Coach Points Inmates Toward New Goals : Youth: Glenn Bell’s football program at Camp Kilpatrick offers a way to learn discipline and gain self-esteem.

Tucked into the lonesome canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains is Camp Kilpatrick, a maximum-security center for juvenile offenders where a Camarillo man is trying to turn lives around with football.

Glenn Bell is head football coach at Camp Kilpatrick, a Los Angeles County facility in Malibu where boys age 12 to 18 are sent for crimes ranging from joy-riding to carrying guns. The inmates, wearing blue pants and white T-shirts, march in formation to classes and work details. They live behind a 16-foot-high barbed wire fence.

For 34 of the 120 inmates, Bell’s football program is a way to learn discipline and gain self-esteem.

His coaching staff is made up of four probation officers. Since inmates are sentenced to Camp Kilpatrick for no more than 52 weeks, Bell has no returning players from year to year. Few of his players have any formal football experience.

And the resources at Camp Kilpatrick are less than ideal. The 70-yard practice field slopes downhill. There are no locker rooms and only bare-bones equipment.

“It is a difficult task maintaining a football program here at CK,” said Bell, a Camarillo resident since 1988. “As a program, we have no following, and therefore it’s tough to schedule games because we generate no revenue.”

Camp Kilpatrick competes as an independent in the California Interscholastic Football Southern Section Division 11. But the team’s opponents often include larger schools such as St. Bonaventure High School in Ventura, Montclair Prep in the San Fernando Valley and Burroughs High in Burbank. Most of its games are at the opponent’s school, but when Camp Kilpatrick does have a home game, it is played at Newbury Park High School.

Bell, who also teaches math, science and business, takes his job possibilities beyond the sidelines and classroom to try to teach youths a productive lifestyle.

“Our program is not about producing championship teams; it’s about producing championship people,” Bell said. “We use sports as a medium to help teach them discipline and teamwork.”

On his own time, Bell, a 45-year-old father of two, takes seniors on furloughs to visit colleges.

“These guys think that college means USC or UCLA,” Bell said. “They are not aware of the (NCAA) Division II and III schools that will offer them an opportunity to get a college education and compete athletically.”

In December, most of his students will take the Scholastic Aptitude Test as a prelude to seeking college admission.

Bell, one of eight children, was born and raised in South-Central Los Angeles. He graduated from Manual Arts High and attended East Los Angeles College before earning a bachelor of science degree from Whittier College. Bell was a star flanker and defensive back on Whittier’s 1969 football team, which won the Southern California Interscholastic Athletic Conference Division 3 championship.

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He began his coaching career as an assistant at Compton High, then served three seasons at his high school alma mater and six years at Palisades High, where he became the school’s first black head coach.

In 1982, Bell took the helm of the Dorsey High football team and, in his first year, led Dorsey to the city championship. In 1984, high blood pressure forced him to resign his coaching position and prevented him from coaching for the next three years.

In 1988, with his pressure stabilized, Bell accepted an assistant coaching position at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. In 1990, he became Camp Kilpatrick’s offensive coordinator and in 1992 was promoted to head coach.

Bell said his experiences working at his father’s barbershop in East L. A. prepared him to deal with people of diverse backgrounds.

“Since I was a kid, I worked in my father’s barbershop,” he said. “All cross-sections of life come into a barbershop for a haircut. I learned quickly to deal with all types of people. I still reflect today on those experiences and use them with these kids.”

Duane Diffie, Camp Kilpatrick’s athletic director, agrees.

“He relates well with the kids,” Diffie said. “He can talk with them because he came from the area where a lot of them came from.”

Alex Williams, a former Minnesota Vikings wide receiver who is a probation officer and assistant coach at Camp Kilpatrick, said Bell is a father figure to his players. Sometimes fathers have to be strict.

Before one recent game, Bell had to leave behind three of his starters because they had broken camp rules. “We simply won’t tolerate that,” Bell said.

“Our discipline approach is to take something away from them that they care about. They care about football, and they look forward to game day. It gives them an opportunity to get away from this place and experience the ‘real world’ again.”

Michael Webber, 18, is one of the students and players who say they have benefited under Bell’s guidance. “I like the coach. He listens to me,” Webber said. “If I have a personal problem, or if I just need a head to cry on, he is there for me. He has taught me to make this negative into a positive.”

On a recent bus trip to a game, Bell had the driver detour past Fred C. Nellis School, a maximum-security state juvenile facility in Whittier that is considered to be among the roughest in California.

It made an impression.

“When the bus came to a stop right next to Nellis, I told the guys to take a good look,” Bell said. “If you don’t take care of business here (at Camp Kilpatrick), this is where you will graduate to.”

Webber remembers the moment. “The bus grew silent in an instant. Everybody knows about Nellis,” he said. “I just got the chills when we went by there. I know I didn’t ever want to be there.”

After making the playoffs in 1992, Bell’s team struggled this year with a record of three wins and six losses. But he doesn’t seem to get discouraged.

“My goal is to make these young men outstanding citizens, ones you would be proud to live next door to.”

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Diffie said the football “has got nothing to do with winning or losing football games. It has to do with making it on the outside. He helps them do that.”

The one aspect of the system that Bell feels is lacking is follow-up care.

“I just wish we had more of an ‘after-care’ support system set up for these young men,” he said.

“Hardly a day passes when I don’t get a call from a former player or student,” Bell said. “A lot of them are struggling, but they call to let me know how they’re doing. Some call for help. I just wish I had more resources to help them adjust.”