Basketball’s Patron Saint

Santa Clara High School basketball coach Lou Cvijanovich is a local legend. For 41 years, he has led the Saints basketball teams to win after win. Parents, teachers and students know him simply as “Coach C.” They even named a gymnasium in his honor.

His reputation is so great that some people believe it has held the school together during a decade of declining enrollment and that Coach C. is the reason many parents send their students to Santa Clara.

And as he prepares to retire this month, some worry that Santa Clara’s student population may continue to drop and the future of the parochial school may be in question.

But Father Gregory Coiro, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles--which oversees the school, said any rumors that Santa Clara plans to close are false.

“The coach has had a remarkable winning record,” he said. “While I am sure that that is a major plus for any school, the school doesn’t close when one coach leaves.”

Ten years ago, 722 students attended Santa Clara High School. This year, 273 students are enrolled. Ten years ago, there were 36 full-time teachers. This year, there are 18.

Meanwhile, enrollment at rival St. Bonaventure High School in Ventura is up, according to Principal Brother Paul Horkan. He said the number of students at the Catholic school has increased from about 550 five years ago to 690 this year.

Oxnard Union High School Supt. Bill Studt said that his district is about 2,300 students over capacity and will open another high school in 2001. In each of the last several years, Studt said, between 30 and 40 students have transferred from Santa Clara High School to the public school district.

Some attribute the decline in Santa Clara’s enrollment to the school’s location in a depressed south Oxnard neighborhood reputed to be violent and crime-ridden. Others say that the $3,580 annual tuition is too high for many parents. Still others say the modern facilities of Oxnard High School’s new campus--which opened in 1995--may be a factor. Coiro said the number of students from the three parish grade schools that feed into Santa Clara is also down.

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Santa Clara High School plans to celebrate its 100th birthday in 2001, and school officials are working to get the student population back up to 400 by then. Teachers and administrators are advertising in local papers, talking to parents, holding open houses and visiting private elementary schools to lure students to the Catholic school.

“Obviously, we’re concerned about enrollment,” Principal Keith Murphy said. “We spend a lot of time thinking, planning and talking to students. We’d like to have about 100 more students, but we can manage as we are.”

Murphy said Santa Clara will stay open as long as it is subsidized by the archdiocese, which plans to spend about $250,000 in capital improvements at Santa Clara this summer and to create a strategic plan for the school this fall.

The school sits on a commercial strip of Saviers Road, in a neighborhood that community leaders say is plagued with poverty and crime. But Santa Clara may soon see the results of a series of government programs aimed at reviving the neighborhood. The state awarded south Oxnard a grant to pair troubled teens with mentors and counselors, the county targeted south Oxnard for a welfare-to-work program and the city created a redevelopment district.

But with or without the reform efforts, Cvijanovich said, “we still run the safest school in the dog-gone country.”

“One of these days people are going to realize that and the school is going to fill up,” he said.

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The low enrollment has forced Santa Clara to reexamine its mission, Murphy said. Instead of a full range of classes and activities, the school now focuses on rigid academics, offering numerous honors and few remedial classes. There are smaller class sizes, and the teachers have numerous responsibilities. And as the numbers continue to drop, Murphy said, the school continues to struggle to make ends meet.

He said the sports program will go on as usual, but the school will miss Coach C.

Cvijanovich, 72, came to Ventura County in 1952, and coached at Wilson Junior High, Haydock Junior High and Camarillo High School. In 1958, he came to Santa Clara High School, where he has spent 41 years as head basketball coach, 17 as head football coach and 12 as head baseball coach.

He holds multiple state records, including 829 career victories and 15 southern section championships. Under Cvijanovich’s coaching, the basketball team has won 29 league titles, four California regional titles and three state championships. And this year, the team had a 30-3 record and won the State Division V championship.

Without him, some worry that parents will send their kids elsewhere. But Oxnard City Councilman Dean Maulhardt, a Santa Clara graduate, disagrees.

“The sports program is the public-relations part of Santa Clara, but the school is there for the academics,” said Maulhardt, who also sent his two daughters to Santa Clara.

Cvijanovich said the basketball program was a good recruiting tool, and he doesn’t think that will change. “Nobody is indispensable,” he said. “The program will continue, but it will just be a different person doing it.”

He also said he would consider coming back next year to help out his daughter Sherri, who coaches the girls’ basketball team.

Mary Mullen, an alumna, a parent and Santa Clara’s varsity softball coach, said Coach C was a legend, and it would be foolish to think that his retirement won’t have any impact on the school.

“It is going to matter,” Mullen said. “But we just have to show people in the community that Santa Clara is a good school. We’re giving it our best shot because we think this school is worth it. Santa Clara means a lot to me.”