No Games Allowed in the Classroom : High schools: Coaches are all business when it comes to emphasizing the importance of academics.

They typically wear T-shirts, tennis shoes and shorts on practice days. Whistles are usually draped around their necks.

Though their attire is seldom impressive, they command respect from every player. They are the high school coaches of Orange County who have built some of the most successful prep programs in the nation.

Coaches are well known in their communities for their work with athletes, but many don’t realize that coaches are also among the top educators in the county’s high schools.

Coaches might touch the lives of their players, but teachers reach out to far more students every day, helping to shape the future for hundreds of teen-agers every year.

Some of the county’s top coaches are foreign language, mathematics, science and history teachers. Others are working with special education students to help them overcome learning disabilities.

A random sample of some of the county’s top coaches reveals that they find their work in the classroom as satisfying as their duties on a playing field. Here are a few of the county’s best coaching teachers.

Greg Hoffman, Western High School’s fiery basketball coach, admits that teaching special education was never his burning passion.

He was a physical education major at Cal State Fullerton but found there were no teaching jobs when he graduated in 1980. Fortunately, a federal law requiring the least restrictive environment for underachieving students had just been passed and suddenly there was a demand for special education instructors.

“The law stipulated that a school have all these classes, but there was no one qualified to teach them,” Hoffman said. “You were allowed to get an emergency credential with six units of special ed (classes) and teach as a long-term substitute with a stipulation that you take six units every year toward a learning handicap credential.”

Hoffman began teaching at Katella High and working toward a master’s in special education, with an emphasis in learning handicap, at Cal Lutheran.

“The first couple of years, I was lost,” Hoffman said. “I had 12 to 14 kids, all day long, and I had to teach them every subject under the sun from reading to math. I’m not going to lie and say I did a fantastic job those first couple of years. The only thing that saved me was the kids were on a very elementary level.”

Ten years later, Hoffman has found lasting rewards in working with students who have trouble reading and supervising those with behavioral problems. He becomes attached to his students and speaks with the pride of a parent when telling stories about former students who have gone on to find success.

“My basketball record is in the newspaper, so from a public standpoint, that’s something I strive to keep up,” he said. “But what’s at stake in the classroom is much more important than what’s at stake on the basketball court.

“When the kids that I’ve taught come back and they have jobs, that’s a prideful thing for me. I’m just as proud of that as I am of any championship. One kid started grooming racehorses, and now he owns a couple of racehorses. He came by and took me to lunch the other day. That made me feel really good.”

Hoffman’s role as teacher is quite a contrast from his job as basketball coach. In the mornings, he teaches students who have learning disabilities or have problems adjusting socially. In the afternoons, he works with some of the top basketball players in the county.

Hoffman takes a my-way-or-the-highway approach to coaching. The rules are cut and dried. He is the judge, jury and prosecutor. No questions asked. But he finds that reaching a special education student is something different.

“They have a special key to get them motivated,” Hoffman said. “You’d be surprised at the little things that work. Sometimes, you get them game tickets or just give them a pat on the back and tell them it’s really good to see them in school.

“You have to gain their trust. I can’t use the bludgeoning approach like I do in basketball. Sometimes I get upset because they’re not working hard enough, but most of the time, I have a tendency to be more lenient.

“My first year at Katella, I was demanding. I ranted and raved and they dropped out or stopped coming to class. I realized that I had to change.”

Hoffman’s perspective and teaching methods have changed over the past 10 years, eight of them at Western. He enjoys the contrast between teaching and coaching.

“When a kid comes to you who can barely read on an elementary level and then later gets into regular classes after you’ve worked with him, that’s really neat,” Hoffman said. “What’s more important? That or teaching a kid how to hit a jumper?”

Mitch Olson, 30-year-old history teacher and football coach at Kennedy High, received his first major lesson in life as a struggling minor league baseball player in Appleton, Wis.

Olson had graduated from Los Alamitos High as a three-sport star with seven varsity letters in 1979. Two days before graduation, he signed a professional baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox.

“I thought, ‘Great, I’ll never have to go to school another day in my life,’ ” he said. “It was a dream come true.”

Two years later, Olson had developed a sore arm and a new attitude toward life. This is a story he tells every year to the freshmen students in his world cultures classes:

“My second year, I got assigned to Appleton and there was a field maintenance worker there who knew every player on the team,” he said. “When I asked one of my teammates who the guy was, he told me that he had played at Appleton the previous three years. That scared me so much, I decided to go back to school. I wasn’t going to be a maintenance man all my life.”

Olson enrolled at Cypress College in the off-season and became a full-time student at Orange Coast College after he was released by the White Sox.

He majored in social science at Whittier College and decided to pursue a teaching career for several reasons. He enjoyed working with youngsters and he wanted to stay involved with athletics. He figured coaching was his best opportunity.

“I looked back on my life and the major people who influenced me were coaches,” Olson said. “I had a great school experience from junior high to college. Teaching just seemed like the natural thing to do.”

In 1985, Olson was hired as a substitute teacher at Kennedy, where he also was an assistant coach for the football, basketball and baseball teams. In 1987, he became the county’s youngest varsity football coach at age 26.

While some football coaches prefer to teach physical education, Olson has remained in the classroom teaching world cultures to freshmen. He has two honors classes among his workload.

“I wouldn’t want to coach PE because most of the PE classes are overloaded,” he said. “It’s tough teaching 50 or 60 kids. I feel I can have more of an impact on 35 students in my classroom.

“In some ways, I feel I’m coaching in the classroom. I’m helping to develop the character of 15-year-old kids every day. I enjoy watching the kids grow up. I have most of the school’s freshmen in my classes every year.

“I follow them for four years by going to their swim meets or drama productions. You can have a real impact on their lives. The students want you to be a human being above all else. I think I can relate to the kids because of my age.”

Olson’s experience as a player-coach for a semi-professional football in Finland for two seasons and travels in the Soviet Union, Sweden, Holland and West Germany have given him firsthand experience to relate to his students.

He encouraged students to focus on the political, cultural and religious customs of Middle East to help them understand the recent crisis in the Persian Gulf.

“The kids watched the news and read the newspaper every day,” he said. “They couldn’t get enough information. They had so many questions because what was happening over there was affecting some of their home lives. It was a difficult time for some.”

Olson said there hasn’t been a day that he has dreaded coming to work.

“The biggest reward is the influence you have as a teacher,” he said. “You can have a real impact on kids’ lives. To be able to help a kid is pretty nice.”

Lisa Marino used to look at her roommate at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and wonder why anyone would major in special education. Six years later, she’s teaching that very subject at Bolsa Grande High.

Marino, 26, is better known as the second-year coach who rescued the school’s cross-country and track and field programs. She had no coaching experience two years ago when she welcomed five returning runners as cross-country coach.

This year, Bolsa Grande finished third in the Garden Grove League finals and Marino currently has the school’s track and field team tied for first place in the eight-team league.

Marino’s on-campus recruiting methods and her special methods of motivation have brought a newfound spirit to the teams. She taught youngsters from China, Laos, Mexico, Pakistan, Palestine, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam last fall. But she takes the most pride in watching some of her special education students compete.

“I’ve gotten some of the (special education) kids out for the team, and it’s been like a springboard for them,” she said. “It has given them the courage to do other things. Just watching them take that first step toward accomplishing something is the most rewarding part of my job.”

Marino works with 12 students each day and compares her field of teaching to coaching a track meet.

“You have six different events in track, and I’m teaching everything from English to math in special ed,” she said. “The difference is, I don’t really care about winning a track meet. The winning to me is focusing on each individual kid and working with them.”

Marino said she first became interested in teaching special education when she met Lloyd Jones, the former director of special education for the Garden Grove Unified School District. She was working as a flight attendant when she met him.

“He thought I had the patience and the ability to be flexible enough to work with special ed kids,” she said. “After two years at the airlines, I thought I could do more. At first, I used special ed as a way to get into coaching.

“There is a big demand for special ed teachers. But when I got the job, I thought, ‘This was meant to be.’ Now I can see myself teaching and coaching as long as they’ll have me here.”

The sign in Room K-2 at Capistrano Valley High reads: “ El Maestro es Senor Zamora .” The teacher is Bob Zamora, a self-proclaimed workaholic who also coaches the school’s varsity baseball team.

Zamora’s classroom is filled with photographs of his past teams. Most prominent is the 1983 squad that won the Southern Section 2-A division title at Dodger Stadium.

Zamora has been characterized as a disciplinarian on the diamond, and he’s no different in the classroom. On this day, he penalizes a student who failed to bring his book to class as well as another who didn’t have a cover on his book.

“He’s tough,” student Steve McDaniels said. “He doesn’t give you credit for doing your homework, but he takes away points when you don’t do your assignments.”

Zamora continues to display a penchant for details as he corrects a mini-composition that a student has written about his favorite actress, Julia Roberts. While making several minor corrections, the coach in Zamora comes out.

“Details win championships,” he said. “Failing to know the correct tense of a verb is like not knowing how many outs there are in a baseball game.”

Zamora has learned that simple competition often can spark a lethargic classroom. He divides his classroom into two teams to play a variation of tick-tack-toe. He offers each side a word in English and a student must give the Spanish translation.

As students respond, there is a collective groan with every wrong answer. Zamora, the coach, has found another tool to motivate his students. His methods helped earn him teacher of the year honors at Capistrano Valley in 1978.

Zamora is the first to admit his workload is heavy: teaching four Spanish classes, coaching Cougar baseball and teaching two night classes at Saddleback College. But he says he wouldn’t change anything.

“I couldn’t teach PE,” he said. “I love teaching Spanish. When my coaching days are over, I’ll be perfectly content teaching Spanish.”