From the Bottom Up : Time, Discipline and Self-Belief Needed to Turn a Football Loser Into a Winner

Steve Bolton was a bit naive going into his first year as football coach at Los Amigos High School. He admits it.

There he was in the spring of 1991, thinking that turning this losing situation around would be a snap. It wasn’t hard for his imagination do a few laps.

He could see a winning record the next fall--it would be the school’s first in five seasons. A third-place finish in the Garden Grove League wasn’t out of the question. Sure, there would be a quick exit from the playoffs, but at the banquet, there would be talk of a bright future.

Never mind that the Lobos’ recent past had been bleak. Six victories in three seasons. Consecutive last-place finishes. A team attitude that had “Me First” as the unofficial motto.

But this was a new era under a new coach. Bolton came out of spring practice that year confident he had already made an impact.

“I started getting overly positive,” Bolton said. “Then we played our first summer passing league game. Our kids started a brawl, and it got out of hand. Our principal canceled the rest of the summer schedule.

“I realized then this job was going to be a lot tougher than I had thought.”

There are football programs to envy and football programs to schedule for homecoming. Taking the latter to the former is a difficult task.

Bolton--like many other coaches who burden themselves with programs spiraling downward--found that creating expectations can be difficult when losing is expected.

Such teams often lack discipline, fundamentals and belief in themselves. The new coaches hope to reverse that trend quickly, but most find it takes time.

In the end, some are able to succeed, although it might not be evident in the team’s record.

“The final phase of rebuilding is winning,” Garden Grove Coach Jeff Buenafe said. “Everything you do leads up to that.”

The Argonauts were 0-10 in 1988, the year before Buenafe took over. Last season, they were Garden Grove League champions and finished 10-1.

It was Buenafe’s first head coaching assignment.

Programs on the slide are entry-level jobs for many head coaches. Most are young and energetic. They have been assistants and are looking for a chance to be their own boss.

But with no experience at running a program, most only get a chance with teams that have that doormat reputation.

Scott Strosnider, a former Edison assistant, took over a Santa Ana Valley program that hasn’t been to the Southern Section playoffs since 1979. He had high hopes but watched in frustration as the Falcons went 0-10 last season.

“I was looking for a chance to be a head coach, and this was my opportunity,” Strosnider said. “It’s like being an assistant manager at a McDonald’s. Sooner or later, you want to be the manager.

“But after it took us until the fourth quarter of the third game to score, I was starting to word my resignation. Maybe my expectations were higher then they should have been.”

Teaching kids to win is difficult. Teaching them they can win is harder.

It’s a psychological battle in which symbolic gestures are enlisted.

“It’s important for the kids to see it’s not the same deal, that it’s not going to be the same program,” San Clemente Coach Mark McElroy said.

McElroy took over a program that has lost 26 consecutive South Coast League games. His first move was to introduce a new team logo.

“We put it on our helmets, we have it in the weight room and team room,” McElroy said. “We even had it painted at midfield for our home opener. It looked awesome.”

In the same way, Zapata the Raider is everywhere at Sonora.

The cartoon-like figure is on the football team’s uniforms, helmets, practice shorts. It’s on the wall in the locker room and coaches’ office. It’s even plastered on the refrigerator in the athletic director’s office.

Just about everywhere you look, Zapata is staring back at you.

“It was the school mascot, but it wasn’t anywhere on the football uniform,” Sonora Coach Mark Takkinen said. “When people see Zapata, I want them to think of Sonora.”

But there’s a tremendous gap between “thinking” Sonora and “fearing” Sonora. The Raiders have won seven games in four seasons.

Closing that gap takes time and work.

Rebuilding the infrastructure is the key. It means fixing facilities, establishing support groups and, most important, assembling a quality staff.

“All of us would rather be a genius than a hard worker,” Foothill Coach Tom Meiss said. “But in the end, it’s being the hard worker that pays off more than being a genius.”

Meiss is an expert in that area. He turned Santa Ana into a winner in the early 1980s and took Orange to the Division VIII championship game in 1989, his first season as the Panthers’ coach.

Now he’s trying to rebuild at Foothill, a program that has been successful in the past but won only nine games in the past three seasons. The Knights’ problems have had to do more with the lack of assistant coaches then anything else.

Meiss brought in eight, counting the junior varsity staff. He attracted quality as well as quantity. His offensive coordinator is Dick Hill, former Santa Ana coach and Orange County’s all-time leader in victories.

“You have to have a lot stability in the program,” said Savanna Coach Fred DiPalma, who turned the Rebels into a winner. “When I got here, the biggest problem was the kids were not fundamentally sound. You need coaches who can teach that. You can’t be teaching new assistant coaches how to teach the kids every year.”

Canyon Coach Loren Shumer had five assistants, including the junior varsity staff, his first season. He now has nine.

The Comanches were 0-10 in 1988, the year before Shumer took over. This season they are off to a 4-0 start, the best in the school’s history.

“I’m the fifth coach in the school’s history,” Shumer said. “The school is only 20 years old. I tell people there’s no way they should have had five coaches already.”

Continuity has also been a problem at Sonora, where Takkinen is the fifth coach in six seasons.

He gave up a secure job at University, where he was the chair of the physical education department. But he felt he could produce a winner at Sonora.

So far, Takkinen has had things his way. With the help of the administration, he increased the number of freshman coaches from two to four. He also increased the players’ work load.

“When I got here, they didn’t even have a spring and summer program,” Takkinen said. “They had no booster club to speak of. But the administration is really behind athletics. Heck, our principal came to almost all our summer league games.”

With his staff in place and that backing, Takkinen was able to go on with the business of making the kids believe.

“Last year, we had a horrible attitude,” Sonora quarterback Robert Knowles said. “As soon as the other team scored, our spirit would go down, and we’d let up. Now we’re going all out for four quarters.”

The low self-esteem is in every losing program. Losing becomes a foregone conclusion. And when there’s no team success, players often adopt a self-centered attitude.

“There were guys who were in it for themselves before Coach Bolton got here,” Los Amigos running back Junior Leofa said. “Those guys aren’t around anymore.”

Bolton tore down to rebuild. After the summer league fiasco, he cleaned out the players who had a negative effect on the team. Some were star players, and the team suffered on the field. The Lobos were 1-9 again last season.

But the change was for the better in the big picture. This season, the Lobos are 1-1-2 and improving.

“We put an emphasis on grades and conduct,” Bolton said. “It cost me a few good players. But we have 27 players this year, and most are on the honor roll.”

A stern hand was also needed at San Clemente. Some players skipped practice but still played in games. Those who did attend practice didn’t enjoy themselves and felt that it achieved nothing.

“Practice was the worst part of the day,” linebacker Matt McNeill said. “You almost dreaded it. We’d have player-only meetings once or twice a week, but people would just get upset at each other.”

McElroy made it clear who was in charge from the start.

If a player misses practice without an excuse, he doesn’t play in the game. If he misses practice and has a legitimate excuse, he doesn’t start.

“The kids wanted discipline,” McElroy said. “They were tired of being told they were losers around school.”

San Clemente is 2-2 this season.

“When (McElroy) came in last spring, we didn’t know what to expect,” McNeill said. “We had more conditioning the first day of spring ball than we did the whole season last year.”

Others instill discipline using less physical means.

At Santa Ana Valley, Strosnider started a study hall. It’s required for all players who do not have better then a 2.5 grade-point average.

“When we got here, the team GPA was 2.0, and now it’s 2.6,” Strosnider said. “It’s also developed closeness. The kids act like a team instead of individuals.”

And the incentives for attending?

“You don’t want to spend 40 minutes running after practice,” quarterback Aaron Tuioti said.

Said Strosnider: “We call it a memory jog.”

Making the final leap, though, comes down to the players. A coach can take a team only so far.

In the end, the one thing that needs to be learned can’t be taught by a coach.

“You can only learn winning by winning,” Strosnider said. “That’s scary.”

Times staff writer Barbie Ludovise contributed to this story.