Ex-Coach Enters a New Arena in Career

Ernie Carr, a new assistant principal at Centennial High School in Compton, says he is facing a challenge far greater than he ever did as a basketball coach.

In a non-coaching position for the first time in 20 years, Carr, 43, is trying to adjust to a career change and a wider scope of responsibility.

“When I was coaching,” he said, “I was responsible for 15 players and for preparing for 26 opponents. That’s not very difficult, compared to having to work with 1,500 students, many who are not up to national academic standards, in a socioeconomic area where there are many, many problems.”

Carr, who started his new job July 1, is well known in Compton, where for 12 years he was the basketball coach at Dominguez High, compiling a 195-102 record.

After stepping down as coach in 1987 he stayed on at Dominguez as athletic director for two years, during which he was an assistant coach at UCLA (1987-88) and an interim head coach at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo (1988-89).

The last two years, while on leave from the Compton Unified School District, he was an assistant coach at UC Irvine.

“This is my first year since I was 15 that I haven’t been associated with a team,” Carr said in his sparsely decorated office. A tall, lean man, he still looks like a coach in his tennis shoes and gray warm-up pants.

It will take a while, he conceded, to get basketball out of his system.

“It is something I enjoyed and something I put a great deal of time and energy into,” he said. It’s not easy to let go.”

He had applied for the head coaching job at Irvine when Bill Mulligan resigned, but did not get it.

“I was in a quandary as to what direction to go,” said Carr, who a year ago acquired a master’s degree in educational management from the University of La Verne.

“I knew I could come back (to the Compton school district) as a teacher or possibly be an administrator. I wanted to stay in coaching. I had few chances to hook on at other Division I schools, but I was at the point where if I was going to be an assistant coach again it would have to be in a situation in which I felt I was progressing.”

Carr will be in charge of athletics and activities, and his other duties will include evaluating teachers of social studies, fine arts and physical education.

He will work with Ed Gilliam, 37, the school’s new principal who came to Centennial from Inglewood High, where he was an assistant principal.

“We have the same goals and the same backgrounds,” Gilliam said. “He was an athlete, and I was an athlete.”

Gilliam played football at USC, and Carr played basketball at Pepperdine.

The two men want to change Centennial’s image, first by improving the school’s physical appearance and then by ridding it of gangs.

“We want to create the kind of clean environment in which (the students) will have pride and want to conduct themselves like ladies and gentlemen,” said Carr, who grew up in a nearby area of Los Angeles and now lives in West Los Angeles.

Already, much of the graffiti has been removed from the school’s red and white buildings.

“We’ll also focus on how the kids present themselves physically,” Carr said. “No earrings or hats. We want them to be more positive about themselves and show them that first impressions go a long way.”

It is the same philosophy he had as a coach.

* Maureen Anne Scharberg of Whittier, who received a $1,000 scholarship from the Whittier Elks Club in 1981 after her graduation from St. Paul High School in Santa Fe Springs, has earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Davis. She will start next month as an assistant professor at San Jose State.

* Joseph R. Taylor has been named conductor and musical director of the Bellflower Symphony Assn. He succeeds Geza Szabo, the symphony’s founder, who died last month.

* Marvin Miranda, a recent graduate of Lynwood High School, has received a full academic scholarship to Notre Dame University. Miranda had a 3.8 grade-point average at Lynwood and was president of the student body.

* Nancy Riggs of Long Beach has received a $750 scholarship from the California Assn. of Realtors. Riggs is studying real estate at Long Beach City College.