In Driver’s Seat : Hawking on the Road to Success at CS Fullerton, Supporters Say

It is early morning and Bob Hawking will have a hurried breakfast before guiding his car out of his driveway on Bianca Circle in Simi Valley. He will drop off his 12-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter at school.

That puts him on the Simi Valley Freeway early enough that the sun still is a near-blinding glare from the east on the grade up the rugged Santa Susana Mountains.

Hawking had less than a 10-minute drive to work when he was basketball coach at Simi Valley High for 14 seasons.

No more. Now he joins the legion of commuters who spill onto the freeway each morning on their way to their jobs in the Los Angeles sprawl.

Hawking travels farther than most. Depending on the traffic and the freeway he finds most desirable that day, it is between 70 and 80 miles to Cal State Fullerton. He’s been making the 1-hour 15-plus-minute drive mostly six--and sometimes seven--days a week since he became Brad Holland’s top assistant two years ago.

It has not been easy, especially with the grinding schedule college basketball coaches keep. But today Hawking, never lacking in ambition, is where he always wanted to be professionally. He’s the head coach at a Division I program . . . even if that program survives on a shoestring budget, has a badly outdated playing facility and its team is picked to finish last in the Big West Conference.

And, oh yes, even if Hawking, who has a 1-0 record after Fullerton’s 80-71 victory over Cal State Northridge--his alma mater--on Tuesday night, has all the security that comes with a one-year contract as an “interim coach.”

But when Holland took the University of San Diego job only 21 days before the start of practice, Hawking jumped at the opportunity to succeed him. It’s the type of job he’s been seeking since he became a part-time assistant at Pepperdine five years ago.

“I gave up a situation where I pretty much had control of my own destiny at Simi Valley,” Hawking said.

“But, after several years in high school, I decided I wanted to do something different. I knew it was a volatile business on the college level. But it’s always a risk when you change jobs. I just didn’t want to take the safe route anymore. . . .”

Hawking’s success as a coach and his tenure as a teacher at Simi Valley High gave him and his family a secure, comfortable lifestyle. His wife, Jeannie, also had a good job working in marketing for a residential builder.

He gained the kind of respect that comes from coaching teams that were 230-119 and won five Marmonte League championships.

And there were those three seasons from 1985 through 1988 when Don MacLean, Shawn DeLaittre and Hawking’s son, Butch, led Simi Valley High to 81 victories in 90 games. When they were seniors in 1988, Simi Valley won the Southern Section 4-A Division championship.

But when MacLean went to UCLA and Hawking’s son left to play for the Air Force Academy, the time seemed right for a change. He took what amounted to an entry-level job as a restricted-earnings coach at Pepperdine under Tom Asbury, but he still was able to teach four classes a day at Simi Valley High, retaining most of his salary.

Hawking had been offered a full-time assistant job at Pepperdine by Jim Harrick five years earlier, but decided to remain at Simi Valley. It was not a lack of ambition, as much as wanting to coach MacLean, his son and the others.

Hawking stayed only one year at Pepperdine, moving into a full-time position at UC Davis, where he could be a top assistant, if not a head coach, albeit at a Division II program.

“It turned out to be a devastating move for us economically,” Jeannie Hawking said. “We moved as a family, even bought a house there, although we didn’t sell the one in Simi. I’m the one who pushed for Davis because I thought it would be good for him. Then when we got up there, I couldn’t find a job for a while, and both of us ended up taking 50% pay cuts. We were making house payments at both places. It was a tough two years.”

Everyone in the family was delighted when Hawking landed the assistant job at Fullerton. The family returned home to Simi Valley and Hawking returned to Division I with a full-time coaching job.

Then the Northridge earthquake hit in January, resulting in damages to the Hawking home estimated at $100,000.

“We had earthquake insurance before, but that was one of the things we cut when our salaries went down,” Hawking’s wife said.

Part of the house still is red-tagged as unsafe, and the family remains uncertain about the next step. Much, of course, depends on what happens with Fullerton basketball this season. If Hawking is hired permanently, the family will move to Fullerton.

Jeannie Hawking hopes the move into the head-coaching position is a sign of better times ahead.

“My wife has been a warrior through all this,” Hawking said. “She’s been very resilient and very supportive. We got married when I was still playing college basketball, so she’s accustomed to the time the game takes. The marriages of a lot of guys in this business don’t survive.”

Hawking has no regrets about not moving to the college ranks earlier. The biggest difference between coaching in college and in high school is mostly personal, Hawking said.

“I haven’t had the time to spend with my family that I did when I was in high school,” he said. “My younger son, Quinn, has had to do a lot more from a basketball standpoint because I haven’t been around as much. It’s not that he hasn’t had attention, though.”

Hawking’s daughter, Kristin, is a standout runner in track and cross-country for Simi Valley High, and her father adjusts his schedule when he can to see her run.

Hawking is happy he had the chance to coach one son. Butch wouldn’t trade that opportunity he had to play for his father.

“But he was tough, and I think he was even tougher on me because of how badly he wanted me to succeed,” said Butch, who plans to follow in his father’s footsteps as a coach when his commitment as an Air Force flight officer ends. “But he doesn’t demand that anyone work any harder than he’s willing to work himself.”

That’s one of the things his former Simi Valley players remember most.

“His own work ethic was unbelievable,” said MacLean, who became an All-American at UCLA and now is with the Washington Bullets of the NBA.

“He was always one step ahead of the other coaches. I mean he would put out a press guide and get sponsors for the program and do all kinds of things like that in addition to coaching.”

MacLean particularly remembers Hawking’s emphasis on the game’s fundamentals.

“He got me headed in the right direction when I was just a kid playing with Butch,” MacLean said. “The games are different at each level, of course, and it’s hard to compare, but he’s probably the best coach I’ve played for. I probably learned the most about the game from him.

“He gets so much out of guys, and not just the people who are playing regularly. He gets a lot out of the guys who are eighth through 12.”

Marty Wilson played for Hawking at Simi Valley in the mid-1980s, was a starting guard at Pepperdine and now is an assistant coach for the Waves. He especially liked Hawking’s caring attitude.

“A lot of coaches care about their players, but Hawk shows he cares about his players,” Wilson said. “He’d come in early and he’d leave late if you wanted him to help you with something.”

Those who know him well also talk about his fiery competitive nature. Larry DeLaittre, whose son played for Hawking at Simi Valley, squared off against Hawking in high school and junior college.

“I played against him in high school when he was at Alemany and I was at Simi, then I played against him when he was at Pierce and I was at Moorpark College, and every time we played I came away thinking how competitive he was,” DeLaittre said.

That competitiveness would even carry over to the games he used to challenge the players to when they were riding with him in his car.

A favorite, DeLaittre recalls, was his version of “Name That Tune.” Hawking would spin the radio dial, then try to be the first to name the song.

“Yeah,” said MacLean, with a laugh. “Butch and I knew all the Top 40 music and we’d get him on those, but he’d keep the radio going to the ‘oldie’ stations. We’d never be able to beat him because he always controlled the radio dial.”

But now Hawking faces the most daunting challenge of his career as he tries to prove himself on the college level in only one season. And he must do it with a team Big West coaches ranked last in their preseason poll.

Hawking has made it evident that he wants the job on a permanent basis. He says the instability of the Fullerton program has been one of its biggest problems.

“This is a career job for me,” he said. “I’m not looking at it as a steppingstone to go somewhere else.”

Holland was criticized for looking toward his next job, and recruiters used that against him.

“There had been a lot of instability in the program at Simi when I took over there, too,” Hawking said.

“I was their fourth coach in six years. Several people told me to not take the job for that reason. But I was stubborn enough to think I could help the situation, given the right chemistry and work ethic.”

Hawking seems to have the support of Fullerton’s players. A group of them spoke in his behalf with Athletic Director John Easterbrook when Holland resigned.

But, if Hawking does not succeed, no one expects it to be because of his own lack of effort. He has shown again that he is a tireless worker.

“I always remember Hawk’s favorite line,” Wilson said. “It was the one he’d say when he knew he was putting us through a really tough practice. I can still hear him. He’d lean over and look you in the eye and say, ‘You’ve got to love it . . . you’ve got to want it.”

For Bob Hawking, there is no doubt about that.