Side by Side : Titans’ Holland Is Still Working Closely With His High School Coach Ed Goorjian

The train thunders along north from Oceanside, past Mission Viejo and beyond Anaheim, piercing the early-morning mist and clattering along the tracks, twin steel rails cutting across the countryside like the very souls of Ed Goorjian and Brad Holland.

Side by side, day after day, for 10 miles. . . 20 miles . . . aw, who’s really counting anymore?

Holland, 36, is the first-year basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton. Goorjian, 66, is his “limited-earnings” assistant, his right-hand man, his . . .

High school coach.

It has been quite a ride.

Goorjian’s train trip sometimes lasts nearly two hours from his home to the station in Fullerton. Unfailingly, someone from the Titan basketball staff--Holland, assistants Bob Hawking or Chris Brazier, or one of the student managers--is there to meet him.

And when another day of basketball is finished, when the X’s are crossed and the O’s are finished and darkness is fast-breaking its way across the campus, they take him back to catch the evening train home. Day after day. Month after month.

Good mornin’ America, how are you? It’s been 20 years since these two first bounced basketballs together at La Crescenta Crescenta Valley High School, and if you take all of the hours they’ve spent talking basketball on the courts, in the locker rooms, on the telephones and in the pizza joints, what you come up with is this:

While many guys stay in touch with their high school basketball coaches only through the pages of tattered yearbooks, Holland finds his by looking to his right on the Fullerton bench.

And then Holland asks him which is better right now, a zone or man defense?

“I was going to work camps and semi-retire,” Goorjian said. “I was ready to retire, to be honest with you. But Brad and I are pretty close. He’s like a son to me.

“I wouldn’t be taking the train back and forth if it wasn’t him.”

Goorjian--the name is Armenian; he was born in the United States--is a high school legend in California who went 427-103 while at Crescenta Valley. He was the national high school coach of the year in 1978 and, through the years, developed five prep All-Americans and 32 Division I players.

The best of those was Holland, and they were both thrilled when Holland played four seasons at UCLA and then moved on to the NBA, playing for the Lakers--winning an NBA championship in 1980--Washington and Milwaukee.

Years passed, schedules changed. For Goorjian, there were a handful of other coaching stops, from community college to Division I, where he was an assistant to Jerry Tarkanian at Nevada Las Vegas for the past three years. For Holland, there was a marriage, more games, births and career changes.

It was one day last spring when Holland landed his first head coaching job, a three-year deal to rebuild things at Fullerton. In one of his first moves, the rookie coach called the Coach.

“That’s the only piece of the puzzle I knew I wanted to solidify,” Holland said. “When I knew I was close to getting the job, I called Ed and talked to him knowing full well he probably wanted to retire. I felt there was a chance I could talk him out of retirement.”

The only obstacle was that Goorjian didn’t want to move from his Oceanside home. And the thought of commuting through the traffic was worse than a turnover.

So he checked the train schedules.

“Sometimes the trip home gets exciting,” Goorjian explained. “When the train hits somebody, you’ve got to wait until the coroner comes.”

One time, Goorjian was 10 minutes from Oceanside when the train in front of his hit someone. Goorjian’s train turned around, went back to San Clemente and the passengers were forced to take buses home.

Then there was the time the railroad lines were being fixed and the train would stop in Santa Ana, and Goorjian would be forced to take a bus from there to Oceanside.

It isn’t exactly what Goorjian had in mind when he left UNLV after last season. But the telephone rang, a friend spoke and, well, is a teacher’s job ever finished?

“It is like a storybook situation, really, when you think about it,” Goorjian said. “Being a teacher and a coach, one of your pleasures in life is watching people grow and develop. It’s been exciting watching Brad.”

Trains, planes, automobiles. Whatever. Once, it was Goorjian who was the transportation coordinator.

The Holland family moved into the Crescenta Valley district during Brad’s freshman year in 1971 largely because of Goorjian. For about four months, until the Hollands could sell their house, a guy named Ross Peabody was Brad’s wheels to practice. Five days a week, about 30 miles round-trip, and in the Crescenta Valley basketball program, this was as natural as winter rain.

Even though Peabody was a guard. And even though Peabody quickly realized that this guy Holland was going to replace him in the lineup.

“Ross picked Brad up every day,” recalled Ray Holland, Brad’s father. “He always used to joke, ‘I bet no player in high school ever worked himself out of a job.’

“He knew Brad would replace him, but that was the kind of kids at Crescenta Valley.”

When basketball is a way of life, you do what you can. Holland had never had a coach so knowledgeable, so intense. Goorjian had never coached a player so talented.

Their relationship grew. Coach and player. Teacher and pupil. Friends.

Goorjian was a defensive specialist and a disciplinarian. One night when Holland was a sophomore, Crescenta Valley was beaten handily at Hoover.

“We came off the court into the locker room, and Ed was going crazy, absolutely nuts,” said Mike Bastone, a high school teammate of Holland’s, a neighbor of Goorjian’s and a friend to both today. “And there was Brad looking toward him with his head down.

“Ed went off. ‘Keep your head up! Look at me when I talk to you!’ And a second later, Ed called practice. The crowd was leaving the gym, and we were walking out of the gym in our sweats, going back to our place to practice for an hour. Full court, one-on-one drills.

“We all to this day say it’s because of Holland not giving Ed his full attention.”

Goorjian demanded production and commanded respect. Once, he took one of his sons, turned him upside down and dunked him in the whirlpool 10 or 15 times.

“He would have this smirky grin on his face when Ed would yell at him,” Bastone recalled. “Ed was going to wipe the smirk off of his face.”

But there was more than discipline. There were victories and laughs and good times. Before every game, the team would gather at a different player’s house to prepare. During the summers, Goorjian would take his teams to Dodger games. One summer, Goorjian rented the guys a beach house for a few days. Players went to camps, double-dated, hung out.

Bonds strengthened. There was a group of girls at school, the Blue Belles, who would leave treats for the players and cheer for the team. Goorjian had started the group several years earlier. Holland ended up marrying one. Brad and Leslie Holland now have three children.

Goorjian and his wife, Joyce, have three sons. Their oldest, Brian, was voted coach of the year in an Australian professional league in October.

But usually, coaches have many sons.

Goorjian calls Holland “one of the finest young men I’ve ever coached, by far.”

Holland calls Goorjian “easily one of the two or three best coaches I’ve ever played for, if not the best.”

While Holland went off to UCLA, Goorjian took a job at Glendale College and then moved on to Loyola Marymount, first as an assistant and then as the head coach. He saw Holland play with UCLA and the Lakers as much as possible.

The bouncing ball led Holland and Goorjian along different tracks. By the late 1980s, Goorjian found himself coaching a club team in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, working for--true story here--Prince Nawaf.

“Very nice man,” Goorjian said. “First-class.”

He coached through an interpreter for two years in Saudi Arabia.

“It’s amazing,” Goorjian said. “It’s easy to communicate in basketball.”

And so it is.

Twenty years later, Goorjian and Holland are back together and Fullerton is off to a surprising 11-5 start.

“His knowledge of the game, I need,” Holland said. “I felt I needed a senior person with a strong technical background. He has been in the game for more years than I’ve been alive. I wanted to tap into that knowledge.”

Nothing unusual there. Coaches have sayings, and for decades players have heard this from Goorjian: “You’re either going to be the fertilizer or the rose that grows out of it.” Holland learned the difference a long time ago.

“Ed is a wonderful person and a very knowledgeable coach,” Tarkanian said. “I’m sure he’s a big asset to Brad. He’s very good with people and a good individual teacher.

“He gives experience to Brad that it would take Brad years to accumulate. I think it’s a very good move.”

The Fullerton players think so, too.

“Oh man, he’s the greatest,” senior Bruce Bowen said. “I’ve been blessed to have somebody like him assist me with my defensive skills. He has a whole lot of wisdom.”

As the “limited earnings” coach at Fullerton, according to NCAA rules, Goorjian cannot be paid more than $16,000 a year. But he isn’t at Fullerton for the money. You don’t put a price tag on matters of the heart. And he had the glamour two years ago when he was at UNLV, and the Rebels won a national championship.

The only question here would be, would this arrangement be more unusual for Goorjian or for Holland?

“It’s not hard for me,” Goorjian said. “I’m enjoying it. It must be tough for him, though. I’m sure sometimes he’d like to yell at me.”

Said Holland: “It’s strange to me that he’s my assistant, but I got over that after awhile--I needed to get over it. My name is on the program. Everything is going to stop with me or start with me.

“Coach has always been very sensitive to that. ‘Hey Brad, it’s your team, your program, you do what you feel is right.’

“I’m sure it’s been difficult for him at times. He’s probably wanted to yell at me, ‘Wait a minute! You’re just a pup in this game! You want to do what ?”’

But it works. The respect, the chemistry. . . you work with a basketball long enough, you can dribble it with your eyes closed. You work with a person long enough, you know what he’s thinking. Watch them together on the sideline and, periodically, you’ll see Goorjian offer a subtle word or two to Holland aside from the usual frantic coaching.

Goorjian, the defensive whiz, offers tips at practice, scouts, chips in with some advice wherever he can. And after a lifetime in basketball, he says things like “I felt I could help a little bit. I’ve been in the league for three years.”

“Ed is a very, very humble person,” Bastone said. “I think in the back of his mind he’s awfully proud he was asked to coach in that situation and that Brad was willing to accept what he has to offer.”

Said Goorjian: “A good coach is like an actor in the movie business. You have different roles. When you’re young, you get the leading role, you get the girl.

“As you get older, you play characters.”

Or, as the case may be, you have it. As Holland steps to the forefront, Goorjian begins to peel away. The son soon becomes the father; the player becomes the coach.

The wheels are always turning.