No More Horsing Around : After 23 Losses, Muller Has Led St. Genevieve to Santa Fe Title Game

Not too long ago, Brigid Muller became the first to wear the mascot’s outfit at St. Genevieve High. Dressed in a horse-and-rider costume, she trotted along the sidelines at Valiant football games.

Meantime, her younger brother Alex was a ball boy.

How things change.

Today, Brigid, 23, is a first-grade teacher. She rarely wears a horse costume.

Alex is St. Genevieve’s senior quarterback. And the Valiants rarely lose.

These are the same Valiants, by the way, who seemed unable to win last year, when their losing streak reached 23 games. Now, St. Genevieve is 7-2, 4-0 in the Santa Fe League and playing Murphy for the league championship at 7:30 tonight at Jackie Robinson Stadium.

That is the shocking part. What is no surprise is someone named Muller is leading the turnaround. Alex, who is 6-foot-3, 185 pounds and in the midst of his second consecutive 1,000-yard passing season, is the fourth of 11 children and, so far, all who are old enough have been Valiants. Literally or figuratively.

After Brigid, there was Dominic, now 21, who played quarterback and receiver for St. Genevieve. He was followed by Christina, 20, and Alberta, 19, who both played basketball and volleyball at the Panorama City parochial school.

After Alex, 17, there is Joseph, 16, a junior receiver who is his older brother’s favorite target. Patrick, 15, is a freshman receiver on the junior varsity team. He likely will be promoted to the varsity to join his brothers for the playoffs.

Robert, 13; Rosemary, 11; Virginia, 9, and William, 7, are St. Genevieve Mullers of the future.

The Mullers and St. Genevieve seem forever connected. Most members of the football teams, varsity and junior varsity, have been in the Mullers’ Panorama City home, either for a Halloween party or to study or for a cookout. Muller treats his linemen to steak dinners when they can keep him from being sacked in a game.

Believe it or not, parked alongside the house is a 1965 Plymouth Valiant. Honest. Dominic bought it a few years ago, then gave it to Alex, who doesn’t drive it because he has been too busy to get his license.

Muller has other things on his mind. Besides being senior class president and a role model for everyone at St. Genevieve, he has been singing to handicapped children and helping the police break up car-stripping rings in his neighborhood.

And this is a guy who used to think there were few things better than a good fistfight. A guy who was kicked off his flag football team because he insisted on tackling. An admitted troublemaker.

A turnaround of personality makes perfect sense, however, for someone who has helped turn around a football program.

“He’s just got that air about him,” Coach Richard Fong said. “It’s kind of hard to put a finger on. Everyone just looks to Alex.”

*

Alex Muller grew up much like most kids in America. Except it probably seemed like he was growing up with most kids in America.

His father, Alexander, moved to Southern California from Berlin, Germany, when he was a child. He met his wife, Christine, and the two spent most of the Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter presidencies filling up their house.

“I got accustomed to changing diapers,” Alex said.

Alex’s immediate family is just the start, though. His mother is also one of 11 children. Muller guesses he has about 100 cousins, most of whom live in California. Family reunions? A mess.

“It’s a lot of people,” he said. “Sometimes I forget their names.”

Ages, too. When asked to list the names and ages of those in his immediate family, he had the ages wrong for seven of his 10 siblings. He also misspelled his oldest sister’s name.

Give him a break, though. At least they seem to get along.

Although eight of them live in the same house--Dominic, Christina and Alberta are away at college--they seem to give one another enough room. The house looks like what it is, a home that has grown in chunks.

When Alexander, who runs his own upholstery business, moved his wife and seven children into their home 15 years ago, it had three bedrooms. There are now seven bedrooms, four bathrooms and two phone lines.

Three of the bedrooms are empty, though. Alex and Joseph, who are more like best friends than brothers, moved into a one-room house in the back yard over the summer. It has a television, a VCR, a refrigerator, a couch and a bunk bed. Even a pinball machine. Picture a college dormitory room and you’ve got it.

The other bedrooms are unoccupied because Patrick and Robert and Rosemary and Virginia choose to share rooms. Talk about tranquillity.

“We have our arguments, but we all get along,” Alex said.

Sure, Patrick busted Alex’s nose in a fight once, but that was an isolated incident. And Alex was smacked in the forehead by the butt end of an ax, but, come to think of it, he did that to himself.

“They’ve learned to work out their own problems,” Alex’s mother said. “Mom can’t always be the referee.”

Alex’s aggressions seemed to be reserved for those outside the family. When he was younger, one of his uncles told him he looked like he was destined to be a boxer.

“For a while, Alex thought punching was the thing to do,” his mother said. “He’s got a lot of intensity. He always has his whole life.”

Muller admits he used to go to the park, start talking and start catching fists with his face.

“I had a big mouth,” he said. “I used to get beaten up a lot.”

Patrick remembers when Alex was fighting two guys at once. Joseph, of course, was doing all he could to encourage Alex, yelling, “Go. Go. Go.” Other times, Joseph would come into the house and say, “Mom, Alex is in another fight. Someone said something about his mother.”

Perhaps one of the reasons Alex didn’t mind fighting was his high tolerance for pain, his mother guesses. When he was 5 and started bleeding after hitting himself in the head with the ax--he vaguely remembers he was trying to build something-- all he could think to say to Joseph was “Don’t tell Mom. Don’t tell Mom.”

In seventh grade, Muller broke his left leg but was allowed to play baseball while wearing a cast. He hit, then someone would run for him. Apparently, though, Muller grew tired of that. With the use of a stick, he and Joseph removed the cast. Two weeks early.

“I broke a stick in there and told my mom I had to take it off because I would have gotten wood poisoning,” he said.

When Muller started playing flag football, he had some trouble with the concept. He insisted on tackling. That’s what football was, he thought. Tackling.

After his coach tried in vain to familiarize Muller with pulling the flags, he kicked him off the team. Muller left, but not without leaving a few words for the coach, though. Joseph then quit the team, too, in protest.

Muller maintains his skill for tackling. He is only sorry that, as a quarterback, he rarely has the chance to hit anyone. Making a rare appearance on defense last year against Cathedral, which was the team St. Genevieve beat to end its streak, Muller won the team’s “Black Mask” award for the best hit of the game. He hit a Cathedral player so hard his helmet popped off. Muller’s helmet, that is.

The sight of his quarterback’s helmet flying off could be one of the images Fong recalled when insisting Muller stay on offense. Doesn’t matter, though. Muller knocked an Oak Park defender out of the game after Muller threw an interception in the opener this year.

Muller had ample practice chasing players who had caught his passes. Last year he was thrown into a starting role as a junior because of an injury to Ivan Garcia. Often trying to force a play out of nothing, Muller threw 23 interceptions, making a significant contribution to consecutive losses 15 through 23.

“His first varsity game he was nervous and I could tell,” Fong said. “Now he’s like an old pro. He’s not nervous. He’s confident in himself. Now it doesn’t seem like things are happening too fast for him. He’s able to pick up a blitz and still make reads.”

Muller has completed 81 of 158 passes for 1,146 yards and thrown only seven interceptions this year. Three of those were in the first game, an 18-14 loss to Oak Park.

St. Genevieve offensive coordinator John Phalen said Muller has improved dramatically since that Oak Park game. Last week, Muller completed nine of 10 passes for 183 yards with two touchdowns and (drum roll) zero interceptions.

“He has a real sense on the field now,” Phalen said.

To say Muller is a Division I prospect would be, at best, optimistic and probably unrealistic. His arm strength is above average, but not eye-popping, Phalen said.

Muller, who was electronically timed at 4.6 seconds in the 40-yard dash at a UCLA camp, said he receives about five letters a week from colleges, including most of the Pacific 10 Conference schools, but little more.

“I don’t know how serious (the recruiting) is,” Muller said. “I’d like to go to UCLA, but I don’t know. It’s pretty hard from a small school.”

His other dream is to play at Notre Dame. Or do anything at Notre Dame. “I’d be the trainer there,” Muller said.

A recruiter from Washington State came to scout Muller at a practice last spring. He watched him throw one wobbly pass and left. Muller’s strengths are his intangibles. The intensity that used to drive Alex into fights at parks is what now pushes him on the football field.

“I’ll tell the guys, ‘This is the play of the game,’ ” Muller said. “I’ll grab each lineman by the facemask and say, ‘Just do your job.’ ”

Against Cathedral this season, the Valiants took the ball at their 12-yard line with 1 minute 13 seconds to play in the half. Out of a no-huddle offense, Muller drove the team 88 yards for a touchdown.

“When he brings the offense out there, we get the feeling like it’s an automatic six points,” senior safety John Arboleda said. “We all respect him because he’s led the team and he’s helped us so much.”

Against Eagle Rock, the score was tied, 14-14, in the fourth quarter and the Valiants were not moving the ball. The coaching staff called a naked bootleg. Alex will get us going, they figured.

Muller ran 60 yards. The Valiants won, 25-14.

His favorite plays, however, are the ones in which he is throwing to his brother, Joseph, who has caught 37 passes for 457 yards. “He never drops anything,” Alex said. “I have more confidence in him than any of the other guys. It shouldn’t be that way, but it’s natural.”

Most of the time now, the coaches send Muller a sequence of plays, allowing him to choose the one he likes at the line of scrimmage. “Alex is the spiritual leader out there,” Fong said. “When he’s out there, the kids just have total confidence in him.”

Two weeks ago, Muller had trouble breathing after a game and was taken to a hospital because of a bronchial infection. He was fine, but he missed a day of school and his followers worried. “Everyone looks up to Alex,” Patrick said. “Everyone was asking, ‘How’s your brother? How’s your brother? Is he going to be OK?’ ”

Muller hardly ever uses his fists anymore. In fact, like something out of a hokey screenplay, he is considering a career in law enforcement. When his brother was hassled by some gang members a few years ago, Muller and his mother found them and had a couple of them arrested.

Later, he and his mother reported a nearby car-stripping operation to the police, leading to another arrest.

Further enhancing his Mr. Clean image, Muller spends his free time helping his mother, a special education teacher at the West Valley School in Van Nuys, with handicapped children. He sings to them, goes on field trips with them, whatever is needed.

Muller’s mother said one 3 1/2-year-old autistic girl will rarely interact with anyone but Alex.

“She holds his hand and sits with him whenever he comes,” she said.

Muller volunteers to fill a school community service requirement, but he said he also enjoys the children. “Every day that I don’t have school, I go over there,” he said. “I just relate to kids well.”

He ought to, given the size of his family. Understandably, Muller has had plenty of experience helping his younger brothers and sisters. One of particular interest is Robert, his 13-year-old brother. Robert, you see, is the quarterback for his seventh-grade flag football team.

Although he has some trouble holding onto the “big football” when he plays catch in the yard with Alex, Robert dominates with the smaller ball, against his smaller opponents. Robert is already 5-8 and wears size 12 shoes.

Asked if he is going to play just like his big brother, Alex, one day, Robert grins and says, “Better.”

St. Genevieve awaits. The cycle continues.