Reversing Course for the Better

Over the summer, La Quinta football Coach Jeff Veeder told his players they had a chance to win eight or nine games this season.

“Everybody thought I was crazy,” Veeder said. “My players gave me some funny looks.”

Why wouldn’t they? After all, they had won no games the year before. When the Aztecs fell behind in the opener against Laguna Beach, Veeder started to think maybe he was crazy.

“I thought, ‘Uh-oh, here we go again.’ ”

But La Quinta came back to beat Laguna Beach, 34-21, to give Veeder his first victory since 1996.

“The kids didn’t get down, they stayed together and played with poise,” Veeder said. “The key to this season was getting that first victory. It had been so long.”

The Aztecs shut out Alhambra Keppel, 23-0, the next week and won three more times before losing their first game. La Quinta finished 8-2, 4-2 in the Garden Grove League, and went to the playoffs for the first time in eight years. The Aztecs lost to Fullerton, 43-27, in the first round of the Division IX playoffs, but their remarkable turnaround was enough to earn Veeder The Times Orange County coach of the year honors.

“It is extraordinarily well-deserved,” La Quinta Athletic Director Jim Perry said. “That’s a tremendous achievement, not only for Jeff, but also for his staff and his kids. This just reinforces everything that Jeff tells his kids, that hard work and dedication really does pay off.”

Perry said he’s a little surprised it paid off so quickly.

“When we hired him, I stressed to him at the bare minimum we were looking at three years to turn this program around, realistically four years,” Perry said.

After a 2-8 season in 1996 and a 0-10 year in 1997, the rebuilding project appeared to be behind schedule. But Perry, like Veeder, had confidence.

“The fact that we were 0-10 and people were trying to hire him away, that told me that we were headed the right way,” Perry said.

La Quinta is Veeder’s first head coaching job, though he had been an assistant at Long Beach Millikan, Santa Ana, Tustin and Santa Fe Springs St. Paul. Many of Veeder’s current assistants played for him at St. Paul and are only a few years older than La Quinta’s seniors.

It was Veeder’s 23 seniors who carried most of the load this season. Quarterback Thi Huyhn completed 53% of his passes, running back Hai Duyen Nguyen rushed for 1,663 yards and scored 14 touchdowns and tight end Ben Fredrickson caught 37 passes for 654 yards.

But maybe the biggest key to La Quinta’s turnaround was the addition of four senior baseball players, who hadn’t played football since their freshman year: Benny Soto, Alex Valdivia, Anthony Garcia and Josue Pena. All four started and played both ways.

Even though Veeder was blessed with more talent than he had those previous two years, his team still didn’t have much size.

“The thing that saved us is we executed well,” Veeder said. “We ran a pretty sound offensive and defensive package.”

Most impressive to Perry, though, was the kind of program Veeder runs.

“He had good citizens, good students and he got kids excited about playing football,” Perry said. “He walked the walk. He preached about working hard and sacrificing, and he did it. I know for a fact there were nights when he never went home.”

Veeder said he will dedicate his coach of the year award to his mother, Joan, who died the night before La Quinta’s last regular-season game. Joan Veeder was the team’s photographer and was affectionately called “Mama V” by the team.

“I’m real happy,” he said. “This is all for her. If she was here, she’d be busting out all over right now. She was a special lady.”