Johnston Bringing New Energy to Golf Team

Jeff Johnston stands lopsided, with one foot in a cast from a recent fall on a fairway. He is rummaging through a miniature refrigerator in the storage shed that also houses the golf office at UC Irvine.

Johnston discovers a carton of yogurt and offers it to a guest before checking the date.

“Never mind,” he says with a laugh.

Since he was hired in November, Johnston has been sprucing up things around the Anteater golf program. With a dollop of his home-made philosophy and a heap of energy, Johnston has few doubts about where the program is headed.

“Ultimately, we’re having a parade down Campus Drive to celebrate a national championship,” he said.

Pretty lofty goal for a rookie coach whose only golf credentials are four years on the varsity at Benet Academy in the Chicago suburb of Lisle, Ill. UC Irvine Athletic Director Dan Guerrero was familiar with Johnston because he was the school’s assistant campus recreation director from 1988-94.

“Every once in a while an athletic director gets to hire someone who [turns] everything he touches into gold. This is my opportunity and I didn’t want to miss it,” Guerrero said.

Although coaching an NCAA Division I team is a far cry from organizing a campus scramble, Johnston is quite resourceful. His career path has included everything from bartender to youth minister and he is working on a Ph.D. in Religion and Social Ethics at USC.

Johnston, 33, leaps the bridges between academia, spirituality and coaching in a single breath.

“You’re dealing with developing minds, especially in golf, where you can challenge each player’s moral fiber and personal growth,” he said. “It’s the classroom, outside.”

So far, Johnston’s philosophy has worked. UC Irvine won the 20-team Anteater Invitational last week at Coto de Caza, finishing the 54-hole tournament at 896, two shots ahead of UCLA and five in front of Washington. This weekend, the Anteaters tied for 10th place with 33rd-ranked New Mexico State with a final score of 894, at the U.S. Collegiate Golf Championship at Pasatiempo Golf Course at Santa Cruz.

The team’s performances are impressive considering the program has only one scholarship. For Johnston, the key is work ethic. Johnston worked odd jobs to help pay his high school tuition at Benet Academy and also worked to pay his way the University of Illinois.

“Golf gets a bad rap about spoiled, rich kids, and if I thought that was true [about a player] and I couldn’t do anything about it, ‘See ya,’ ” he said.

Johnston was forced to quit playing golf during his freshman year at Illinois after he broke his hand in a fight with his younger brother, Scott.

“It was over a woman,” he said. “He ended up with the girl and I got a broken hand and didn’t play golf for three years.”

The next time he picked up a club in competition, he and a friend won the campus two-man tournament his senior year.

The victory sparked his love for the sport and he canceled his plan to attend law school and instead pursued a career in athletics. In 1988, Johnston received a master’s degree in sports administration from Illinois and landed an interview with UC Irvine campus recreation director Jill Schindele at a convention in Florida.

Schindele said Johnston was highly regarded by his colleagues at Illinois, but they also said he had one flaw--an antipathy to rising early. Putting him to a test, Schindele flagged Johnston down at 10:30 p.m. at one of the convention’s evening meetings. She told him his interview the next day would be at a breakfast meeting.

“He was there with a suit on. . . at 7 o’clock in the morning. We just wanted to see how serious he was,” she said. “He told me later he never went to bed.”

During his tenure in the recreation department, Johnston most enjoyed teaching golf. He enjoyed teaching so much, in fact, that in 1994, he left Irvine to teach writing full-time at USC. After 16-year veteran Anteater Coach Steve Ainslie was fired last year, the open coaching position lured Johnston back to Orange County. He replaced interim coach Tim Tift.

“If they had 100 golf jobs, 99 of them I wouldn’t be interested in,” he said. “I only came back to UC Irvine because of the people.”

Johnston hobbles through the clutter of his office and points to his favorite poster, which he hasn’t gotten around to hanging. It is a picture of a monkey wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt and reclining on a bike. The caption reads “Attitude is everything.”

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Anteater Notes

UC Irvine women’s volleyball coach Merja Connolly handed out her first collegiate scholarship, Sunday, when Jamie Hill signed a letter of intent to attend the school in fall. Before replacing retired coach Mike Puritz in December, Connolly was coach in 1992 and ’93 at Cornell, which does not offer athletic scholarships. “It’s symbolic in that Jamie is the type of player who will help turn around our program. She will be an immediate impact and exemplify a dominant power program for UC Irvine,” Connolly said. Hill, a 6-4 middle blocker at Rancho Bernardo High, is a two-time San Diego Union All-Academic selection and also was selected Miss Teen San Diego for 1993-94. . . . The UC Irvine track and field teams compete Saturday against UCLA, Cal State Northridge and Houston at Westwood. Field events begin at 11:30 a.m. and running events start at 1 p.m. . . . The UC Irvine men’s tennis team (12-6), ranked No. 23, will play at top-ranked UCLA at 1:30 p.m. today, and the women’s tennis team (6-10) looks to stop a seven-match losing streak at Long Beach State at 1:30 p.m Wednesday. . . . The Anteater men’s volleyball team, 7-15 overall and 2-14 in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, plays its final home match of the season against No. 14 USC (8-12, 7-10) at 7 p.m. Wednesday. UC Irvine is 0-10 against USC.