New Coach Looks to the Past as Inspiration to Rebuild the Present : Football: Larry Reisbig is working to restore the program’s image and winning ways. It’s early, but the signs are positive.

Each day, on his way to practice, Long Beach City College football Coach Larry Reisbig is beckoned by a trophy case beneath the stands at Veterans Stadium. It reminds him of the new job he has undertaken.

In the case are footballs from the 1958 Alfalfa Bowl and the 1960 Junior Rose Bowl, a tarnished bronze trophy from the 1962 Shrine Potato Bowl and a plaque recognizing the Vikings’ perfect season and national title of 1964.

The assignment for the former Cal State Long Beach Coach is simple: Put a ‘90s spin on those old glory days.

“I was eager to get back to the community college level,” Reisbig said. “I always thought Long Beach was a unique school. I played against them when I coached Pasadena from 1982-84.”

LBCC, which is 2-1-1 this year, has not won a conference title in 28 years. Competing in the rugged Mission Conference, it has had only five winning seasons since 1969.

The team has also struggled with an image problem. For years, area high school players believed that football wasn’t a priority at LBCC. The majority of its coaches in the past 15 years were part-time employees known as “walk-ons,” who were not around to help players during the school day. Potential recruits eschewed Long Beach for El Camino College in Torrance, Cerritos College in Norwalk, or Fullerton, Orange Coast, Golden West and Rancho Santiago community colleges in Orange County.

By the end of last season, when LBCC finished 1-9, the football team had become a place for players to end up, not to go.

“There wasn’t a commitment from the institution itself,” said Paul Chafe, who coaches the quarterbacks and running backs, and who was the head coach in the late 1960s. “The college presidents during that time had other priorities. They just wanted a nice, comfortable program that didn’t make a lot of waves.”

Last winter, Athletic Director Chuck McFerrin fired Coach Wil Shaw. Shaw, who joined the football program as an assistant in 1974, was one of only two full-time college employees on the 1991 football staff. His record in eight seasons was 28-50-2. McFerrin and other people on the athletic staff wanted to start over.

“The community needed to believe that LBCC was serious about making a commitment, that football would be given the best opportunity to succeed here,” McFerrin said.

Reisbig, who was the secondary and special teams coach at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, was a natural choice for the job, which drew more than 60 applicants. He was 70-35 in 10 seasons at College of the Canyons in Valencia and 22-9 in three years at Pasadena City College. Although forced to resign as coach at Cal State Long Beach in 1989 after an 11-23 record, he was credited with keeping the financially plagued 49er program--which eventually was dropped in 1991--afloat.

“He was always positive and never once did he have a bad attitude,” said Whittier College Coach Ken Visser, a former 49er assistant. “No one could have won in that situation. It was just an impossible situation for him.”

Reisbig’s best trait as a coach appears to be his ability to motivate players with honesty and hard work.

“He’s disciplined,” said sophomore running back Ray Wilson. “Last year, everyone here was out for themselves. We were not a team. This season, there ain’t no favorites. You got to earn your position.”

Reisbig is quick to point out that it’s still early in the season and that he expects it to take as many as three years to change things. “We haven’t rebuilt this program yet,” he said. “That will take time. Every game we play will be a dogfight for us.”

But the Vikings’ winning record so far has sparked new interest in the aging program, which was started in 1928--a year after the college was founded at Wilson High School. For the first time since the glory days of the early 1960s, the football team has a booster club. Tailgate parties have sprung up in stadium parking lots before games, and crowds at the 12,000-seat Veteran’s Stadium have averaged about 1,700, an increase of 400 a game over last year.

Reisbig set the tone of his administration just days after being hired in April, when he persuaded three of LBCC’s former head football coaches--Chafe, Gary Jacobsen and Don Kloppenburg--to return to the field after years off. Chafe, the coach from 1966-69, posted a 20-13-3 record; Jacobsen, now the defensive line coach, was 22-32-1 from 1970-75, and Kloppenburg, now the linebacker coach, was 12-8 in 1980-81.

Mike Reisbig, Larry’s son, was hired in a part-time position as offensive line coach after three years as an assistant at Pasadena City College. Mark Robbins, an all-conference wide receiver for LBCC in 1980-81, was hired part time to handle wide receivers. Rick James, who worked with Reisbig at Orange Coast, works with the linebackers in a part-time position. Kicking coach Dana Roach, who worked under Reisbig at Cal State Long Beach, was also hired as a part-timer.

The only coach Reisbig kept from Shaw’s staff is Mike Maloney, an All-American defensive back for the school in 1978. Maloney, also a part-timer, said Reisbig has insisted that part-time coaches be more accessible to players, and he has helped arrange schedules to accomplish that.

“Last season, Wil (Shaw) was so busy he didn’t know which way to turn,” Maloney said. “Now you have five guys on campus all day long, and that helps spread out the workload.”

Chafe said he, Jacobsen and Kloppenburg don’t plan to stay around for many years. But it was necessary for them to return, he said, to help get the Reisbig era off to a good start.

“Those guys are working very hard. They’re a real fine staff and if you watch the team play, it shows,” said retired coach Jim Stangeland, vice president of the Long Beach City College Foundation, which raises money for the school.

In 1964, Stangeland guided LBCC to a 10-0 record, a Junior Rose Bowl victory and the school’s last national championship. From 1957 to 1964 he complied a 59-12-3 record.

Not since that era, Stangeland believes, has Long Beach had so much going for it. Reisbig, he contends, will fill that trophy shelf before he is through.