‘Aca-Deca’ Coach Says He’ll Leave, but Few Believe

After seven years of coaching the county’s Academic Decathlon powerhouse, history teacher Larry Jones is calling it quits. At least, that’s what he says.

Problem is, no one quite believes him. Not his wife, nor a rival coach, nor some of his decathletes.

Although her husband vows to retreat from the all-consuming “Aca-Deca” to spend more time with his family, Marilyn Green thinks she knows better.

“He is a brilliant and gifted teacher who tries hard to make a difference for his community and his students,” said Green, who coordinates state and federal programs for Moorpark Unified School District. “Yeah, he’s taking some time off; I hope he’ll take several years as a breather. But I’m guessing he’ll come back to it.”

Call it intuition--or maybe wishful thinking--but this suburban community’s residents aren’t quite ready to let Jones go.

It’s hard to blame them.

In the eight years since Jones, 50, began coaching--with a hiatus in the 1994-95 school year--the Moorpark Academic Decathlon team has become a dynasty, winning the county tournament in 1993, 1994, 1998 and again in February.

Jones Fears Burnout

Last weekend, Jones, co-coach Michelle Bergman and their eight decathletes made history, upsetting the favorites from El Camino Real in Woodland Hills to become the first Ventura County squad to win the state competition. In mid-April, the team will represent California at the national Academic Decathlon in Fullerton.

Like basketball’s Michael Jordan, Jones said he wishes to depart the decathlon while he’s at the top of his game. The question remains, will he emulate Jordan in another way--retiring only to return?

“I truly don’t think I’m coming back to decathlon--only if I start getting itchy for it again,” said Jones, a wiry, intense man who beams when talking about his students. “I know I’m truly good at relatively few things in life--and I found out early that one of them is teaching. I don’t want to be one of those teachers who burns out. If I keep up this pace, I’ll burn out.”

Fear of burnout, a desire to spend more time with his wife and two teenage sons and frustration with the way the decathlon is run are pushing Jones to retire from coaching.

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The hours spent preparing a successful Academic Decathlon team are grueling. As competitions approach, students and coaches labor 30 to 50 hours a week preparing for the 10-event contest that covers topics from Socrates to “Siddhartha.” That’s in addition to regular classwork and jobs. They spend many weekends and holidays studying.

Jones arrives at work by 7:30 most mornings, teaches until afternoon, coaches decathlon until 8 or 9 p.m., goes home to grade papers until 10 or 11 and grabs a few hours’ sleep before starting all over.

As best he can recall, his last day off was New Year’s Day. Mere hours after his mother’s death days before Christmas, Jones was back at school helping students prepare.

“I want time to get some exercise, take walks with my wife, see movies with my boys, play catch and go to church,” said Jones, a teacher for 23 years. “Now, Academic Decathlon is the last thing I think of every night, the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning, and the thing that wakes me up at 3 a.m. That’s just not healthy.”

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Unhealthy perhaps, but it’s certainly effective.

The Moorpark decathletes--junior Ari Shaw and seniors Arturo Barragan, Alexandra Dove, John Ellis, Valerie Lake, Nick Lange, Mitul Patel and Rebecca Wershba--praise their coach effusively. While they enter the decathlon test and interview rooms without their coach, many of the students say they never realized how successful they could be until Jones taught them.

“Mr. Jones, he’s like a father figure,” said Ellis, 18. “Academic Decathlon is a family--Mr. Jones and Mrs. Bergman are the parents. They’re behind us 100%, no matter how we place [in competition] or what we do. If we’re tired or burned out and can’t study, he’ll send us home to sleep. He won’t push us beyond our max, but he pushes us hard.”

A Malibu native, Jones is one of six children born to a homemaker and an engineer from England. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Cal State Northridge and a master’s from Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

Jones said he decided teaching was his calling in elementary school, inspired by his fourth- and fifth-grade teachers.

While some students groan about history class, Jones believes studying people, events and ideas to be the most fascinating of subjects.

His unique approach to teaching history, weaving in philosophy and fun, earned him an Amgen’s Teacher of Excellence Award and its accompanying $10,000 in 1995.

A soft-spoken Neil Young fan, Jones’ competitiveness is belied by his mustachioed grin and silly ties with images of characters from “The Simpsons” and “South Park” and of Michelangelo’s “David.”

While his decathlon students write essays in competition or scan their brains for that one missing piece of esoterica about the opera “Carmen,” Jones is as nervous as an expectant father pacing a maternity ward.

Time for Own Kids

But when the students return, Jones does whatever he can to ease their tension.

“Even through the stress of competition, he keeps a smile on his face. He’ll give you back rubs and tell you to calm your nerves,” said Barragan, 17. “When we’re in the tests, I know he’s pulling his hair out, wishing he’d given us one more practice test. . . . He always says, even if we lose, no one will beat us. The journey is its own reward.”

Added mother Genice Wershba, whose daughter, Rebecca, has been on decathlon teams for the past two years and whose older daughter participated previously, “He’s so caring with these kids. Five years ago, I remember him saying, because of a [district] policy saying teachers shouldn’t touch kids, ‘I’m a hugger. If that bothers you, just let me know now.’ He’s this magnificent motivator who always lets the kids know they’re winners.”

Dedication to the team has come at a cost.

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Time away from sons Alex and Nathaniel pains Jones. Although he is usually able to make spring and summer baseball games--after decathlon wraps up--Jones has missed soccer games and a winning shot in the last basketball game of the season. Rather than watch one son’s role as Daddy Warbucks in “Annie,” Jones saw the performance on video.

And Jones recalls this heartbreaking question one son posed to his mother: “How come Dad has so much time to help other kids with their homework and no time for me?”

“The decathlon students, they’re like my second kids,” Jones said, sighing. “I sometimes worry that my own kids feel that I’m with them too much. There’s nothing in my life more important than my sons.”

The one year Jones spent away from decathlon coaching, he was helping care for his father and his best friend, who died of complications from cancer within a week of each other. While his father was ill, Jones and his wife set up a bedroom in their living room. In came Jones’ mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, so her son could feed and read to her.

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Decathlon has another price too: With enormous success comes criticism.

Jones’ intensity rubs some people the wrong way. Quarreling with decathlon officials about inaccurate questions or interpretations of policies strikes some as whining. The coach, however, calls it sticking up for the students.

“When you ask kids to jump through all these hoops, yet year after year you get tests that are so badly written with all these glitches, it’s frustrating,” Jones said. “So I speak my mind. I know some people get ticked at me, and I won’t say things that will be hurtful to other people, but I’ll fight for my kids.”

His competitiveness has led some rival coaches in Ventura County to grouse that it’s not any fun to compete against Jones anymore. Even if his students wear boutonnieres to competition, someone inevitably complains.

What people don’t catch is the way Jones will straighten the tie of a student on an opposing team or urge officials to allow a competing student to take an exam again if he falls ill, said Simi Valley coach Ken Hibbitts, whose squad has traded county titles with Moorpark in recent years.

“I know some other coaches think he’s too fiercely competitive, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” said Hibbitts, a social studies teacher. “That’s what’s made his team so good. No one ever says a basketball or a football coach is too competitive. Academics are what school’s all about. His philosophy is my philosophy, too.”