job, he and his family packed their bags.

But after his first football season at California, Cuccia and his wife Carol decided to return to Southern California for economic reasons.

Thanks to a friend of Cuccia’s wife who had coached at Poly, word reached Poly Athletic Director George Tideback that Cuccia was available. Tideback, 61, was desperate to replace Kevin Kennedy, who resigned as coach four days before the start of practice in ’89.

“He’s the best thing that ever happened to Poly,” Tideback said. “Somebody up there in the big sky was looking down on us when he came to Poly.”

Tideback claims the phone hasn’t stopped ringing during Poly’s run through the playoffs as alumni and members of the community call with congratulations for the Parrots and their coach.

Cuccia squirms when asked about the accolades, deflecting credit to the players. He claims his formula for success is simple: provide an atmosphere of mutual respect and let the players have fun.

“I just gave them the opportunity to be successful and they took advantage of it,” he said. “My job is to make sure they have the best coaches to coach them and to get them prepared to play the best game they can possibly play. And if I don’t do that, I’ve failed.”

The reason Poly hadn’t been a winner in recent years was simple, Cuccia said.

“They didn’t know how to win. They didn’t know how to practice. You can practice to practice, or you can practice to win,” he said.

Poly finished 1-8-1 in Cuccia’s first year and some people were skeptical. But those close to the program knew that there was something different about this coach.

“There is something about the guy,” Tideback said. “You can see it in the kids. The guy is just a winner.”

After the first season, Cuccia really went to work. He ordered new uniforms and changed the colors from royal blue and yellow to Air Force-blue and Notre Dame-gold.

“I wanted different uniforms for a different attitude,” Cuccia explained. “I wanted something that told the kids we were going to be a different team overall.”

Cuccia also implemented a year-round weight program, a spring and summer conditioning regimen, and a mandatory study hall. He brought in defensive coordinator Hank Swanson to complement assistant coaches Mesa and Senegal.

Having upgraded the coaching staff, he then turned his attention to the players. He knew he needed better ones and his search brought him to the baseball diamond. Poly has been a traditional City power under Coach Jerry Cord.

Cuccia actively pursued the baseball players and attended nearly every Poly home game. He then enlisted the help of such two-sport players as Jonathan Campbell, a running back and defensive back, and wide receiver Marlon McKinney, who pitched the football program to their baseball teammates.

The formula worked: Eight baseball players will suit up tonight for the City championship game. Catcher Steve Chavez, first-baseman Francisco Flores and utility-player Raul Torres have made the most dramatic impacts on the team.

Torres, a senior and second-team All-Valley defensive back, leads the area with nine interceptions and has become a genuine college prospect after just one season of football. Flores is a 6-4, 235-pound offensive lineman who earned All-East Valley League recognition this year as a junior and projects as one of the top college prospects in the area for next season.

Chavez, a starting linebacker, was a hard sell. His family and baseball teammates objected to his interest in football, but Cuccia’s sales pitch was more persuasive.

“He builds something inside you. He builds character,” Chavez said.

Cord has been forced to start his winter-league baseball season without some of his best players. Still, he remains a Poly football fan.

“No one has ever gone after them,” Cord said of his players. “In the last six or seven years, no one has been a motivator around here to go get kids. Fred is the first one in a long time.”

The numbers bear that out. The turnout for football nearly doubled from 57 to 107 between his first and second season.

Once recruited, players become loyal because of Cuccia’s sense of fairness and compassion. Moreno, a burly player with a quick wit and a short temper, again is a prime example.

In a game early last season, Moreno grew frustrated by an overly aggressive opponent and showed his anger by twisting the player’s helmet off and hitting him over the head with it.

Moreno was thrown out of the game, but thought he’d suffer a bigger punishment from Cuccia. His reception on the sideline caught him by surprise.

“He hugged me and said, ‘It’s all right,’ and then he sat me down and that was it,” Moreno recalled. “I mean, he hugged me. It was the first time a guy ever hugged me.”

No wonder, Cuccia has little trouble putting tonight’s game in perspective.

“We’ve come so far--we’re a Cinderella team,” Cuccia said with asmile.

“If we lose, hey, a lot of people’s hearts will be broken. But I think you have to reflect back on the season.” Cuccia, who has two kids of his own, takes pride in building not only football players, but disciplined, responsible citizens.

“If we can accomplish that, we’ll be successful,” he said. “Not only on the football field, but in the classroom and beyond school.”