Parent Trap Can Snare Coaches : High school sports: Programs rise and fall with well-meaning boosters.

Attempted bribes. Physical threats. Harassing phone calls.

Rich Herrera says he encountered them all during his six seasons as coach of the Westlake High baseball team.

“He always had one parent either threaten to sue him or beat the crap out of him,” said Rich Eby, former president of the Westlake baseball booster club.

Eby tried to serve as a buffer between Herrera and disgruntled parents, but it was a losing battle. Players came and went but parental pressure was constant, eventually contributing to Herrera’s decision to resign as coach in January.

“I wish I didn’t have to rely on parents,” Herrera said.

Dream on. Without the fund-raising efforts of parents and booster groups, many successful high school athletic programs would close down.

Eby said Westlake boosters pump almost $40,000 a year into the baseball program, helping to pay for new equipment and uniforms and make improvements to the school’s playing field.

The Hart Quarterback Club is in the middle of an ambitious effort to raise $40,000 to send the football team to Hawaii for its season opener in August. At Canyon, football boosters must raise $10,000 annually to meet basic needs, the club president said.

“If you’re going to have a good program, you have to rely on parents financially,” said Buena football Coach Rick Scott, whose school has an active booster club.

By working in snack bars, selling ads and staging various fund-raising events, parents volunteer their time to improve conditions for coaches and athletes.

“When it comes to parents, 98% are great, fantastic people,” St. Francis football Coach Bill Redell said. “But the problem that happens to a lot of us in the high school ranks is that we let the 2% ruin it for us.”

That’s what happened to Redell at Crespi, where he coached from 1985 to ’88. Led by tailback Russell White, who ended his varsity career as the leading rusher and scorer in Southern Section history, Crespi won the Big-Five Conference title in 1986 and was ranked No. 1 in the nation for part of the 1987 season.

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With increased success came higher expectations. After Crespi suffered through a 6-6 season in 1988, White’s senior year, Redell decided he had heard enough from parents telling him how to run his team. He resigned after the season and was out of coaching for four years before taking over a struggling St. Francis program in 1993.

“One of the things that drove me out, quite frankly, was the parents,” Redell said. “That 2% can be so overbearing, and can create all kinds of problems. It takes the fun away from you.”

Frequently coaches are subjected to intense scrutiny by parents who wield power through influence and, in some cases, intimidation.

A disillusioned Wally Thornhill stepped down as Newbury Park’s softball coach midway through the 1994 season after a group of parents complained to school administrators that Thornhill’s coaching was inadequate. Although administrators supported Thornhill, whose team was 7-3 at the time, the incident sapped his enthusiasm.

“I thought about it overnight and decided it wasn’t fun anymore,” said Thornhill, a Los Angeles police officer.

Newbury Park Athletic Director Teri Scarpino said she respected Thornhill “a ton” and wished the incident never happened.

“I think booster groups’ intents are always good,” she said. “But I think sometimes . . . they forget that they are dealing with human beings who have sensitive, deep feelings. People don’t get into coaching because of the money. They get involved because they love the sport and love working with kids. I wish people would keep that more in mind.”

Westlake Athletic Director Jim Martin said booster groups create problems when they become involved in matters pertaining to school personnel.

“A booster club’s function, and only function, is financial,” Martin said. “They raise money to help support a program. The challenge comes when a booster club tries to exceed that by taking on hiring-and-firing responsibilities.”

There’s nothing wrong with parents wanting the best for their children. It’s when those goals exceed the grasp of the child that problems can arise, coaches said.

“The hardest thing to do with parents is to get them to be realistic about their own child’s talent and future,” Scott said.

Scott, in his seventh year at Buena, considers it a good senior class if one of his football players earns a scholarship to a major college. After last season, offensive lineman John Raymond signed with Arizona State.

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But the difficulty athletes face in acquiring college scholarships is lost on parents who sometimes blame coaches when their sons and daughters fail to attract the attention of recruiters.

“A lot of [parents] have such an unrealistic view of what it takes to play at the Division I level,” Redell said. “Very few kids who play [high school] football, or any other sport, can compete in Division I athletics. You’re lucky if you have two in one league.”

More difficult for coaches is telling a parent that his or her child isn’t talented enough to play for the high school team.

Herrera said he was subjected to threats and frequently got calls at home from parents, usually complaining that their sons weren’t playing more, or at all, for Westlake’s baseball team.

Herrera was The Times’ Ventura County coach of the year in 1990, when the Warriors rose to the nation’s No. 1 ranking.

“Parents do a lot for the program and that’s fine,” Herrera said. “But they have to realize that not every kid is guaranteed to play.”

While he was booster club president from 1986 to ‘93, Eby said he twice confronted Westlake parents who wanted to launch campaigns to oust Herrera as coach. The ongoing criticism prompted Herrera to stop attending booster club meetings last season.

“Parents have their rose-colored glasses on,” said Eby, who had two sons play baseball at Westlake. “The majority of high school parents have a very limited spectrum of knowledge of how baseball is run. They come out of this Little League mentality: ‘Johnny has to play whether or not Johnny can walk and chew gum simultaneously.’ ”

Martin, Westlake’s athletic director, said parents accustomed to having a say about who coached their children in youth leagues sometimes have a hard time adapting to high school athletics.

“Especially if they come from club programs and Little League,” Martin said. “It’s a real change when they hit high school, where coaches are hired by the principal.”

Success can present another set of problems. Once a winning precedent is established, satisfying the expectations of boosters can become increasingly difficult.

Former Canyon football Coach Harry Welch said he learned that lesson after the Cowboys won three consecutive Southern Section titles from 1983 to ‘85, and tied a section record with their 46th consecutive victory in 1986.

Winning seasons followed, but Canyon never again achieved a similar level of success. Welch claims parents began complaining about his coaching to school administrators after the Cowboys lost two nonleague games in 1987.

“The expectations became so unrealistic,” said Welch, who resigned as coach after the 1993 season. “And it’s not just people in the Santa Clarita Valley. I’m a parent. As parents, we are sometimes unrealistic in our expectations of our children and the people dealing with our children. When [a team] experiences incredible success, we on the outside tend to think we know why.”

Thornhill says he ran into a similar situation at Newbury Park. Because the city’s youth softball leagues produced a national championship team, parents became disgruntled when many of the girls failed to achieve the same success in high school, Thornhill said.

“Parents are geared toward a stringent win-at-all-costs attitude,” Thornhill said. “That’s where my problems came from.”

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Protests from parents led to Thornhill’s resignation and to the hiring of Pete Ackerman, a successful youth coach, as varsity assistant. Former assistant Mike Morgan was promoted to coach. Scarpino, Newbury Park’s athletic director, confirmed that parents wanted Ackerman on the coaching staff.

Scarpino said she hasn’t heard a complaint about the current coaching staff, even though Newbury Park’s softball team made no significant progress. The Panthers were 20-8 in 1993, Thornhill’s only full season as coach. They were 21-8 in 1994. And, after a 2-0 loss to Huntington Beach Marina in a Division I second-round playoff game May 23, they ended the 1995 season at 19-9. Marina went on to win the title.

People want to see a return on their investments. That is why coaches dread parents who feel they have a stake in a team because they’ve raised money for a program or paid tuition to a school.

Mick Cady resigned as boys’ basketball coach at Notre Dame High in 1993, within a month after the Knights won the Southern Section Division III-A title, partly because he was tired of dealing with parental pressure.

Cady believes one of the reasons Notre Dame parents were vocal was because of the Catholic school’s tuition.

“When you’re paying $5,000 a year, you want to know what is going on,” Cady said. “You tend to want more out of the education.”

After sitting out a season, Cady returned last fall as boys’ basketball coach at San Fernando, a public school with more-modest aspirations for its team. Cady said the change to a lower-profile program has been good for his psyche.

“The people I deal with at San Fernando are really good people,” Cady said. “It’s hard to say how big a difference it is [from Notre Dame]. It’s located in a lower- to middle-income area. The people are very nice and very supportive. But, of course, that might change if we start winning.”

Herrera said some parents in the affluent Westlake community got the idea that favors could be bought.

“In 1991 and ‘92, one parent raised a lot of money [for the program],” Herrera said. “She wanted to know why her kid wasn’t playing. I had to tell her that it doesn’t work that way. You can’t buy a starting spot.”

Some parents try anyway. After cutting a player from the team a few years ago, Herrera said the boy’s father offered to make a “large cash donation” to the program if Herrera reinstated the player.

Eby said some Westlake parents act this way because they are accustomed to getting their way.

“A lot of them are high-level executives who have coached their sons in Little League,” Eby said. “They’re successful people who are used to being in positions of control.”

Dave Hourigan, president of the Hart Quarterback Club, speculated that most of the football parents at the school can afford the $600 it will cost to send each of the team’s 60 players to Hawaii for an Aug. 31 game against St. Louis of Honolulu.

But parents and booster club board members decided that the players should contribute to the fund-raising effort.

“We want all the kids to work together, whether they can pay the money or not,” Hourigan said.

And how does Hart Coach Mike Herrington figure in all this?

“We have a real good relationship,” Hourigan said. “We let him coach and we raise the money for him.”

Of course, Hart has not had a losing record in six seasons under Herrington. The Indians were 13-1 and Division II runners-up last season.

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The line separating a coach’s supporters from his detractors sometimes gets blurred. Boosters have been known to operate in both camps, building a healthy relationship with a coach before tearing it down in a fit of anger.

The causes are many, the repercussions lasting.

The Canyon program is still dealing with the fallout from an Oct. 1, 1993 incident in which Welch, then the Cowboys’ football coach, got into a physical altercation after a game with Tim McKeon, a parent who is now president of the football booster club.

Welch said he was viciously attacked by an out-of-control father.

McKeon said he was defending himself after Welch made a threatening move toward him. McKeon said he approached Welch after hearing that the coach blamed his son, a Canyon player, for the team’s loss to Quartz Hill.

Welch denies blaming the loss on the younger McKeon.

The incident damaged the Canyon program, said Chris Connelly, a mother with two sons on the 1993 team.

“There definitely were some strained feelings,” Connelly said. “It broke up a lot of loyalties. It broke up the team.”

One of Connelly’s sons, a junior, quit the team while the other, a senior, continued to play. Other players also quit. Welch, perhaps sensing that the program’s trademark unity was eroding, resigned after the season, his 12th at the school.

Looking back, Welch said parents were his “strongest allies and worst enemies.”

Welch and McKeon remain neighbors, but their once-close relationship has cooled considerably. Welch filed a police report of the incident at the school’s insistence, he said, but he did not file charges.

McKeon, who had three sons play for Welch, said memories of the incident still sadden him.

“I feel like, in a way, I helped to make his decision not to coach anymore,” McKeon said. “I regret that. I think he was a good coach. But more than that, it’s the personal loss of a friendship. . . . I have real strong feelings about parents trying to overthrow coaches. No way would I ever lead a campaign like that.”

Although Welch didn’t accept McKeon’s apology, which he deemed inadequate, he wants people to know their relationship was more good than bad.

“There were 1,000 beautiful incidents with Tim McKeon, and people will remember the one horrible one,” Welch said. “There were 100 people like him over the course of 12 seasons: caring, loving, generous.”

Sooner or later, most high school coaches deal with parental pressure.

“We all go through it,” Cady said. “I guess it’s how we handle it.”

But what does a coach do when a parent--the booster club president, no less--comes out of the stands at a football game and shouts instructions to the team?

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Redell said it happened to him at Crespi and was one of several incidents that caused him to rethink his attitude toward parental participation.

“I created my own problems by getting too many parents involved,” Redell said.

No more. In two years at St. Francis, Redell has avoided involving large groups of parents and has curbed his participation in booster activities. He skipped post-game get-togethers in his first year at the school, but started attending the social gatherings last season.

“I’ve tried to be a little more understanding and patient [of parents],” Redell said. “I’ve also tried not to be as visible as I was at Crespi.”

The low-key approach doesn’t suit everyone.

Buena’s Scott says it’s important to build relationships with parents to make them feel part of a program.

“I try to do some things socially [with parents] so they can see me in another light,” Scott said. “Then you feel more comfortable to call them if you need some help with a kid or with the program.”

Cady said a lack of communication contributed to his problems with parents at Notre Dame, where he was basketball coach for seven seasons. He blamed himself for not being more approachable.

“I don’t think I created a good-enough dialogue where [parents] felt comfortable to come in and talk to me,” Cady said. “As a coach, I think that’s what you have to do.”

Another of Cady’s shortcomings was being overly sensitive to criticism, something no coach can afford, he said.

“My skin is probably too thin,” Cady said. “I felt like I couldn’t satisfy everybody. That’s a weakness of mine. I should go on and not worry about who I’m offending because, unfortunately, in coaching you’re going to offend someone.

“If you have 15 kids, that means there are five who are starting and 10 who are going to be offended.”

Still, when parents start causing trouble for a coach, it’s difficult to turn the other cheek.

Cady said parental pressure is causing increasing numbers of coaches to leave the profession, a situation that will eventually take its toll on interscholastic athletics.

“It’s unfortunate because there’s not a lot of good coaches out there,” Cady said. “It’s the next generation of kids who will suffer the most.”