At Home Where the Antelopes Play : Firm and Friendly, Brent Newcomb Stands as a Pillar of the Community After 25 Years of High-Desert Football

The photo of the antelope is taped to the window of the coaches’ office at Antelope Valley High. It isn’t the most intimidating beast on the face of the earth.

Actually, it looks like Bambi.

The cute little thing--the school mascot--doesn’t have much in the way of antlers and would make a poor hat rack, yet football Coach Brent Newcomb has hung his cap in these parts for a quarter-century.

Underneath the photo are four handwritten lines, designated by Newcomb as this season’s creed:

Antelope born,

Antelope bred,

I’ll be an Antelope,

Till I’m dead.

“We give the guys something different to rally ‘round every year,” Newcomb said.

Truth be told, Newcomb, 51, is a far cry from his own war cry. He wasn’t born in the area and wasn’t raised there. And judging by the success of his football program, Newcomb isn’t anywhere near ready for last muster.

Yet after every practice and every game, Newcomb leads the incantation, like a preacher in his pulpit. Players fervently repeat each line.

The weathered old field general has been coaching at Antelope Valley for 25 years, the past 16 as head honcho, and he revels in his reputation as a no-nonsense guy.

“What you see is what you get,” said Ed t’Sas, coach of the sophomore team and one of Newcomb’s former players.

What people have seen, and what they have received, are victories and Southern Section titles. Tonight, the Antelopes (7-1) will visit Quartz Hill (8-0) in a game that could decide the Golden League title, which the Antelopes have won or shared the past two seasons.

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Newcomb might seem the old fogy but his team knows otherwise. Play by the rules and he’s easy to get along with.

On more than a few occasions, Newcomb has caught players mimicking his gesticulations in practice. He doesn’t seem to mind a bit.

“I’m sure they have a great time mocking the old coach,” he said.

Make no mistake, his rapport with players is strong. He wheedles and cajoles, challenges and teases, depending on the occasion and the individual.

Fair, firm and friendly. Words to teach by. Newcomb’s words, in fact.

“Some of these kids don’t have a dad to put an arm around ‘em,” Newcomb said. “A pat on the back or a kick in the butt is worth six inches sometimes.”

An extra foot or two can decide a game, and 25 years on the sideline have taught Newcomb a wrinkle or two. A few years ago, rain was forecast for the night of a crucial game. Newcomb had players dip footballs in buckets of water during practice all week. Sure enough, it rained, and Antelope Valley had victory in its clutches.

When the Santa Anas blow, he makes sure the kicker, punter and quarterback are pointed into the wind.

“We hate the wet-ball drill,” quarterback Mike Gleich said. “But it works.”

On Thursdays, practices are held under the lights as a dress rehearsal. Little things, sure, but Newcomb tries to cover all of the bases.

Subtlety and nuance, though, aren’t Newcomb’s primary calling cards. He prefers to win with plain hard work and religious preparation, even if it means walking the lunatic fringe.

Newcomb has developed one particularly demented habit that would make most coaches wince. During football season, he rises about 2 a.m. on weekdays to watch game films. When he gets home from practice about 7 p.m., he eats, then hits the sack at 8 or 9.

“The rule of thumb is this: ‘Never call Brent after 8:30,’ ” assistant George Fetters said.

Nightly, Newcomb’s thumb can be found on his remote control. Fast forward. Rewind. Enough to give normal folks pause. For the coach, AV also stands for audiovisual.

“I get my best work done when it’s quiet, when it’s about 2 to 4 o’clock in the morning,” Newcomb said. “It’s my house. I’m in my chair, with a cup of coffee, relaxed . . .”

When it’s football season, there’s precious little relaxation. His work ethic, no doubt, is attributable to his blue-collar background. Newcomb grew up in rural Coolidge, Ariz., near an Apache Indian reservation on the Salt River. His ancestors helped settle the area.

“Pretty backward country,” he said.

This old salt always seemed headed straight ahead, though. As a teen-ager, he picked cotton at the less-than-princely sum of three cents a pound. He drove a tractor 14 hours a day at $1 an hour.

“That helped make this seven-days-a-week football stuff survivable,” he said. “I’m not afraid to spend some time with something.”

His assistants marvel at the coach’s tireless commitment.

“He is definitely dedicated to giving these kids their best opportunity to win,” said t’Sas, quarterback of the 1976 championship team. “I’ve never seen him outcoached. When we lose, it’s usually to superior talent.”

When they win, it’s not with superior numbers. Though Antelope Valley plays at the Southern Section’s highest level, Division I, and has 2,700 students, there are only 32 players on the varsity.

If Newcomb has said it once, he’s said it 100 times: “Kids today just don’t want to follow the rules.”

His rules, to be specific. Simply put, the former Vietnam artillery officer believes in the canons of old-school football. “We don’t cut anybody,” Newcomb said. “The kids cut themselves.”

And they had better cut their hair. Newcomb’s Law: No earrings, ponytails or bandannas. All players are required to address their elders--teachers, coaches, reporters and referees--as “sir.” Only team captains are allowed to speak with officials.

“He doesn’t put up with (nonsense) at all,” Gleich said. “You’re out of here if you’re not serious.”

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Newcomb has a record of 120-64-1, but when he took over the program 16 years ago, he was wondering if he’d bitten off more than he could chew. His mentor, former Coach John Lowry, had posted back-to-back Southern Section titles in 1976 and 1977, then accepted a coaching position in Las Vegas.

Lancaster is in the middle of the Mojave Desert, but the Antelope Valley football program was at a high-water mark. Coaches dropped by to study the school’s weightlifting program. Attendance was booming. Six teams were fielded at various levels.

Still, Newcomb took the reins.

“He started a nightmare,” Newcomb said of the pressure to duplicate Lowry’s success. “It started snowballing. We were beating everybody. We had the largest school, but we probably had the best programs.”

Newcomb didn’t exactly drop the ball. Antelope Valley won the Northwestern Conference title in 1981 and lost in the conference final in 1985 and 1986. In 1988, the Antelopes won the Division II title.

In short, the team made four championship appearances in eight seasons, though a drought followed. Antelope Valley went a combined 5-15 in 1989 and 1990, then rebounded to win or share the Golden League title the next two seasons.

Through the highs and lows, Newcomb continued to schedule the toughest competition he could find. This season, Antelope Valley played nonleague games against three teams ranked in the state top 20.

The Antelopes are the only team in the region to have beaten both Bishop Amat (in the 1991 playoffs) and Loyola (1993 nonleague game) this decade.

Bishop Amat hasn’t lost since. The Antelopes are ranked ninth in the state, higher than any other team in the region.

“We’ve had moderate success,” Newcomb said, shrugging.

There might not be a more unpretentious coach in the region. Give Newcomb a good cigar, a couple of cold beers and a glassy lake, and he couldn’t be happier.

In the off-season, he switches from night owl to night crawlers and goes fishing to decompress.

Everybody needs time to recharge, especially after those bleary-eyed, 80-hour weeks.

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A pretty fair all-around athlete while growing up in Arizona, Newcomb was recruited by several Pacific 8 Conference schools. Even in high school, though, he seemed destined for the coaching ranks.

As a freshman, he injured a knee. He suffered a broken leg as a sophomore, a severe concussion as a junior, and a broken arm as a senior. Evel Knievel had stronger karma, if not calcium.

Clearly, Newcomb was born to call the plays, not execute them. After graduating from Northern Arizona and completing a voluntary tour of duty in Vietnam, Newcomb in 1969 did what his ancestors had done--he headed west.

He has been at Antelope Valley since. The running gag among the coaching staff is that Newcomb has been in Lancaster so long, he’s practically an Antelope himself.

That would make him a member of a large fraternity. Everywhere Newcomb turns, including his own bedroom, he runs into products of the school and its athletics program. Of the nine football coaches on Newcomb’s staff, seven are Antelope Valley graduates. Even Newcomb’s wife, Pam, is an Antelope.

They seem to be everywhere, as Gleich found out before a recent game against Highland. Newcomb pointed out to the quarterback that two of the game officials were Antelope Valley graduates.

So is Highland Coach Lin Parker, whose grandfather, father and children attended Antelope Valley.

Parker, one of Newcomb’s trusted assistants before taking over at Highland, has an antelope head mounted on the wall of his den.

“I heard Bear Bryant talk once, and he said the number-one thing you have to do is surround yourself with winners,” said Newcomb, reeling off the names of his assistants like a kid boasting about his vintage baseball cards.

“They’re Antelopes. They’re dedicated to the program, they’re strong disciplinarians and they know how much time you have to spend with it.”

Four years ago, t’Sas was coaching in Porterville, Calif., when Newcomb encouraged him to apply for an opening at Antelope Valley. Voila! A former star comes home.

“When I think of AV football, I think of Brent Newcomb,” t’Sas said.

Last Sunday night, a tiny gremlin in a Halloween costume knocked on the door of Newcomb’s home, just down the street from campus. Newcomb forked over the candy to the little stranger.

Said the kid: “Thanks, Coach.”

“It’s kind of nice being a mini-celebrity,” Newcomb said.

Newcomb and his staff are particularly well-known at the Buffalo Club, a Lancaster watering hole. Every Thursday night, they convene at the club for “Camaraderie Night,” as Newcomb calls it. “We’ve had some great times.”

Always, before anyone can bend an elbow, Newcomb makes everyone lift a glass and toast the antelope head mounted on the wall. “Ritual,” Fetters said.

If not superstition. Newcomb has, shall we say, a few more peccadilloes.

A few years ago, a local sporting goods company offered to outfit the Antelope staff in stylish new coaching togs. No charge.

No thanks, Newcomb said.

It seems that Newcomb refuses to change outfits when the team is playing well. This season, for instance, he has worn the same red underwear--red is one of the school colors--every Friday night.

Early in the year, Newcomb started putting loose change in his shoe for good luck. Players started bringing all the money they had found on the campus grounds. Another quirk--the coins had to be found heads up.

“When we beat Loyola, I think he had 49 cents in his shoe,” Gleich said.

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These are high times in the High Desert. The house is rocking. Generally.

A group of students routinely sets up a thundering music system on the sidelines to entertain fans and students during home games. Players, of course, have their favorite tunes.

So does Newcomb--and seniority rules. They want Queen, but he’s the King.

“We go for songs like, ‘We Will Rock You,’ ” Gleich said. “But he makes us play country music. Man, he has his own tape he gives them.”

Yup, mixed among the hip-hop tunes and rock anthems is country twang and western warble.

When the disc jockey played the offbeat combination before a big game against Bakersfield, students quizzically looked at one another as a country song kicked in.

Then the strangest thing happened. A group of them started doing the do-si-do, elbows entwined, right at the foot of the grandstands.

Welcome to Antelope Valley, where the coach is square and so is the dancin’.

“You know, everybody keeps telling me that you can’t coach like you did 25 years ago,” Newcomb said. “But I know this: I’ve stayed the same, and I believe it’s paid off.”