After 37 Years, Lou Cvijanovich Still Has a Heart for Coaching

Lou Cvijanovich, long-time Santa Clara basketball coach, said Saturday he feels like “a million bucks,” and not just because he has been selected the John Wooden national high school coach of the year.

Cvijanovich was honored at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles on Friday, receiving the award named after the legendary former UCLA coach.

Santa Clara has won 13 Southern Section and two state titles, and more than 700 games in 37 years under Cvijanovich. He cited all his assistant coaches and players during his career, saying the award goes to a “multitude of people, not just one person.”

And nothing is going to slow down the 68-year-old coaching legend, not even heart surgery. Cvijanovich was admitted to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard on March 26 after complaining of chest pains.

When doctors discovered clogged arteries, they performed angioplasty surgery three days later.

Cvijanovich has recovered quickly and said he feels good enough to go back to work Monday. He has been placed on a restricted diet, must take medication and follow a specific exercise program, but he has no plans to retire from coaching.

He already has clearance from his family doctor to resume all activities and is hoping to get a similar response from heart specialists later this week.

“I feel really good,” he said. “Heck, I don’t work that hard. The only pressure in this business is what you put on yourself. And I’ve learned to deal with that.”

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Monty Moritz sounds more like an experienced social worker than the catcher on the Ventura High baseball team.

After leading the team with a .405 batting average as a sophomore, Moritz slumped to .280 last year and was anything but the team leader he has become as a senior. He admits he hated to practice and just didn’t care about the game.

“My parents got divorced last year,” Moritz said. “Unfortunately, that’s something a lot of teen-agers have to face these days. It sidetracked me. I found the party scene a little too much last year and that didn’t help me out. But now that I’m following rules set by my father, I feel a lot better.”

Moritz credits his father for the turnaround, but Monty has shouldered much of the load himself. He and his 14-year-old sister, Jennifer, live alone all week while their father works out of town in the construction business.

Dad pays all the bills but Monty is in charge at home. “I take care of my sister and we do great together,” he said.

Things are turning out just as well on the baseball field.

Moritz is batting a team-high .447, leads the Cougars with six extra-base hits and 12 runs batted in, and has coolly handled a pitching staff that turned in four consecutive shutouts at the start of Channel League play.

No wonder the Cougars are in first place with a 6-1 league record, 9-3 overall.

“Monty has been the leader and the catalyst,” Coach Dan Smith said.

Moritz (6 feet, 190 pounds) has caught every inning this season and intends to keep the streak going. That’s remarkable stability for a guy who has played all over the infield in four years on the varsity.

Besides catching, he has played third and first base and made his biggest contribution as a pitcher.

He has 11 career victories and last year led the team with a 1.27 earned-run average. He’s still waiting to throw his first pitch this season, but the team can’t afford to lose him behind the plate.

“He’s done a great job with our pitchers,” Smith said.

Smith learned before the start of the season that Bubba Morales, last year’s starting catcher, would be lost for 1995 because of academic ineligibility. But after seeing the turnaround in Moritz, Smith already had decided on a new starter.

“Even if Bubba was eligible, I still would have put Monty back there,” Smith said. “You have to put a good kid back there and he’s my best.”

Moritz has been the team’s best hitter in the clutch. In 1-0 league victories over Buena and Hueneme, he drove in the winning runs with a home run and a sacrifice fly.

In Tuesday’s 5-4 victory in 10 innings over Santa Barbara, Moritz blasted a two-out, two-run triple in the bottom of the seventh to erase a 4-2 deficit and force extra innings.

“After last year, this has been intense,” Moritz said. “I love it. This year, it has been baseball, baseball, baseball.”

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Half the Marmonte League will gather for baseball 300 miles from Ventura County this week. Agoura, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Westlake will join Calabasas of the Frontier League in the Durango tournament in Las Vegas.

Teams can expect a whirlwind visit. Each of the 28 teams in the tournament will play five games in three days beginning Monday at fields all over the city.

Tournament officials will attempt to keep Marmonte teams from playing each other if they wind up in the losers’ bracket. Agoura, Westlake and Simi Valley are in one bracket, Thousand Oaks and Calabasas play in the other.

But Mike Scyphers, coach of first-place Simi Valley (10-3, 5-1), said it matters little who the Pioneers play. He also has adopted a low-key approach to the games themselves and will bring up junior varsity left-handers Ricky Fanter and Cameron Chevrez to pitch in the tournament.

“We just want to get away from the pressure of the league race,” Scyphers said. “The camaraderie you get from going on the road is second to none. We just want to play baseball, have fun and bring the team together.”