Trouble for His Toil : Bernardi Trying to Rally as Burroughs Coach After Losing USC Job, Separating From Wife

Too many times Gary Bernardi wished he could have stayed in bed. It would have been better than to face a life in which hard work and dedication produced failure and heartache.

But Bernardi was wide awake Monday at 4:15 a.m., several hours before work began on his first day as head football coach at Burroughs High. Might as well get started early, he thought. He couldn’t go back to sleep if he tried.

And it won’t be the last time Bernardi tosses and turns, and then awakens in the darkness. To say goodby to one precious slice of life and begin again at the bottom is not a dusk-to-dawn process.

Bernardi was fired last winter from his job as an assistant coach at USC. In May, his wife asked for a separation.

And now Bernardi, 38, will begin picking up the pieces of a dismantled career as a physical education teacher and the coach of a football team that finished 0-10 last year.

“It’s hard when your personal life and professional life drastically change at the same time,” Bernardi said. “But you’ve got to keep going.”

You’ve got to keep going.

He must have uttered those words a hundred times in the Trojan locker room. This time, his voice hoarse, his body tired after an 18-hour day, his emotions strained, Bernardi was drawing on his instincts. Coaching himself.

This is not a football game. This is life. But life for Bernardi had seemed like a breakaway run in the open field. He was a hard-working assistant for one of the nation’s most heralded college football programs.

The end of the run came as no surprise. Bernardi lost his job when Larry Smith lost his.

The Trojans failed to get to the Rose Bowl for the third consecutive year. They lost to UCLA for the second year in a row and were toppled by bitter rival Notre Dame for the 10th straight time. University officials and alumni were embarrassed.

The pink slip that came last winter and left him jobless, however, was nothing compared to the hit Bernardi absorbed in the spring when his wife, Leigh, left.

“For the most part, I was blind-sided,” said Bernardi, a Saugus resident. “We were married 11 1/2 years.”

Bernardi did take solace in the fact he gained joint custody of his three children: daughter Marina, 9, and twins Joe and Briana, 6. Through the ordeal, and with free time away from football, Bernardi grew closer to his children.

“I’ve been with my kids,” he said, “all day, every day.”

But with the start of two-a-day practices, the children are staying with their mother.

“This is going to be a tough two weeks,” he said. “I’ve had my eyes opened about what I’ve missed when I was coaching. It’s been a great summer. Your kids are the greatest thing ever.

“But, at the same time, I haven’t got coaching out of my system.”

Bernardi said he, as did other USC assistants, had offers to coach at other colleges out of state, but he decided to stay put and find a teaching job because of his family.

Before his hiring at Burroughs last month, Bernardi took every substitute teaching assignment he could get at Placerita Junior High in Saugus. In between, he worked as a voluntary aide in his children’s classes.

Monday, as he opened training with his new players--some of them putting on pads for the first time--Bernardi was approached by a USC alum apparently on a goodwill mission. But the booster’s conversation sparked only bitterness.

“He made some statements and . . . it’s over with,” Bernardi said. “He just irritated me. It’s hard for me to even look at anything about the Pac-10. It’s hard when I watch TV and look at the sports page. Other guys went to other jobs. I’m here. For my family, it’s best. But I can’t vindicate myself here.”

Bernardi can’t escape the hype surrounding the return of Coach John Robinson to USC and the expectation of more national championships. He wonders if those expectations are reasonable.

“I don’t know what deck of cards (Robinson) will play--the one he and (former USC Coach John) McKay had or the one Larry Smith used,” he said.

Bernardi resents all attacks on Smith’s tenure. For six years, he dedicated his life to coaching Trojan tight ends, linemen, special teams and recruiting in the Valley.

It was a wonderful job for Bernardi, who grew up in the Valley watching USC.

He was an all-league receiver at Monroe High in 1970 and played at College of the Canyons. After he transferred to Cal State Northridge and stopped playing football, Bernardi served as an assistant at Bell-Jeff High.

In 1980, Smith gave Bernardi his start in big-time coaching at Arizona, hiring Bernardi as his administrative assistant. By 1986, the year USC plucked Smith away from the Wildcats to replace Ted Tollner, Bernardi was Arizona’s recruiting coordinator.

At USC, Bernardi would comb his old stomping grounds for talent. Taft High Coach Troy Starr praised Bernardi’s work ethic as a recruiter, saying there were few players he overlooked.

“He would take a look at anybody,” Starr said. “And he would spend time with you even if you didn’t have a prospect that year. He was a quality coach and he worked hard.

“But, SC’s a difficult place to be right now. And I think most important was his loyalty to Coach Smith. He never said anything about him when things were going bad. Loyalty is a top quality for a coach.”

In six seasons at USC, Smith was 41-25-2 (.602 winning percentage) and led the Trojans to three Pac-10 championships. But six losses to Notre Dame and four defeats in five bowl games were Smith’s undoing.

“Hey, we accomplished some things,” Bernardi said. “We did go to the Rose Bowl three times. I’m from Southern California, and those things are important to me too.

“I appreciate what USC stood for--their tight-knit family attitude and their (striving) for success. I always attempted to uphold that tradition, the feeling of prestige of the school.

“It still smarts. I tried my darndest. Overall, we did a lot of good things.”

But circumstances have now changed Bernardi’s motivation. Career goals have moved much closer to home.

“You have to support your family,” he said, explaining why he took the Burroughs job.

Pac-10 autumns are a thing of the past. For a while at least, Friday night games with a high school team that has won only three games the past three seasons will test Bernardi’s love for football.

“It’s a challenge,” he said. “You have to push yourself. But I like it as long as I keep getting a great effort from the kids. For the most part, the kids are good at Burroughs. Coaching is teaching. And I like to teach.”

Right now, Bernardi might not display as much enthusiasm as his colleagues. But those coaches haven’t traveled the same road.

“(Monday) was a real tough day,” he said. “But considering the situation, things are going smoothly. The children are doing all right. I’m sure they wish that things were different, and so do I.

“They like being around the football. They used to love USC.”