New Cowboy in the Saddle : High school football: Mohr takes over Canyon program after Welch rides off.

They can’t say he didn’t warn them. Stay in shape, he said. Be ready to run, he cautioned.

But did they believe him?

Not entirely.

Larry Mohr, in his one season as an assistant, proved his mettle to members of the Canyon High football team. They knew he was tough and would challenge them during summer conditioning drills.

And yet they still managed to underestimate him.

“Very much,” said Tim Fitzgerald, a senior defensive end.

“People were dying,” said Mark Manskar, the team’s star lineman.

Some things change. Some things don’t.

Canyon High has a new football coach but the same old football philosophy: Be disciplined. Be committed. Work harder than any other team.

Larry replaces Harry and the beat goes on. Will the winning?

*

The late afternoon sun beats directly down on the plain brown door that leads to the Canyon football office. No shadows.

Check that. One. No one sees it, but they know it’s there. The coaches talk about it. So do the players.

The shadow has a name: Harry Welch.

Coach, teacher, philosopher, salesman, taskmaster, creator of the Canyon football tradition and a lightning rod for controversy. Harry Welch, 49, who in his 12 successful and often-controversial seasons at the controls led the Cowboys to a 120-31-2 record, three Southern Section championships. His teams once won 46 games in a row.

Welch, a man of average size, has a shadow that looms large and heavy. His successor feels the weight of its burden.

Mohr knew that following in Welch’s footsteps would not be an easy task for a rookie head coach--or any coach.

“I guess I could have taken a 10-year-old flag team,” he said. “Or a job at another high school.”

He is glad he is at Canyon. “There are advantages,” he said.

Mohr, a 35-year-old former construction worker with closely cropped hair and a neat mustache, knows a good foundation when he sees one.

“The kids here expect to work hard and they expect to be held accountable when they’re not responding or they’re not working hard,” he said. “They already know what it takes to be successful.”

So do their parents. Ninety-three people attended a recent meeting of the football team’s booster group, The Touchdown Club.

Earlier this week, the “Green and Gold Kickoff Dinner” raised almost $10,000--more than similar organizations at other schools raise in a year.

“You look at the facilities--the stadium, the weight room--a lot of the nice things we have around here, and they’re due to Harry Welch,” Mohr said.

“You don’t try to replace tradition like that. You try to continue it, to build on it.”

There are disadvantages.

Said Welch: “I don’t know who followed (General George) Patton, but I’m sure it wasn’t fun, even though he was considered a gnarly dude. Many other coaches have told me, ‘I wouldn’t follow you.’ ”

*

Mohr became Canyon’s seventh head coach on March 23, roughly two months after Welch announced his retirement.

“I feel excited and a little bit nervous,” he said at the time.

Tonight, when the Cowboys open the season against Righetti in Santa Maria, Mohr expects those emotions to multiply.

“(I knew) a coach who would throw up before almost every game,” Mohr said wryly. “That could be me (tonight).”

The pressure he feels, Mohr contends, is self-imposed. His success, he said, should not be measured by wins and losses.

“I’m more interested in how competitive we are and how respectable we become,” he said. “To me, the process is more important than the product.

“I want people to look at our team and say we play hard, that we’re committed to each other and we play with class and character.”

Mohr’s coaching credo, to a large extent, was learned from his father, Larry Sr., a long-time youth baseball coach.

An engineer by trade, Larry Sr. yearned to coach full-time, his son said. Several of the Mohrses’ eight children do exactly that.

Anthony Mohr, a former Thousand Oaks High and Moorpark College quarterback, coaches football at a middle school in Colorado. Kathy Mohr is the head women’s basketball coach at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. Margaret Mohr is the head girls’ basketball coach at Long Beach Wilson High, where sister Ruth, a former soccer coach, is the head trainer.

Larry coached Canyon’s defensive backs last season after a 12-year run as an assistant at Thousand Oaks, his alma mater.

Two other members of the Canyon staff, brothers Paul and Mike Gomes, also played and coached with Mohr at Thousand Oaks.

The three coaches came to Canyon in April, 1993, after a falling-out with Thousand Oaks Coach Bob Richards. Mohr and Paul Gomes were co-captains of the 1976 Lancer team that won a Marmonte League championship. As coaches, they helped Thousand Oaks win a Southern Section championship in 1987.

Mohr and Paul Gomes used to talk about the day the Thousand Oaks program might be placed in their control. Now they lead a program that has a record of 12-1-1 against the Lancers since 1979.

“Just the tradition here puts a lot of pressure on Larry,” Paul Gomes said, “but he has the disposition to handle it.”

Several key players, including Brian Bialas, the heir-apparent at quarterback, have quit the team since last season. A few other players, who quit before last season after playing for lower-level Cowboy squads, have rejoined the program.

Last season, Canyon was 6-4, a year after a 7-4 season. Those records fall below standards set by previous Cowboy teams.

“If we’re competitive out there I think people will be very understanding,” Mohr said. “Three or four years down the road, maybe not.”

What Welch is hearing from many Canyon supporters is that they will allow the new coach a “two- or three-year honeymoon.”

“If Larry goes 6-3, people will be excited,” Welch said. “If I went 6-3 they’d be asking for my head on a platter. But that’s good. That’s a better perspective for him. He deserves that.”

However, Welch also warns, “Some people will always expect more.”

*

He calls for advice. He calls fairly often. Mohr is not ignoring his predecessor.

“I talk to him all the time,” Mohr said. “I consider him my mentor. He’s the best coach I’ve ever been around. Harry Welch deserves the influence he has in this program. He built it.”

Which is not to say Mohr is shying from establishing his own program. The Canyon offense has some new wrinkles. The defense in many ways resembles an old scheme at Thousand Oaks.

Mohr has let it be known that he is his own man, and Welch, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I didn’t want a clone replacing me,” he said.

The players have noticed a difference. Fitzgerald and Manskar say the new Canyon staff is easier to approach off the field than in years past. Lessons about life are intertwined with those of football.

“There’s more of a friendship,” Manskar said.

Assistant coaches are being given greater responsibility. Players are asked for their input.

Welch, who has been kept occupied lately by work on his earthquake-damaged home, has heard about some of the changes.

“I expected Larry to be his own man,” Welch said. “I like and admire that about him. I expect him to run the program his own way.”

But that doesn’t mean for Welch that watching Canyon play without him will be any easier.

“It’s going to be very, very hard,” he said. “But I’ll still be in Santa Maria.”