Not So Fast, Coach : Children, Health Concerns Gave Antelope Valley’s Newton Chelette Pause and Now He’s Slowing Tempo : JUST PREPS / A page dedicated to high school athletes, their families and coaches--and to those who follow high school sports.

A pizza-delivery man stands by the bleachers at the Antelope Valley College gym, one hand clutching the bill and the other curled into a fist that is resting on his hip.

He has been waiting for only a few minutes, but his body language says he’s eager to seal the deal.

Newton Chelette, the fellow with the checkbook, is busy.

The Antelope Valley men’s basketball coach is in the middle of a walk-through session with his team, going over strategy for that night’s opponent.

“If they pass the ball in there, you have to slide down and help out,” Chelette reminds one of his forwards.

The players, wearing street clothes, shuffle from one spot to the next, slowly dissecting some of the offensive setups they expect to face in the game. They do it enough that the pizza guy knows he has kissed goodbye the tips on at least a few more deliveries.

Finally, Chelette strolls over and pays the man, who darts from the place as the players pounce on the seven boxes filled with their pregame meal.

Chelette grabs a slice and a can of soda and downs them casually.

And why not? After years in the coaching rat race, some of them at troubled four-year programs, and after suffering chest pains that sidelined him briefly last season, he has altered his tempo.

Not that Chelette, who turned 46 on Wednesday, is looking for a reclining chair. Far from it. He coaches, teaches, officiates and is a single parent raising three children.

It’s just that Chelette is no longer in a hurry. He is exactly where he wants to be.

*

This high-desert, working-class town of no particular distinction is not where Chelette expected to settle as a coach. Or find happiness.

When he took over at Antelope Valley in 1989, the Marauders were smarting from two disastrous seasons. Chelette, then interim coach at Santa Barbara City, saw an opportunity to mend the Marauders and perhaps position himself for a major college job.

He had been head coach at Southeastern Louisiana for three seasons in the mid-80s and had been an assistant at McNeese State and Nevada Las Vegas, the latter under Jerry Tarkanian. And though Chelette battled NCAA investigators while at Southeastern Louisiana, another trip to the big time was still in the back of his mind.

Those thoughts began to disappear when Chelette hit the desert.

“People told me this job would be a great opportunity,” he said. “It really was tailor-made for me. They needed someone to coach basketball, teach a sports officiating class and golf classes. . . . When I got the job, I had [Tarkanian’s] assurance that if I didn’t like it I could go back on his staff.”

Chelette never had to ask.

In their first campaign under Chelette, the Marauders finished 27-6, won the first of three consecutive Foothill Conference championships and were ranked seventh in the state. The victories tied the school’s single-season record set in 1955-56.

The Marauders nearly equaled the record again in Chelette’s second season when an enormously talented nonconformist named J.R. Rider blew into town and averaged 33.6 points to lead them to a 26-5 record. He also brought a checkered academic history that made Chelette’s head spin.

The 6-foot-5 swingman, who plays as Isaiah Rider for the Minnesota Timberwolves, signed with Kansas State out of Encinal High in Alameda, Calif., but did not meet the NCAA Prop. 48 requirements and ended up at Allen County (Kan.) Community College.

He soon left Kansas with a barely detectable grade-point average and agreed to play at Las Vegas for Tarkanian, who asked Chelette to take Rider and turn him into a student at Antelope Valley.

That was no small order. Rider was declared ineligible to play for the Marauders because of problems with his grade transcripts. He missed seven games before being reinstated after appealing. His stint with the Marauders, and the connection between Chelette and Tarkanian, had people cynically referring to Antelope Valley as UNAV.

“All of J.R.’s shenanigans from Kansas followed him here,” Chelette said. “I felt a lot of pressure because of my relationship with Coach Tarkanian. He had asked me to put J.R.’s life in order. This was the only place where he had academic success. I take that as a compliment for our system.”

*

Chelette’s system produces winners.

With or without star players such as Rider, who transferred to Las Vegas after one season at Antelope Valley, Chelette has done well at every level he has coached.

The Marauders have won at least 20 games every season under Chelette and have won four titles, including the Foothill Conference North Division championship last season, when Chelette was voted coach of the year.

This season, the Marauders are 19-6, 3-0 in the Foothill Conference North Division after defeating Victor Valley, XX-XX, Wednesday night and are ranked 11th in the state.

Chelette said from the start that this was perhaps his best overall team, one that could reach the state final eight tournament in March at San Jose State.

“I’m pretty excited about this team,” Chelette said. “We have as good or a better chance than any team we’ve ever had to advance in the playoffs.”

As with other topics, Chelette doesn’t mince words when talking about the Marauders. Or to them.

“He’s pretty straightforward,” said Brandon McIntire, a sophomore guard from Atascadero High. “You know where you stand with him all the time. If he’s yelling at you that means he loves you; that’s what he says.

“I like him. He gave me an opportunity to play. I went to Cuesta for one semester but things weren’t working out. He has kind of taken me under his wing.”

Tarkanian, who has known Chelette for years, said he’s not surprised by Chelette’s success.

“I regard him as a great coach,” said Tarkanian, now at Fresno State. “He has great knowledge of the game and he communicates very well with the players.”

*

Born in rural Iowa, La., 10 miles east of Lake Charles, Chelette became interested in basketball when his father put up a hoop at the family ranch.

“I became intrigued with the art of shooting,” Chelette said. “I became primarily a basketball player and a cowboy. I played in the fall and winter and in the spring and summer I would do rodeos.”

He was proficient at both.

In 1968, he competed at the high school national rodeo championships in Topeka, Kan. By then, he was also called “Shotgun” Chelette after scoring 55 points in one game for Iowa High.

“Pistol Pete [Maravich] was at LSU then and the local paper picked up on his nickname and started calling me Shotgun,” Chelette said.

His basketball career almost ended early. In 1965, when he was 15 and a high school freshman, Chelette broke his left leg in three places while riding a bull in a rodeo and wore a cast for 13 weeks. His father and Joe Foreman, Iowa’s basketball coach, banned bull riding from that point.

“I remember every day that summer, after I came out of the hospital, Coach Foreman took me to the gym and I shot free throws propped up on crutches. If I learned anything from Coach Foreman, it was dedication and commitment.”

Foreman, who plans to visit Chelette for a few days next month, remembers him as a smallish player without great natural ability but with unmatched desire and determination. Although only 6-1 and a point guard, Chelette jumped center because, Foreman said, he had uncanny anticipation.

“He was the most-dedicated, hard-working young man I’ve ever been involved with,” Foreman said. “He’s like a son to me. . . . We had kids his age and he used to spend a lot of time at our house. We’ve been very close.”

After high school, Chelette shopped for colleges and chose McNeese State in Lake Charles. He played point guard and competed in rodeos for the aptly named Cowboys.

“I was an only child and my parents wanted me to stay close to home,” Chelette said. “I went on a recruiting trip to LSU and got to play two on two and three on three with Pistol Pete. That was an unbelievable experience. I wore floppy socks like him in high school.”

*

After college, Chelette returned to Iowa High as Foreman’s replacement.

His team finished 14-16 in 1974-75 at Iowa and Chelette left after that for more money at Westlake High in Lake Charles, where he was 12-26 his first season but won 20 or more games in each of the next four.

From Lake Charles, he moved to McNeese State as an assistant and recruited Joe Dumars, later a standout with the Detroit Pistons.

“I saw him [Dumars] play more times [in high school] than most people see their own sons play,” Chelette said. “J.R. [Rider] is the most talented player I’ve ever coached but Joe Dumars is the best human being I’ve been around. He’s a tremendous person.”

Chelette was at McNeese State for four seasons before becoming head coach and athletic director at Southeastern Louisiana. He directed the Lions to the Gulf Star Conference title in his first season, 1984-85, but slipped to 20-39 over the next two seasons. To make matters worse, the NCAA went after Chelette for recruiting violations and other infractions.

The charges, Chelette said, were bogus.

“One of the violations they were trying to nail me on was that I transported two of my players,” Chelette said. “You know what that transportation violation was all about? It was Dec. 29 and it was 36 degrees and raining and I saw the two kids running to the dorm after practice. I was going to drive right by the dorm so I picked them up.

“They had several other [alleged] minor infractions but they couldn’t make anything stick. The transportation thing was the biggie. The [NCAA] infractions committee gave me a clean bill and a letter of apology.”

But not to the school, which was slapped with a five-year probation by the NCAA for what it called an “almost total absence of supervision of the athletics department.”

By the time Southeastern went on probation, Chelette was in Las Vegas working as a volunteer assistant to Tarkanian.

The friendship between the two started when Chelette was coaching high school and organizing all-star games and clinics. He met Tarkanian at one of those functions and the two hit it off. Even now, Chelette remains unbendingly loyal to Tarkanian, himself the target of repeated NCAA investigations, and refers to him simply as Coach.

“When I left Southeastern Louisiana I was very bitter,” Chelette said. “That [season at Las Vegas] probably always will remain in my mind as my most memorable in my entire coaching career. It was like a fantasy. . . . At the time, there was no one more influential in the West Coast than Coach.

“Coach is a great person. He never did anything anybody else didn’t do. . . . You cannot find one single player who was disloyal to Coach.

*

Chelette has found bliss in the desert but it hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride.

During his second season at Antelope Valley, in 1990-91, Chelette and his wife, Susan, divorced. He has custody of their children, Amanda, 17; Brady, 14, and Kelly, 11. The family shares a home that Chelette says is no more than a “9-iron [shot] away from the campus.”

All three kids play basketball, Amanda for the Quartz Hill High girls’ team and Brady for the boys’ team. Kelly plays on the sixth-grade team at Sunnydale Elementary.

“They are my life. For Christmas they gave me a plaque that says, ‘Anybody can be a father but it takes a special person like you to be a dad,’ ” Chelette said, misty-eyed.

The children are one reason Chelette says he has tried to reduce his workload--he tries not to referee when the kids have games--and to slow down a little. He was shaken by chest pains he suffered last season that kept him in the hospital for three days, and gained new perspective.

“It was the scariest three days of my life,” Chelette said. “I’m laying in the hospital with all kinds of monitors and wires and the only thing I can think about are my kids.”

The pains, doctors said, were stress related, and Chelette returned to the team without missing a beat. He hasn’t missed a game since.

“I’m doing what I want to do,” Chelette said. “I’m with my kids and I coach and referee basketball. . . . I have a poster in my room that says, ‘To live life is rare. Most people only exist.’

“Anybody who knows me knows I’m living it.”