Away From O.C., Coach Finds Peace of Mind : Basketball: Steve Thornton trades hectic pace at Dana Hills for tranquil Tracy, Calif.

In Oregon, the natives welcome stressed-out urbanites seeking solace in the woods with bumper stickers that read: “Have a Nice Visit . . . Then Go Home.”

A Californian, who’s happy to be driving only 40 minutes to work, moves into the rural suburbs of Seattle and he’s less popular than investors who want to move the Mariners.

Steve Thornton, however, has managed to flee the city and find acceptance, too. Acceptance? Heck, the guy can’t go to the post office or the cleaners without getting slapped on the back and told again and again what a great job he’s doing.

Four years ago, Thornton quit his job as basketball coach at Dana Hills High School and took a similar position at Tracy High, the only high school in Tracy, a bucolic community of 34,000 halfway between Stockton and San Francisco.

Thornton said he was leaving Orange County to escape the traffic and hectic pace. He was just changing locales, not professions.

In truth, however, the pressures of coaching basketball in Orange County sent him north. Let’s face it, the drive from his home in Dana Point to the school really wasn’t a factor.

Competing in one of the toughest basketball leagues in the state, Thornton put together a 118-90 record in nine years at Dana Hills. The Dolphins made it to the playoffs six times during his tenure.

It was never good enough, though. And some of the players’ parents made sure Thornton knew it.

“There were a few very vocal, very selfish parents who saw only their own sons’ perspective,” said Bob Canary, the Dana Hills baseball coach and a close friend of Thornton’s. “The attacks were unfair and unfounded, but sometimes it only takes a few to get the ball rolling.

“Steve always handled it with the utmost of class, but he finally decided that it wasn’t worth it. That’s what prompted him to look for a saner environment.”

Thornton won’t admit to being run out of town on a rail. He will admit to being fed up.

“There’s a lot of that at Dana Hills, a lot of parent struggle,” Thornton said. “Other coaches have felt it, too. It was something I just got tired of battling. Even though we were fairly successful, it was a constant struggle.

“I’d been in Orange County since junior high. I went to Magnolia High School and started coaching there. I was at Loara for six years. Then I was at Dana Hills for nine.

“For several years, I had been thinking about possibly getting out in favor of a place with a less chaotic lifestyle. I liked what I was doing, but I wanted to get to a place where it might be a little simpler, easier.”

If it was easy he was looking for, Thornton landed in the wrong place.

Tracy is a football school--the Bulldogs won more than 100 football games during the 1980s--but the basketball team was in a shambles. Still, Thornton says, he thought the program “had potential.”

Maybe. It certainly had room for improvement. Pleasing these boosters wouldn’t take much. All he had to do was produce two victories to better the team’s 1-26 mark in 1987-88, the season before Thornton took the job.

Tracy hadn’t won a San Joaquin Athletic Assn. game in two years. It hadn’t posted a winning season in 13 years.

Thornton, fresh with the prospect of a fresh start, guided the Bulldogs to an 8-18 record during his first year.

“He’s a great coach who really knows basketball,” said senior forward Josh Wallwork. “From his first day here, we’ve worked on defense, rebounding and free-throw shooting. And that’s won a lot of games for us.”

Tracy improved to 13-16 in 1989-90 before dipping a bit to 11-19 the following year. This season, however, they took the quantum leap to 22-9 and made a trip Sacramento for the final eight of the San Joaquin-Sacramento section playoffs.

“People here are really excited that we’ve revived the basketball program,” Thornton said. “I guess they were good in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

“There’s just so much community spirit here. It’s a one-high school town and they really back the programs here. They draw 4,000 to 5,000 for football.”

By the end of this season, the basketball team was selling out the 1,400-seat campus gym. For a key league game and an early playoff game, they even turned away a couple hundred folks.

Wallwork, who passed for 2,164 yards and 21 touchdowns for the Bulldog football team this season, didn’t count on having success on the basketball court as well.

“Who could have a better senior year?” Wallwork wonders. “Made the playoffs in two sports. It was great. All of Tracy was behind us. They really support us. And they let Coach Thornton do his job.”

These days, Thornton’s a local hero. Public affection makes it almost too embarrassing to pick up his dry cleaning.

Thornton’s wife, Kristi, the girls’ swimming coach at Tracy, their son, Michael, 13 months, and Amberly, 8, Kristi’s daughter from a previous marriage, are just about Tracy’s first family.

They recently bought a new home in downtown Tracy, two miles away from the school.

For Steve Thornton, the grass is indeed greener on this side of the hill. But has he raised expectations too high? Will he have to maintain this success to avoid another fall from grace?

“When I went to Tracy High 22 years ago, it was hard to get a ticket to a basketball game,” said Greta Yerian, Wallwork’s mother. “I’m sure we didn’t win every game, but there was always enthusiasm.”

Yerian says she’s not sure of the fan interest when her mother went to Tracy High, but it’s clear that support for the high school runs in the blood.

“This community is very upbeat about the program,” Thornton said, “but it’s not like you’ve got to win it all every year. They want you to be competitive, and if you do have a good year, they’ll really come out and support it.

“People rally around the high school. It’s a very positive atmosphere. It’s neat in that respect.”

Tracy’s devotion to their young athletes paid dividends for Thornton and his players last summer, when they raised more than $18,000 for a trip to Hawaii to play in a tournament.

“We had a golf tournament, a basketball game, car washes, a raffle, a huge garage sale . . . all the usual stuff,” Wallwork said. “It was a fun trip.”

Thornton is making tentative plans for another trip this summer. He may even venture back to Orange County for a little competition against some old friends.

He doesn’t figure to experience any regret about leaving.

The rat race has lost all its appeal.

Thornton says the problems with high school sports in Orange County are more far-reaching than the chance of burning out a few good coaches.

He believes the student-athletes suffer most.

“It is just getting so intense. Year-round games. Summer leagues. Summer camps,” he said. “The year I left, we played 47 summer league games. I honestly think it’s gotten out of control.

“I mean it got to the point where you had to go down into the junior highs and even elementary schools to try and keep kids in your district, to keep them from going to other programs.

“Up here we have strict controls on the off-season. We’re allowed to play in one league and two tournaments, about 18 games. It means an awful lot of kids up here still can play three sports. It’s almost impossible for a kid to play football, basketball and baseball in Orange County anymore.”

Rich Skelton, who succeeded Thornton at Dana Hills and is now the school’s athletic director, says he, too, succumbed to the year-round demands of building a successful program.

“I buy into Steve’s thinking because I have experienced it myself,” he said. “That’s why I got out of coaching. The atmosphere. The emphasis. The constant pressure to win.

“You see kids switching schools to get into winning programs to have a better chance at a (college) scholarship. And the South County is an area full of powerful teams with a very pro-athletic following. It all takes its toll.”

Then you add the parental push, and in Thornton’s case, anyway, it was a burden he couldn’t carry.

“The South County is filled with a lot of goal-oriented, upwardly mobile, aggressive people,” Canary said. “It carries over into their expectations for their kids’ teams. Often, those expectations are unrealistic.”

Both Thornton--and the Tracy basketball program--are doing just fine. Maybe it’s the fresh air. More likely it’s the fresh atmosphere.

“The work ethic is very strong here,” Thornton said. “Even the kids who don’t have as much physical ability aren’t afraid of working hard. They’ll go in and do a job defensively for you.”

Oh yeah, and one other thing.

“In four years here,” he said. “I haven’t heard one discouraging word from one parent.”