Golf Is Fine, but This Job Fits to a Tee : High schools: Former Loara Coach Herb Hill comes out of retirement to become football coach at San Jacinto High.

Man cannot live on golf alone, so when San Jacinto High School officials offered Herb Hill the head football coaching job this week, Hill’s instincts steered him back to his natural habitat--the sideline.

Retirement and the world of fairways, sand traps and putting greens no longer seemed to suit Hill, who spent 28 years as Loara’s coach before stepping down in 1989.

He enjoyed being a member of the Soboba Springs Country Club in San Jacinto, playing golf four days a week for the last four years, but when his handicap improved about as much as his career coaching record, Hill figured it was time to move on to something else.

Something familiar.

“I found out with golf that more doesn’t necessarily mean better,” said Hill, 63, who moved to San Jacinto with his wife, Karyn, in 1990. “If you’re a hacker, you’re a hacker--it doesn’t matter how many times you do it.

“One of the only things I’ve had success in is coaching, and I haven’t broken par yet, so why not do something you’re successful at?”

Hill, who guided Loara to 10 league championships and Southern Section titles in 1968 and 1979, had been itching for years to return to coaching in some capacity. He offered his services to the previous two San Jacinto coaches, Jeff Snyder and John Norman, but both declined.

When Norman, a walk-on coach, quit in January after going 1-19 in two seasons, Hill didn’t immediately pursue the position. The school had recommended Don Doshier, San Jacinto’s basketball coach, to take over the football program in late March and even announced the move to area newspapers, but the San Jacinto School Board voted not to approve it.

Doshier, 53, has since filed a $1-million age discrimination suit against the district, claiming it breached an oral contract and alleging that a board member said trustees wanted someone younger for the job.

Meanwhile, April and much of May passed, and still San Jacinto, a Skyline League school with 800 students, had no football coach.

“I got a call from a friend in the district who asked if I could recommend someone for the job,” said Hill, whose Orange County record of 191 victories was eclipsed by Santa Ana’s Dick Hill in 1991. “I said no, because by now, everyone is pretty much nailed down. He called the next day and said, ‘What about you?’ ”

Hill, who has 38 years of coaching experience, met with school officials, took a tour of San Jacinto’s new, $1.8-million on-campus stadium, took note of the 90 players in the Tigers’ program and then took aim at the job.

He went through the interview process, was offered the coaching job--along with the responsibility of teaching two physical education classes a day--and accepted. The move, which San Jacinto Principal Dawn Mitchell said was not a response to the age-discrimination suit, was approved by the school board Tuesday night.

So much for retirement.

“It’s almost like he’s reborn,” Karyn Hill said Wednesday, the day after Herb took the job. “He’s really enthusiastic. He sees this as an opportunity to match the team with this wonderful new facility.

“He was really beaten down at the end of his stint at Loara, but he was so excited about this he couldn’t sleep last night. That enthusiasm, I know, will translate to the kids and the faculty.”

When Hill announced his retirement from Loara in 1989, he said, “I’ve been to the starting post too many times.” The stress of competing in the highly competitive Empire League and the time demands of teaching a full load of courses had taken its toll.

“But I’ve had four years to rest up,” Hill said. “Cutting down my teaching load and getting back to something I enjoy looked like a good opportunity. I think I have the energy for this.”

He’s going to need it. San Jacinto, which won four league championships during the 1980s, has not had a winning season since 1987 and suffered through a 28-game losing streak from 1991-93. The Tigers’ only victory last season came over a West Valley team that had only 17 players.

But Hill, who played at Santa Ana College and Occidental, started the Rancho Alamitos (1956) and Loara (1962) programs from scratch, so he knows about the construction process.

“I’ve never really stepped into a program that was down and needed rebuilding, but I’ve been in ground-floor-up situations,” Hill said. “I’m not going to get real fancy in a hurry. I’ll emphasize execution, doing a few things with some consistency, and playing good, solid defense.”

Hill, who plans to institute a year-round weight-training and conditioning program at the school, has no intention of holding the job for more than three or four years. He’d like to stay long enough to train one of the young coaches on staff and have that coach prepared to take over in a few years.

Which is fine with the folks at San Jacinto.

“He’s well-organized, very thorough, very enthusiastic, and he’s a master of all aspects of the game,” Mitchell said. “He can help the boys believe in themselves, and he can help the coaches understand how all the parts (of the team) become a whole program. He’s a legend, and we’re happy to have him.”

Coaching will surely cut into Hill’s tee times, and Hill won’t be able to putter around the yard and garden as much, a hobby he developed when he moved to San Jacinto and installed a new yard.

But the joys Hill discovered in landscaping--cultivating a bare piece of land into something beautiful--were very similar to the joys of coaching--working with youngsters, molding and motivating them into productive young adults.

And those things ultimately lured Hill out of retirement.

“You can clear a piece of ground, put some nice plants and ground cover in, and when you’re finished, it looks great,” Hill said. “That’s instant gratification.

“When you work with kids all your life you plant seeds, but they don’t grow real rapidly. It’s years sometimes before you see how they turn out, but there’s great satisfaction in that, too.”