Johnson Ringing In New Era of Chaminade Football

Tim Johnson plans to spend a lot of the upcoming football season lying around on the sofa.

Just don’t expect to find Johnson perched horizontally with remote in one hand, frosty aluminum can in the other.

For Johnson, who arrived in town only last week to assume duties as coach of the Chaminade High football team, the coaches’ office will be a cozy home away from home--at least until November, when his wife and young son are expected to join him in Southern California to complete the family’s move from Jackson, Tenn.

Johnson, 34, defensive coordinator at Lambuth University the past three seasons, plans to eventually rent an apartment in Northridge. But Johnson--more workaholic than couch potato--says the sofa at school often will be his bed during the next several weeks.

“This is where you’ll find me,” Johnson said, changing clothes in front of an open locker. “There is a pile of stuff to do and I’ve yet to get through it. Right now, I’m trying to get a feel of what this football program has to use.”

A former Chaminade assistant, Johnson came down from the college ranks to become a first-time high school head coach, a career move designed to help him master the administrative end of coaching. He already has moved into the high-rent district among area programs by replacing Rich Lawson, who resigned in May after nine years to become coach of the fledgling Malibu High program.

Lawson led the Eagles to a Southern Section final his first season at Chaminade, a tiny parochial school tucked away in a tranquil West Hills neighborhood.

Chaminade’s rivalry with established Notre Dame has blossomed into one of the region’s best. Chaminade defeated the Knights in 1992 for the team’s first Mission League title.

Johnson knows he will be under the microscope--and quite willingly.

“I went after a couple of college jobs and I was told that I was qualified, X’s-and-O’s-wise,” Johnson said. “But as far as dealing with the press and dealing with the budgets and dealing with the administration, I had no experience with that. I now have to do P.R. stuff, work with the press, work with the administration. . . .

“I’m not unique from anybody else who’s been an assistant. I wanted to stick my own philosophy on the line and see how it would come out.”

Johnson’s approach will differ little from Lawson’s. The defense will be the same scheme Johnson oversaw as the coordinator of that unit in 1991. Offensively, “you’ll see few wrinkles,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s imprint likely will be made in areas of organization and discipline.

“We’ll spend a lot more time in meetings--which, from what I understand, will be a lot different from how it’s been the past few years,” he said. “We’ll be as productive as we can be every single day. . . . I don’t know any other way.”

Johnson has spent much of the past decade on the move after growing up in Kansas City and earning All-American honors three times as a linebacker at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. His resume includes a graduate degree from Oxford University in England and seven years as a head coach of various professional teams in Finland.

In Finland, Johnson became a friend and colleague of Lawson, who coached overseas in 1985 and ’86. That led to Johnson serving as a Chaminade assistant, a position he left to become defensive coordinator at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kan.

While his stay at Chaminade was brief, Johnson made a lasting impression.

“I never lost contact with him, and once Rich left I went after him specifically,” said Ed Croson, Chaminade’s athletic director. “He’s the perfect kind of guy for this type of environment. He’s been in parochial school and he understands more than the academic side of it. I knew that the only thing that would change are some X’s and O’s.”

Not to mention some faces. Graduation claimed 26 players, including a core of talented skill-position players. Few would consider Chaminade a top team, including Johnson, who concedes he has “a big hill to climb.”

But the coach, characteristically, plans to work more and sleep less.

“I was Quasimodo in the bell tower at Lambuth; I was the workhorse,” Johnson said. “I’m still planning on doing that. But now, Quasimodo has got to put on a pair of [slacks] with a nice collared shirt.”

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Joe Magdaleno, the only boys’ soccer coach Santa Paula has had, continues to battle a heart condition and is uncertain whether he will guide the Cardinals.

Magdaleno, 53 and a member of the Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame, was told by doctors in January that he has an irregular heartbeat. He missed six games during a season in which his program won its eighth Frontier League title and has not returned to his job as an outreach consultant for junior high students.

Magdaleno’s condition has gradually improved with the help of medication, though he lacks stamina. He said in March he would decide whether to continue coaching by the end of the summer, but he may now wait until October to make a decision.

“I’m not up to par yet but I’m getting better,” said Magdaleno, who has a 258-64-19 record since founding the Santa Paula program in 1980.

“I have [doctors’] appointments in the next two weeks that will tell a lot.”

In June, Magdaleno stepped down as the Cardinals’ cross-country coach. He said he is prepared to do the same with soccer if he no longer can give a full effort.

“There’s a time when you have to step aside and let somebody else take the reins,” Magdaleno said. “Hopefully it will be someone with the same concept: that you’re not just a soccer coach but also a teacher of life.”

Contributing: Tris Wykes.