Whitacre Gives Program Right Spin : Basketball: Villa Park coach, who suffers from vertigo, has turned around girls’ team.

Villa Park girls’ basketball Coach Len Whitacre had the strangest dream as he lay on the ground, unconscious after taking a tumble on his bicycle, while his two sons scrambled to find a phone so they could call 911.

He dreamed he was playing left field for the Chicago Cubs, a team he hated, and there was a runner on second base, and he had just crashed into the ivy wall at Wrigley Field while making the catch. And he had to rise so he could throw the ball into the infield.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘You’ve got to get up because you’re going to look like an idiot when that sucker tags and scores all the way from second,’ ” he said, recalling that Sept. 8, 1991 afternoon. “And then I’m thinking, ‘There were two outs, man; wait for the stretcher.’

“I swear to you, I’m on the ground, and when (paramedics) wake me up, I think I’m playing left field for the Cubs.

“Everything is spinning--there’s only two guys, but it’s like there’s 200 guys running laps around me, and I go ‘Where am I?’ ”

He couldn’t tell paramedics who was president, what day it was, what year it was. And that spinning experience he was feeling was in the embryonic stages of a relationship that has become far more than Whitacre might have ever imagined.

The paramedics explained Whitacre’s situation to him, that he had been in a bicycle accident near his San Juan Capistrano home.

“That’s ridiculous,” Whitacre said. “I don’t ride a bicycle.”

“Your two sons were with you and they said you were riding a bicycle.”

“I don’t have any sons,” he answered, “and if I had any sons, I wouldn’t be spending my time riding bikes with them.”

He was completely delusional and eventually landed in a head trauma unit at Kaiser Permanente in Anaheim. Released after four days, he spent 1 1/2 months in bed. His teeth and the right side of his face--where he landed--are still numb. He developed little idiosyncrasies, such as inverting words in sentences. He occasionally loses things--not objects, but thought, time and orientation.

Whitacre suffers from benign positional vertigo. He has had episodes during which he was dizzy a thousand times a day. He hasn’t had any spells since November, but he knows they’ll be back. He is, as he says, “one of the dizzy people.”

It is quite a tale for an uncommon coach. The vertigo has invaded every avenue of his life--including timeouts during games.

“I’ll just lose it,” Whitacre said. “I don’t know if anyone knows it--or maybe they all know it--but I’ll just look at my assistant and say, ‘Do you have anything to add?’ ”

Whitacre is a walk-on coach at Villa Park. He has run his own business, Computer Group Industries in Laguna Hills, for 18 years and says his condition is analogous to resetting a computer.

“I talked to some people in Oregon,” Whitacre said, telling a story that will end in one of his trademark laughs. “They said there are some people who never get over the original vertigo and they go through their life being dizzy forever and that I should count my blessings because for me, it’s only seasonal--it comes and it goes.”

The vertigo has not affected the outcome of a game since Whitacre’s system has taken hold. In the two years he has headed the program, the Spartans are 27-9, and have won 22 of their last 25 games. Twenty-one of those 22 victories have been by 10 points or more, and in none of the three losses has he been stricken.

The Spartans are 13-2 this season and defending their Century League title. Before Whitacre’s arrival, the program had not had a winning season in nine years; the championship was their second in 30 years.

The “dizzy man” has turned the program upside down--or more appropriately, right side up.

Sue Gardiner has been on campus since 1970. She is in her 11th year as girls’ athletic director at Villa Park.

“I was impressed with his resume: He seemed very articulate, seemed to know basketball and had some coaching experience, and it’s sometimes difficult to find coaching experience in a walk-on,” Gardiner said. “I knew I was taking a little bit of a chance, but after interviewing him and talking to him, I had a feeling about him, that he knew how to go about things and put together a good program from the head coach on down. It was the little things, like how important it was to him to stay involved with the lower level programs; a lot of varsity coaches don’t have anything to do with the freshman or junior varsity teams. He doesn’t even want them practicing at the same time so he can attend all their practices.

Gardiner looked like a genius after she made the hire.

“I didn’t have any idea the turnaround would be so quick,” Gardiner said. “I knew there was some talent, but I was really quite amazed at how fast he made it work.

“The only thing that really concerned me was that he has a very aggressive personality and comes on a little strong, and we’ve had to work together with working with people. He genuinely likes people, but sometimes he gets so intense he wants things to happen immediately, which shows in his wins and losses.

“He certainly ranks as one of the top coaches I’ve ever seen, though. What I’m afraid of is that someone is going to steal him away from me.”

Despite the program’s turnaround, critics say Villa Park is not a top-10 team because the lofty record is the offspring of a weak schedule. Whitacre said next season he will try to get in some of the tougher local tournaments, like Woodbridge, Costa Mesa or Marina.

As intense as he is upbeat, this is only his fifth year coaching, and it’s his first varsity job. He could easily be making more money concentrating on his computer business, but he’s in the gym because he wants to be. Villa Park was the only school that would hire him based on his lukewarm credentials: Three years as a junior varsity coach at Capistrano Valley. He played one year of high school varsity basketball. He admits he’s learning on the job.

“Since the first day I walked on, I think I tried to treat (the players) like they were better basketball players than they thought they were,” he said. “What I’ve tried to explain to them is that if you play aggressive defense, then you don’t have to have the kind of skill level that it takes to play soft defense and win basketball games.

“When I came here, there was no feeder program, and there is very little feeder program now. Athletes that play basketball here are often playing competitively for the first time, so I just tried to select a team that has as much athleticism as we can get, and then convince them that athleticism was enough to play basketball--that if you weren’t a great ballhandler or shooter, you had to play your rear-end off.

“If you make a mistake on the court, I will not hold it against you. but if you quit working hard, you will not play. They have come to believe that.”

He made his point last year by benching the Spartans’ best player, Tara Earl, in the last five minutes of a game in which they trailed but eventually won.

“Afterward, I told her every time she stopped and pouted, she would sit the rest of the game, and I didn’t care who we lost to or by how much,” Whitacre said. “She had to work hard all the time to stay on the court.

“The other thing we decided is nobody’s ever going to embarrass us; if we play as hard as we can, then we have pride in our effort. Nobody can embarrass you if you’re working hard. You can only be embarrassed if you quit. And they believe that. And after last season, we worked real hard to learn to shoot and dribble.”

Whitacre laughed.

“I’m 45 years old,” he said. “I’ve been here for two years. My plan was to be somewhere for 20 years. I’m in midlife, I’m stable, and I lose a lot of income coaching. I have six children. I coach 10 months a year.

“Next to being in the delivery room with my wife, it’s the greatest experience with the human spirit that I’ve ever had.”