A Desert High : Kyman Finds Fresh Air, Fresh Start to His Career and Life at Littlerock

How is renewal sought?

Bernie Kyman took a hard drive to the Antelope Valley from his Northridge home of two decades, bore east past gravel quarries, stray dogs and a dilapidated county raceway, and kept going until the paved road ends at Avenue R and 110th Street East.

He looked left and there sat immaculate Littlerock High, what Kyman’s friend and colleague Jim Bauer calls “an oasis among all this.”

It is an oasis from grief for Kyman, 53, whose wife of 27 years went to bed on a May night in 1990 and never woke up after two aneurysms burst at the base of her brain. Patricia Kyman went into a coma and died 11 days later at 47.

And it is a place to rekindle a love for coaching that for 30 years had Kyman hopscotching among two colleges and six high schools.

Kyman was hired as a teacher at Littlerock in 1991 and this year became the baseball coach, his first head coaching job since 1987 and eighth of his career.

“Everything is new here,” he says contentedly.

There is a new home in Palmdale, a new team sporting a 5-2 record, and a new wife, Sandy.

“Our first date, we went to Saugus Speedway, and we’ve been racing around ever since,” Kyman says with a wry grin.

It might be poetic to say Kyman never looked back, but he does, returning each year to teach summer school at Chaminade, where he was athletic director from 1980-87.

It gives him a chance to visit his numerous friends in the Valley, reconnecting the dots of his nomadic career.

Kyman attended L.A. High, Santa Monica City College and San Fernando Valley State (now Cal State Northridge), playing football and baseball at every stop.

The shortstop at San Fernando Valley State was Bob Hiegert, now the Northridge athletic director, and the third baseman was Tony Davila, now women’s tennis coach at Northridge. Kyman played first base.

On the football team, Kyman played center and linebacker. Joel Schaeffer, the Reseda High football coach of 16 years, played guard and linebacker. Gary Torgeson, Northridge softball coach, played tackle.

Kyman’s first coaching job came in 1965 at Murphy High, and in 1972 he left, beginning a journey that would take him to L.A. High, St. Bonaventure High, Pierce College, Moorpark High, Alemany High, Pierce (again), Chaminade, Cal Lutheran and Chaminade (again) before Littlerock.

He is an assistant football coach at Littlerock under Bauer, who in his first year of coaching in 1972 assisted Kyman at St. Bonaventure.

“Since 1955, I’ve either played or coached football and baseball somewhere,” Kyman says.

Kyman also served as an athletic director in 19 of those years. It was fulfilling, if unspectacular work, and allowed Kyman lots of time with Patricia and their children: daughters Cassi and Jodi, and twin sons Bobby and Coley.

The kids were grown and three still lived at home the night their mother lapsed into a coma. Coley, a Cal State Northridge football and volleyball player at the time, lived on campus.

“It was so hard for all of us,” Coley says. “My mom was wonderful. She went to every game my dad ever coached. She’d drive us all.

“She loved to laugh, loved to be around friends. She was that type of person.”

The following summer was a long one for Bernie. He returned to Chaminade as football assistant in the fall, but began actively seeking a place to start fresh.

Renewed vigor came in 1991 in two forms. He started teaching at Littlerock and he met Sandy.

“My stepmom is a wonderful lady,” Coley says. “After the heartaches dad has been through, it makes me extremely happy to see him happy. They’ve got the Jacuzzi and big screen TV. They are laid-back.”

Kyman didn’t leave it all behind. Cassi and Jodi have moved to Palmdale, although both work in the San Fernando Valley. Bernie and Sandy, who has three grown children, have turned one room into a shrine to their kids.

“They have a sports room full of pictures and awards from all those years,” says Coley, an All-American volleyball player and starting quarterback at Northridge. He and Bobby were standout football players at Reseda High, where they played for Schaeffer.

Bernie would like to add another championship trophy of his own to the collection. At an age when many colleagues are easing back on coaching, he looks forward to hitting the field every day.

“I love coaching, I love being with the kids,” he says. “It keeps me young. The way I see it, I’ve never worked a day in my life.

“I will probably die coaching. I may not die teaching, but I will die coaching.”

Kyman stands in the heat on the Littlerock track and slowly rubs his bald head. He is teaching a midday physical education class and he gazes past students plodding halfheartedly around the track, past the desolate brush and gnarled yucca trees, to the snow-dotted San Gabriel Mountains seemingly within arm’s reach.

“If it weren’t for the wind on some days, this place would be unbelievably perfect,” he says.