Building a Winner in the Wild

Five years ago, Savanna basketball Coach Tom Gregory walked into the wilderness and vanished. He turned his back on the known world, left his cozy surroundings, to be a pioneer.

Time has come to find him.

(Cue “the Big Valley” theme).

The scene opens: A car rolls past the old tractor, turns just after the big barn and comes to a stop across from the horse stable. Here sits Rueben S. Ayala High School.

You don’t get here by freeway, you take the “expressway.”

Sure, the modern world has reached out. A couple of strip malls are down the street. But this still reeks--quite literally sometimes--of farm land.

This is no one-horse town, not with McCoy’s Arabians across from the school. Down the block is the Payne Ranch. They don’t have police in Chino Hills, they have sheriffs.

Gregory took this job sight unseen. He had no idea what to expect. Chino Hills, to him, was merely a little closer to home. Driving from Riverside to Anaheim at 4 a.m. got to be a drag.

So picture the jaw-smacking-the-pavement experience on Gregory’s first glimpse of the “Dog House.”

He couldn’t miss it as he turned onto Bulldog Boulevard. This is no field house for plowboys, but a 2,200-seat gymnasium, complete with three basketball courts. Home of the (arf) Ayala Bulldogs.

(By the way, using fire hydrants to mark the restrooms was a bit much. But, what the heck, it’s their school.)

Troy High, where Gregory played, didn’t have such a facility. Nor did Savanna, where his 6-foot-and-under teams played so viciously.

His first thought: “I can live with this.”

This is no mausoleum. The Bulldogs pound people here.

Ayala reached the Southern Section Division I-AA quarterfinals the past two seasons and was ranked as high as fifth in the state by Cal-Hi this year.

The ‘Dogs are the second-seeded team this season. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Gregory was quite good at this coaching thing even before he left the Big City.

He was 154-105 in 11 seasons at Savanna with three Orange League titles. Often, his players got a pain in the neck listening to their coach. Gregory, who is 6-foot-2, remembers once chewing out his team for poor rebounding, then realizing he was actually looking down at them.

But his players rarely came up short on the court. They were gnats that drove teams nuts. They wouldn’t go away. Their coach did.

It was tough for Gregory to leave, but Savanna was a long way from home. Ayala was a fresh start. An opportunity complete with exciting challenges. Finding the place for example.

A Cal State Fullerton assistant coach asked for directions recently. Gregory said Ayala was about 10 miles from Fullerton “as the crow flies.” As the car drives, it’s about an hour.

No one ever heard much about Ayala until the Bulldogs became legends of the fall, when the football team reached the Southern Section Division Division III championship game in December.

Certainly Gregory didn’t know much about the area when he took the job. There wasn’t much to know. There wasn’t much there. Well, he did see gobs of homes being built in the hills. Even an English teacher could do the math.

Ayala has 2,900 students and is expected to house 4,000, if another high school isn’t built in the city. More kids, more basketball players. Maybe too many players.

Gregory had to cut nearly 100 kids during three days of tryouts this year. Educator/coaches hate cutting student/athletes. Still, he has managed to console himself with a 22-4 record.

Not bad for a frontiersman who carved a basketball program out of an untamed land.