Once Again, His Main Activity Is Coaching : Sunset League: After four years as Marina’s activities director, Dave Thompson jumps at opportunity to get back into the game of football.

While Dave Thompson was organizing Marina High School’s homecoming dances and proms the past four years, deep down inside, he was longing to wear a hat and whistle and do what he does best--coach football.

Thompson, one of the most successful prep football coaches in Orange County, resigned at Marina in 1985 with a 58-32-4 record and enough frustration to fill a locker room. When the game plan included battling superintendents for practice field maintenance, Thompson called it quits.

Thompson went into administration, first becoming a dean of students for eight weeks and then accepting the job as the school’s activities director.

“I enjoyed it . . . it was a lot harder than coaching football because it was an all-year job with a lot of night activities,” Thompson said. “Not everything works the way you want it to, but the job kept me involved with the kids.”

Thompson did find time to play more golf and lowered his handicap to 15. Still, something was missing in his life.

“I missed the Friday nights and the game on the field,” he said. “I missed the Friday night wins. You generally don’t sit around with ex-students talking about that great prom you put on for the Class of ’88.”

So when John Seeley resigned after the 1990 season to accept an assistant coaching job at Rio Hondo College, Thompson jumped at the opportunity to get back into coaching. In some ways, he never left.

“He still went to every coaching clinic,” assistant John Porter said. “They call him, ‘Front Row Dave’ at the clinics.”

Thompson remained a board member of the Southern California Football Coaches Assn. and attended every Marina football game.

Today, he’s even enjoying two-a-day practices as Marina goes into the season with a veteran team that is expected to battle Edison and Santa Ana for the Sunset League title.

“Not much has changed,” Thompson said. “Kids are kids and football is football. Our defense is a little more multiple and there are some new blocking rules, but we’ll still run the veer.”

Thompson said the ’91 edition of Marina football reminds him of 1979, his second team at Marina. That year, Marina qualified for the playoffs for the first time since the school opened in 1963.

Marina went on to an 11-2 record and reached the semifinals of the Big Five Conference playoffs in Thompson’s third year when he was named the county’s coach of the year.

A major stumbling block in Marina’s comeback under Thompson will be Edison, the league’s perennial power. A Thompson-coached team has never beaten Edison; the closest the Vikings came during his eight-year tenure was a 0-0 tie on a rain-soaked field in 1983.

The six opposing coaches all picked Edison to repeat as league champion, even without preseason All-American wide receiver Brandon Jessie, who decided to concentrate on basketball in his senior season. Jessie caught 27 passes and scored seven touchdowns in only five games as a junior last year.

“Brandon’s the best athlete I’ve ever coached, the kind of big-play guy who can put you over the hump,” Edison Coach Dave White said. “But we’ll still be a good team without him.”

White said this is the strongest team in his 12 seasons as an assistant and head coach at Edison, where he was the school’s athlete of the year in 1974.

Edison swept through the league with six consecutive victories last year and most opposing coaches are pointing at Santa Ana as the only team with a good chance of beating the Chargers this season.

Santa Ana, playing one of the toughest schedules in the county last year, struggled to a 3-7 record in its first year in the Sunset League since it dominated the league in the late 1960s.

Santa Ana Coach Dick Hill enters the season tied with former Loara Coach Herb Hill as the county’s winningest coach and should move into the No. 1 spot the second week of the season against Hawthorne.

Most eyes will be on sophomore quarterback Mark Fausto, who impressed opposing coaches in a summer passing tournament at Rancho Santiago College.

“The young quarterback will be worked on,” Hill said. “He has a lot of talent, but at the same time, he’s very inexperienced.”

Ocean View has been the surprise of the league the past two seasons, earning a co-championship in 1989 and returning to the playoffs last year under Coach Howard Isom. The Seahawks could be the league’s mystery team with as many as 10 juniors and a sophomore earning starting positions.