Wary Coach Took Oak Park Job With Major Misgivings : Hall’s Fears Allayed by Team’s Success

When Oak Park High was courting Rob Hall four years ago and he found himself eager to say yes, he wondered if he was about to sabotage his coaching career.

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The Oak Park basketball team had just completed an 0-20 season.

Against his better judgment, Hall took the job. He had no idea he would soon be riding the crest of a youth basketball craze running through the Agoura-Oak Park area.

“When I got here, everybody was predicting we would win,” said Hall, who was an assistant at Santa Paula High before Fred Yamano, Oak Park’s athletic director, recruited him.

“People were telling me how lucky I was to be the new coach. All I knew was Santa Paula beat Oak Park by 40 that year.”

Hall’s first team went 7-15. But, by the end of that 1991-92 season, Hall was sharing the future visions of all those people who called him “lucky.”

He discovered sophomores Ryan Garth and Nick Rattray, who were part the first wave of good players coming from a new basketball pipeline in Agoura.

Now seniors, Rattray averaged 10.5 points per game during the regular season; Garth averaged 12.2 points and seven rebounds. Garth exploded in the Eagles’ 84-70 victory over St. Joseph in the first round of the Southern Section Division IV-A playoffs last week with 37 points, seven rebounds, five steals and three blocked shots.

Hall also laid eyes on four freshmen that first season: Shawn Williams, Brandon Creason, Darren Aherne and Brian McMullen. They were Oak Park’s version of a “fab four.” They were products of the burgeoning Agoura Youth Basketball Assn. and had played for a traveling team that once won 62 games in a row.

Hall won’t hesitate to admit two things:

1) Oak Park is good. The Eagles take a 22-2 record into tonight’s Southern Section Division IV-A quarterfinal playoff game against Crossroads. They were undefeated in Tri-Valley League play, winning their first league championship.

2) Yes, he is lucky. How often does a high-school basketball coach find a red carpet rolled out for him when he walks into a gym?

“It’s been a beautiful situation,” Hall said. “These kids all decided early on they wanted to be good basketball players and they’ve worked very, very hard for a long time.”

Oak Park got good in a hurry. The Eagles finished 14-10, reached the playoffs and set a school record for victories in 1992-93, Hall’s second season.

Instant success, thanks mainly to six boys who started playing organized basketball when they were 9. As 10-year-olds, Williams, Aherne, Creason and McMullen launched their four-year, 72-2 run in a traveling league that pitted them against some of the toughest age-group competition in Southern California.

The group boasts no superstars, just guys who play the game with textbook execution and appear to get along as brothers.

“We grew up together and we watched each other develop our games,” Garth said.

“We’ve been good friends for years.”

Not just on the court. Creason and McMullen, for example, camp and surf together at out-of-town beaches during the summer. And on the court, the Eagles play games within a game because their ability to communicate approaches the telepathic.

“Me and Brandon (Creason), we’re almost one,” said Williams, a 6-3 guard/forward. “We look at each other and know instantly what to do, whether it’s an alley-oop, a cutter, a give-and-go. Whatever.”

Said Creason: “Any guy on the team who has the ball, we can tell if he’s going to drive or pass. And if he’s going to pass, we know who the pass is going to. Shawn (Williams) knows all my moves and I know all his moves.”

Creason, the team’s point guard, ranks second on the team in scoring (12.5 points per game) and leads in assists (six). Aherne, a 6-3 forward, leads in rebounds (8.6).

If there is a star in the group, it’s Williams, a strong candidate for Tri-Valley League player of the year.

Williams leads the team with a 16.2 scoring average, ranks second in rebounds (7.8 per game) and assists (three) and leads the team in steals (3.6). But Williams missed the playoff opener and will be out tonight because of mononucleosis.

“I think everybody expected this from us,” Williams said. “We’ve never backed down from anything. We’ve always known what it took to win.”

Five years before Hall arrived as Oak Park’s coach, the seeds to the Eagles’ success were planted by parents such as Bob Philpot, an accountant; Rick Williams, a dress manufacturer; Ken Laibow, who develops and markets hot and cold athletic wraps, and Ed Corridori, Agoura city councilman. Corridori’s sons were solid players for Agoura High.

None have substantial coaching experience, but all shared a desire to make basketball thrive in Agoura Hills. They’ve succeeded.

Agoura Hills, a city of less than 20,000, has built its youth program from about 200 participants to nearly 800. The growth of the league also has bred success at Agoura High, which finished the regular season at 17-7 and won a share of its first Marmonte League championship.

Agoura’s lineup includes Brian Laibow and Ben Richardson, who played with Williams, Creason, Aherne and McMullen on Ken Laibow’s traveling team.

“I’m going to give myself some credit,” Ken Laibow said. “We really taught these boys how to play basketball. We took these kids to the toughest places in L.A. We played in L.A. tournaments. We played in the South Bay league.”

Despite the success, Agoura might never be known as a breeding ground for Division I college players.

“We don’t get Marques Johnson’s kids,” said Philpot, whose son, Aaron, plays at Agoura. “We get book-smart, aggressive kids who might make Division III. But you can take that talent early on and mold it.”

Said Shaun Williams: “Our class started the trend. The younger kids heard about us. They started coming to our games and following us. Then they wanted to follow in our footsteps.”

Today, the parents wonder how good Agoura High’s team might be had Oak Park not opened 12 years ago and diluted the talent pool. Hall has wondered the same thing.

“If you put (Agoura’s team) together with mine and took the best 12. . . . I don’t even want to talk about it,” Hall said.

Hall feels like a charmed coach, but there are certainly times when he feels like an outsider.

Following a 68-50 victory over Bishop Diego in Oak Park’s final home game, after the Eagles cut down the nets in a championship celebration, Hall approached four senior players in a quiet corner. They were talking and embracing, and he noticed tears.

“I walked over and talked to them a couple of minutes and I realized I was out of place,” Hall said. “I said, ‘Guys, stay as long as you want. You can sleep here if you want.’

“Sometimes I feel like I’m just tagging along. But that’s the way it probably should be.”