Jones’ Staying Power Has Made His El Dorado Players Believe

The story of Rick Jones’ youth probably isn’t the saddest you’ve ever read, and he knows it. When he talks about his life, he does so without a trace of self-pity or bitterness. It’s just not his way. He knows there are others who have had it worse.

Jones was 5 when his father left his mother, Lucille, and never came back. Without her husband, Lucille Jones raised her family on food stamps, welfare and love. As difficult as times were, young Rick became a standout athlete, a good student and a solid citizen at Paramount High.

He was a high school senior when his mother died from breast cancer, leaving him alone in the world. But Harold Korver, a pastor at a Paramount church, and his wife, Shirley, took Rick into their home.

Jones, in his fourth season as El Dorado football coach, had every reason to fail, but he was determined to make himself a success.

Stay the course. No matter what happens, stay the course.

Those were words to live by growing up, and have remained important to Jones to this day.

When he walked onto the El Dorado campus in 1989 he was fresh from a number of assistant coaching jobs, four seasons of exceptional play as a tight end at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a veteran of the school of hard knocks.

He inherited what turned out to be the worst high school football program in Orange County that fall. The Golden Hawks lost all 10 games they played, were shut out five times and were outscored, 340-26.

When El Dorado scored a late touchdown to cut Loara’s lead to 43-7 in the season finale, Hawk supporters gave the team a standing ovation. The gesture only seemed to underscore the pitiful state of the program.

Moments later, Loara players carried retiring Coach Herb Hill off the field. Hill had just set an Orange County record with his 191st victory, and the gulf between winning and losing never seemed wider for Jones.

But his commitment never wavered. He knew the Hawks could be winners someday.

Three years after that 0-10 season, Jones’ team is 2-0 and playing cross-town rival Valencia (1-1). And get this: An El Dorado victory over the defending Southern Section Division VI champion might not be such a ridiculous notion.

Jones, 33, said it only goes to show you what a little hard work, faith and attention to detail can do.

“From Year 1, we’ve probably been the best conditioned team on the field,” Jones said. “We weren’t winning on the scoreboard, but being a winner came down to improving and always giving 100%.

“In Year 2 we were much more competitive. We were closer on the scoreboard. We told the players the will to prepare to win is more important than the will to win. What you do on Monday and Tuesday is more important to improvement, especially when you’re getting your socks knocked off on Friday nights.

“In ’91 we started doing some things like beating Los Alamitos.”

Indeed, fortunes began to turn around last season. El Dorado was 5-6, dumped Los Alamitos, the eventual Division III champion, and advanced to the playoffs for the first time since 1988.

If there was a turning point in Jones’ rebuilding effort at El Dorado , it was that 7-0 upset of Los Alamitos in the seventh week of the season.

“I don’t know if there is any miracle to turning a program around, but you have to have a plan and stick with it,” said Los Alamitos Coach John Barnes, who took his lumps in his first five seasons at the school.

“You keep surviving as a coach. Hang around long enough and you’ll win. Hanging in there is important.”

Some observers might question the sanity of devoting so much time to such a losing proposition, but Jones worked hard just on the chance that his players might do well.

“If I walked out of here with any energy left, I didn’t work hard enough,” Jones said. “With these guys, I try to lead by example. You give them the idea they can do anything. There’s always hope even if it looks like there’s none.”

Jones offers this example:

With the state’s budget crisis beginning to come to a head last spring, Jones received a reduction in force notice. In a meeting with his players, he explained the situation. He said three years at El Dorado were probably not enough to save his job if there were layoffs.

“I told the kids, ‘I’m going to coach here until I die and when I die I’m going to come back from the dead and coach some more,’ ” Jones said.

The players laughed, and Jones wound up keeping his job.

“That’s the idea of staying power,” he said.

And now the players are beginning to believe.

“I didn’t do this alone,” Jones said. “You set a course people can follow. You lead by example, by what you say and do. No one around here has all the answers.”

Jones knows a thing or two, though.

From his mother, he learned to fight against the odds. From the Korvers, his adopted family, he learned compassion. And from his players, he has learned that anything is possible.