Moving Along the Right Track : Prep Wednesday: Basketball Coach Mark Trakh credits his Brea-Olinda Ladycats for teaching him much of what he has learned about life.

The big yellow school bus lumbers out of the parking lot and onto Wildcat Way.

The Brea-Olinda girls’ basketball team is clustered in the back of the bus, far removed from authority.

Coach Mark Trakh and junior varsity coach Cathy Lewis sit quietly in the front and listen as Sharon, the bus driver, begins a safety speech.

The girls unsuccessfully stifle their giggles. Sharon starts to frown.

“Pay attention,” Trakh barks.

After Sharon has finished, she turns to Trakh: “It’s you coach. They’re fine without you.”

Trakh usually drives himself to Ladycat games, but with assistant coach John Hattrup scouting across town, Trakh rides the team bus to this league mismatch at Anaheim.

“Can’t you just feel the tension? You can cut it with a spoon,” Trakh kids. “I was a journalism major. I used to write all those cliches.”

He dispensed with the note pad and pen 13 years ago, after he answered an ad--scrawled on a piece of paper and posted in the physical education building at Cal State Long Beach, where he earned his degree in 1981--that would lead him to the floundering Brea-Olinda girls’ basketball program.

Sharen Caperton, Brea-Olinda’s girls’ athletic director of 17 years, hired Trakh as a walk-on coach in 1980. Now, the cliche is a towering basketball dynasty rather than the turn of a phrase in Brea, where Trakh has compiled some staggering statistics.

While compiling a 341-42 record, Trakh’s teams have won 11 consecutive Orange League titles, 48 consecutive league games, four consecutive Southern Section titles and three of the last four State championships.

The Ladycats also have won 30 games or more in each of the last four seasons and haven’t lost to an Orange County opponent since 1987.

“He said he would only stay a year. Thank goodness he’s stayed this long,” Caperton said.

But the welcome mat Brea set out long ago looks as if it may outlast Trakh, who is starting to show some wear.

On the bumpy bus ride that preceded a 79-11 Ladycat victory, Trakh talked about the ties that have kept him loyal to Brea-Olinda, how he has shaped his coaching philosophies, and his thoughts about the future.

“I can’t see myself, in my 40s or 50s, riding a bus to Anaheim,” he said. “I don’t see myself coaching that much longer. I’d like to try something new. . . . Maybe I’ll be a nuclear physicist or drive a cab in Paris.”

Doubtful, but Trakh, 37, never thought he’d be a girls’ basketball coach, either. Growing up in New Jersey, Trakh was good enough with a basketball--he was the sixth man at Lakeland High but never played beyond high school--to think he earned the right to ridicule the girls’ team.

“I was one of those guys who used to sit in the bleachers and make fun of them,” he said.

Interestingly, Trakh now credits his female players for teaching him much of what he has learned about life.

“When I first came here, I was 23. I had no clue about life or situations,” he said. “They taught me a lot of valuable lessons--that each person is different and you have to handle and treat each one differently.”

Some believe Trakh’s ability to recognize what motivates each individual, and then get the most out of her, is his greatest coaching asset.

“He sees what works with one player might not work with someone else,” said Lewis, who played for Trakh from 1987-91.

His encouragement transcends the basketball court. When one of his team members became pregnant in the last off-season, Trakh sought her out early and told her she was welcome back.

“She’ll have to be an adult for the rest of her life,” he said. “This is a chance to let her be a kid for one more season.”

The baby attends every Ladycat game and is watched by a designated parent. Trakh probably wouldn’t have encountered such a situation as a boys’ coach.

“Coaching girls is very rewarding,” Trakh said. “I have a better understanding of females and their roles. If I ever get married and have kids, I’d rather have girls.”

Maturity and necessity have forced Trakh to expand his focus, which was limited to matters of the court in the early years.

“He has one interest,” said San Diego State Coach Beth Burns, who has known Trakh since 1984. “It’s round and it bounces.”

Yet Trakh insists he has mellowed from his tunnel-vision days.

“If we lost a game, I used to go over the final minutes in my head over and over again,” he said. “This year we, lost in the Santa Barbara tournament and by the time we went to dinner, I’d forgotten about it. Once you get to a certain age, you realize there are more important things.”

Why then, if he has more important pursuits, has he remained at Brea-Olinda?

“There’s nothing left to accomplish here,” he said. “Win a national title or get a national ranking, I guess, but how can you determine that anyway?

“I don’t do it to prove anything. I do it because it’s fun. Winning is still really fun.”

As it was from Day 1, when he would see a promising player and vowed to stay just “one more year.” Trakh continually spots talent on the horizon and can’t seem to drag himself away.

“The first year it was Da Houl, now there is a group of eighth-graders who are going to be dynamite,” he said.

But Trakh also has a strong desire to get out while the getting is good.

“The time to leave is when you’re still enjoying it, when you’re having the most fun, when you’re still winning,” he said. “I want to leave when I decide to leave.”

His supporters want him to succeed wherever he goes, but picturing Brea-Olinda basketball without Trakh would be a little like imagining Washington without politics.

USC’s Jody Anton, a former Ladycat and arguably one of Orange County’s brightest stars, can’t separate the man and the program.

“Impossible,” she said. “He’s been offered jobs and he’s had college interviews. I truly believe he belongs at the college level and he deserves it, but I would have a hard time seeing anyone else at the program.”

Although flattered by such praise, Trakh knows no one is irreplaceable and that when he’s gone, he’ll have left a legacy of self-sufficiency.

“The kids are Brea-Olinda,” he said. “It’s not me at all. They’ll say, ‘Don’t leave, don’t leave,’ but another guy will come in and win 25 games and it will be, ‘Mark who?’

“And it should be that way. I want it to continue on for the kids. Then people will disassociate it from me.”

As far as his options outside the Ladycat den go, Trakh would like to return to school to pursue a master’s degree in education, if a college coaching job doesn’t pan out. Since the early ‘80s, Trakh has had his eye on the college ranks.

He has made unsuccessful bids at UC Santa Barbara, Hawaii, UC Irvine and twice at Cal State Fullerton. He turned down an offer of an assistant’s position at Hawaii in 1983, and a head coaching job at Chapman in 1989, and he didn’t pursue an opening at San Diego State, where he was asked by the school to apply several years ago.

His family jokes about his ill-fated attempts to join the college ranks.

“I tell him, it’s easier for him to be president of the United States before he gets a college job,” said Trakh’s father, Jeff. “He just says, ‘I’ll wait. I have a good job. I’ll keep trying.’ ”

Trakh isn’t itching to get out of Brea. A college job would be nice, but during the wait, he has a pretty nice waiting room.

“If the opportunity comes up, great,” Trakh said. “But I have a perfect situation here. If I’m going to continue to coach at the high school level, this is the place.”

Longtime community members find it curious that Trakh hasn’t been snatched up by any college programs.

“Mark has an X factor,” said Leonard McCain, a retired school administrator from the Brea-Olinda Unified School District. “Some teams have players who may not be the best, but when they’re in the game, they’re going to win. There are some coaches like that. They have that little extra something. That’s what Mark has. It’s interesting to me that the college people filling those positions don’t have enough sense to see that.”

Trakh has set a loose timetable of two to five years to find a college job, or take another career route.

“I want to be optimistic, but I also have to be realistic,” he said. “I can only wait for so long. Then it’s going to be on to the next thing.”

The next thing won’t be to take over another sinking high school program and build another basketball empire.

“It takes so much time, effort and dedication,” he said. “I don’t think I could do it again. After 13 years, I’m more laid back. It’s hard to get that same intensity back.”

When his players look back on their basketball experience, Trakh hopes it will be as a small piece of a bigger picture.

“I would hope that anything we did played a small part in whatever they did later in life,” he said.

The feeling is mutual. In something as trivial as 6:30 a.m. workouts during the summer, Trakh instilled life’s lessons of “determination, dedication and responsibility,” Anton said. “My friends couldn’t believe we had to get up in the summer for practice. But that taught us responsibility. In life, you have to get up early and go to work.”

Said McCain: “Much of what he’s taught has nothing to do with showing a kid a jump shot.”

More than the winning streaks, more than the state titles, Trakh cherishes the friendships he shared with his teams most of all.

“You would think the celebrating and dancing we did as the clock ran out to win a state championship would be the most important thing,” he said. “But developing a lasting, close relationship with my players, that’s the most important thing.”

There have been dozens of important games Trakh can recount, and you can’t pin him down to name one. But he will name his most memorable team.

“My 1982-83 team,” he said without a pause. “They had no tradition back then, and only one senior. They beat the No. 1 team in the state and went to the CIF Southern Section finals for the first time. They started it all. And they took so much abuse from me. They were way-overachievers.”

Players have their own memories of Trakh, many of which are traced back to his wild superstitions.

Like the time in 1987, when highly regarded Brea-Olinda, in its home gym brimming with green and gold balloons, lost a stunner to Los Altos in a Southern Section playoff.

“Since then, he hasn’t allowed one balloon in that gym,” said team trainer Debbie Thompson.

Then there was the time a player bought Trakh a polka dot shirt and black sweater for a state playoff game. That night the Ladycats lost, and Trakh threw out the clothes.

Equipment can be blessed or cursed as well. In 1990, with a 54-game winning streak on the line, Trakh handed Tammy Blackburn, now at San Diego State, a basketball he claimed “was protected. The ball will go in,” during a timeout. When she went back into the game, Blackburn tossed the ball to the sideline, took the game ball from the official and made the first free throw for the victory.

“He’s really superstitious,” Lewis said. “Everyone sees him as so serious, but when you get to know him, he can be almost childlike.”

Hours have passed since the team left for Anaheim. As the bus makes a left turn and heads up the hill toward the gym, Trakh turns to address his team.

“OK girls, don’t pound the top of the bus when you start to sing the Alma Mater,” he pleads.

He looks back and smiles.

“This isn’t so bad after all,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have to ride the bus more often.”

Mark Trakh’s Vital Stats

TRAKH’S RECORD AT BREA OLINDA

Year Record League Playoffs 80-81 12-9 Fourth Did not qualify 81-82 21-5 Second Lost in 2-A first round 82-83 24-3 Champion 2-A runner-up 83-84 29-2 Champion 2-A runner-up 84-85 29-1 Champion 3-A runner-up 85-86 25-4 Champion 3-A champion, first round state 86-87 24-4 Champion 3-A semifinalist 87-88 27-2 Champion 3-A quarterfinalist 88-89 31-2 Champion 3-A champion, Division III state champion 89-90 33-1 Champion 3-A champion, Division III state runner-up 90-91 33-1 Champion II-AA champion, Division II state champion 91-92 32-2 Champion III-AA champion, Division III state champion

STATE CAREER WIN-LOSS RECORDS

Coach School Record Years established 1. Joe Vaughan Ventura Buena 412-42 1976-present 2. Tom Pryor Cerritos Gahr 368-80 1977-present 3. Jim Soden Pacifica Terra Nova 352-104 1976-92 4. Pam Wimberly Menlo-Atherton 351-109 1975-present 5. Mark Trakh Brea Olinda 341-42 1981-present 6. Jan. Edwards Altaville Bret Harte 339-129 1974-92 7. Lee Trepanier San Diego Point Loma 335-51 1977-90 8. Mary Brown Fresno San Joaquin Memorial 317-45 1969-86

Records of active coaches updated through Jan. 21

STATE WINNING PERCENTAGE LEADERS

Coach Games played Wins Percentage 1. Vaughan 454 412 90.7% 2. Trakh 383 341 89.0% 3. Brown 362 317 87.6% 4. Trepanier 386 335 86.7%

BREA OLINDA STANDOUTS

Player Year graduated College Affiliation Da Houl 1983 Hawaii NCAA I Maria Stapfer 1984 Hawaii NCAA I Jodi Kleber 1985 Azusa Pacific NAIA Charlene Schuessler 1986 Columbia NCAA I Carrie Egan 1987 Cal Poly Pomona NCAA II Kristen McPhee 1987 Northern Arizona NCAA I Susan Tousey 1988 Pepperdine NCAA I Tammy Blackburn 1990 San Diego State NCAA I Aimee McDaniel 1990 Pepperdine NCAA I Jinelle Williams 1991 UC Irvine NCAA I Jody Anton 1992 USC NCAA I

Sources: Brea Olinda High School; Cal-Hi Sports