Taking His Best Shot at Coaching : Track: Former Olympic medal winner Dave Laut of Oxnard is developing shotputters at Ventura College.

Dave Laut’s nervous system is playing tricks on him.

One of the best shotputters in U.S. history, Laut is sitting among the very few fans scattered throughout the bleachers in Santa Barbara watching a junior college track and field meet on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

He has been to countless meets on three continents in a career that started at Santa Clara High in Oxnard and peaked at the 1984 Olympic Games when he won the bronze medal. Besides the Coliseum crowd of 90,000 during the ’84 Games, Laut has competed in front of huge throngs in Europe and still receives autograph requests by mail from die-hard European fans.

But when Matt Creech and Amy Blackburn, sophomore discus throwers at Ventura College, placed among the top three in the men’s and women’s competitions at the Western State Conference meet April 29, Laut was ready to start a “USA, USA” chant in the bleachers.

“I still get the same exact feeling I got at the Olympics,” Laut said about watching his proteges compete. “It’s a good feeling for a coach and it’s all pretty new for me.”

Laut, a 38-year-old Oxnard native, must rate as one of the most overqualified walk-on assistants in the state. He is in his second season at Ventura College.

He won two NCAA titles at UCLA and held the U.S. record at 72 feet 3 inches in 1982 when he was ranked second in the world. He won the U.S Olympic Trials in ‘84--still his highest moment--helping ease the disappointment of winning “only” the bronze at the L.A. Games. He still ranks fourth all-time on the U.S. shotput list.

He made his last Olympic run in ‘88, finishing sixth at the U.S. Trials after overcoming simultaneous surgeries on both knees in 1986. And he completed his international career by participating in a series of controversial meets in South Africa in defiance of an international ban.

Despite that resume, Laut said, he will be proud to be just another coach in the stands during this weekend’s state championships in Bakersfield.

Blackburn was the state runner-up last year and has a personal best of 148-6. Creech, in his first year at Ventura after transferring from Moorpark, has improved dramatically this season, setting his personal best twice at the WSC meet at 150-10.

“When I saw Matt PR . . . that was cool,” Laut said about Creech’s performance at the WSC meet. “I just got that feeling again.”

Laut might have seem destined for a life as educator and coach. His father taught and coached at Hueneme High and his brother, Don, is a teacher at Pius X High in Downey and a walk-on coach at Long Beach City.

But Laut shopped around after he finished competing, considering fire fighting and real estate before taking a job five years ago as a biology teacher at Santa Clara, where his wife, Jane, is the girls’ volleyball coach. He also was handed the head track job, a position he reluctantly filled for two years before he quit to become a junior college assistant.

“The head coach doesn’t get to coach,” he said. “It’s an administrative, paper-shuffling, you-get-blamed-for-everything kind of job.”

Shed of those annoying duties, Laut worked for one season at Moorpark College, where he was state champion in 1976, before moving to Ventura last year. According to those who know him best, he has found his niche.

In fact, those at Ventura say they have the best of both worlds in Laut--a coach with world-class knowledge without a big-league attitude. Nancy Fredrickson, the head coach this season while Tuck Mason is on sabbatical, has welcomed Laut’s approach.

“Dave has been a real motivator for me,” she said. “He’s always got a pat on the back for everyone. He’s a low-key guy, very humble. He doesn’t have the ego that goes with being an Olympic athlete.”

Fredrickson also appreciates Laut’s work in the weight room. After years of weight training, the 6-foot-4, 225-pound Laut has impressed the track team and football players with his ability to devise individually tailored workout programs. And he pushes athletes without them risking injury.

Said Fredrickson: “He’s got no macho tendencies.”

Laut reinforced that image when he good-naturedly accepted teasing after he pulled the rookie mistake of wandering too close to the competition during a meet and took an errant discus in the behind.

“That just proved he’s human,” Creech said.

Creech and Blackburn have flourished under Laut, in effect getting one-on-one attention much of the season. Blackburn, from Don Lugo High in Chino, had chosen Ventura because of the basketball program but was ecstatic when she learned that Laut had joined the track staff.

“I thought it was awesome,” she said. “I think about him being an Olympian, so when I have a slight disagreement with what he says, I think maybe I should listen to him. I’ve already recommended people to come here because of Dave.”

That’s just what Mason had in mind when he hired Laut two years ago. Mason, 56, who has been at Ventura since 1976 and coached at Oxnard High for 11 years before that, has followed Laut’s career since he was a football, basketball and track standout at Santa Clara.

Mason remembers Laut participating in the most exciting high school shotput competition he ever saw. Laut placed second to Dave Kurrasch of Newport Harbor in 1975, losing the state championship by one-half inch in a field that included Manu Tuiasosopo, who later played football at UCLA and in the NFL.

“The lead kept changing with each throw,” Mason said. “Those were great competitors and Dave was probably the smallest one. He was always a great technician.”

Laut isn’t even the big man on campus at Santa Clara, a parochial school with 530 students. That title goes to Lou Cvijanovich, the 68-year-old who has coached at the school for nearly four decades. He was Laut’s football and basketball coach in the 1970s and still refers to Laut as the “nicest kid in the world.”

Humble, low-key and a nice guy are descriptions that capture only part of Laut. An athlete doesn’t reach world-class status without a fire inside.

Sam Adams, the UC Santa Barbara coach for 34 years until his retirement three years ago, trained Laut after he left UCLA. Although Laut was always in control during meets, he drove himself relentlessly at practice.

“Dave is a grand guy, very cool, but you betcha there’s a fire inside,” Adams said. “In training, he could get very upset with himself. He would berate himself and other things and places, and make all kinds of noises.”

Still, Laut attributes his biggest disappointment--settling for the bronze medal at the ’84 Games--to a lack of fire. After placing fifth at the 1980 Olympic Trials and failing to make the Olympic team, Laut set the 1984 Trials as his biggest challenge.

“I had to peak for the Trials and sell out to make the team,” he said.

He won the event with a 70- 1/2 throw but actually hurt his chances in the Olympics, he said.

“I had a real deep feeling of satisfaction after the Trials and that’s not good because I wasn’t hungry,” he said.

He was so desperate to regain his edge that he skipped the Opening Ceremonies, deciding instead to train. After entering the meet as the favorite, the bronze medal was a letdown.

“When I got the medal, I was thinking I could have won first if I did this or that. It wasn’t until later that I realized winning a medal was pretty cool,” he said.

Laut’s bid for the 1988 team was doomed when he blew out both knees in 1986 during an agility test to qualify for the Oxnard Fire Department. Surgery on both knees left him in walking casts for months. That he recovered and placed sixth in the ’88 Trials still amazes Adams, his coach.

“He should have got the comeback-of-the-year award,” he said.

Laut ended his career in an uncharacteristic spasm of controversy. With a number of other U.S. athletes, he participated in a series of meets in South Africa despite an international ban and was subsequently suspended from competition for four years.

Laut, whose 66-foot put in a meet at Pretoria in ’88 was the longest on South African soil at the time, has no regrets about the trips and remains disdainful of those who try to politicize athletics.

“We put on clinics all over the country, in white and black neighborhoods, and everyone was so appreciative,” he said. “The bottom line is that black and white athletes there were starved for international competition because somebody in the White House or the United Nations has a political agenda.”

Laut has his own agenda now, and it’s all about coaching. He fully intends to make Ventura the state’s best junior college for throwers.

Blackburn and Creech’s success has been a first step and Laut will start work immediately after the state meet with Dolores Tuimoloau, the state shotput champion at Channel Islands High last year who was academically ineligible to compete at Ventura this season.

Laut is on the front lines when it comes to training but gladly will yield center stage to the athletes.

“I don’t care if people know my name,” he said. “But they’ll know about Ventura. I’ll just enjoy watching the other coaches sweat.”