Lost Lobo

David Olson thought he was laying the groundwork for a long coaching career at Los Amigos High when he instituted mandatory study hall for his players and became a stickler for discipline and accountability.

In his two years as the Lobos’ football coach, Olson’s teams posted a 10-11-1 record and twice made the playoffs. But more importantly, others say, many of his players’ grade-point averages rose and their attitudes improved.

Then, last month, Olson was fired and replaced by Roger Takahashi, who won nearly 70% of his games as Los Amigos’ varsity coach from 1994-98.

Olson, 35, a 1983 Los Amigos graduate, is disillusioned. He said he tried to do the right thing by stressing “academics, competition, learning responsibility and character, winning and having fun.”

And there is evidence he was meeting his priorities.

“College is the most important thing to me right now because I want to make something of myself,” said Manny Salgado, a senior who made the school’s honor roll and the All-Garden Grove League football team last season.

When Salgado was a sophomore, before Olson became head coach, his grades were so poor that he wasn’t eligible to play football.

“He taught us to do lots of things, like keep your mind on schoolwork,” Salgado said. “He wanted us to be responsible on and off the field, in the classroom, respect the teachers and principal, do what you’re told, do your homework, don’t be late to class, be there on time. He taught us to be respectful people.”

Olson laid down the law early. He suspended 14 players, including seven starters, for his first game as head coach because those players hadn’t given advance notification before missing a practice.

Los Amigos lost the game, 48-7.

In Olson’s last game as coach, Los Amigos lost in the first round of the Southern Section playoffs to University, 21-13, in part because Sam Islas, a key player, was benched for the first quarter because he missed a team meal.

“Of course I was disappointed,” Islas, a junior, said. “But I realized what I had done to the team. I let them down . . . If I was a coach, I would set up the same rules. I learned there are no special players on the team, it’s a team effort, and everyone has to put in the same effort to be successful.”

Connie Van Luit, Los Amigos’ third-year principal, made the decision to switch coaches. She initially supported Olson after she investigated complaints made in November by the football booster club and its president, Pam Martinez.

Martinez said she then took her complaints about Olson to Peggy Mahfood, the director of secondary education for the Garden Grove Unified School District. And in January, after Mahfood’s three-week investigation, Van Luit changed her mind.

Two days after his team’s football banquet, Olson refused Van Luit’s request to resign, so she terminated Olson and promptly hired Takahashi. Olson remains at Los Amigos as a history teacher.

Olson said three “minor” violations--two of Southern Section rules, one of a district policy--during his tenure as coach were cited for his firing. Van Luit declined comment other than to say she wanted Takahashi back as coach. Mahfood did not return phone calls. Martinez, on behalf of the booster club, had no comment.

“I think they investigate in order to justify firing a coach,” Olson said. “If that’s what you set out to do, that’s what’s going to happen.”

One of the section violations involved prohibited contact between coaches and players on a Sunday.

But Olson said the contact was innocent. The coaches were working, Olson said, when some players, having seen the coaches’ cars parked at the school, came by to say hello, and another time to see who the first-round playoff opponent would be. “There wasn’t any practice or game preparation taking place with players,” Olson said.

The other violation, “the bigger one of the three,” Olson said, took place last spring. In the off-season, teams are allowed one hour of football instruction during each school day. Because Olson taught history during the football players’ sixth-period physical education class, the players instead lifted weights. He met with the team for a “45-minute football P.E. class” after school.

Athletic Director Dave Auxier signed off on that arrangement, but said Olson sometimes spent more than 45 minutes with the players.

“There were plenty of times he was out there after 4 p.m., and school ends at 2:38,” Auxier said.

Olson said he couldn’t ever remember ever being out there that late.

The violations were never brought to the attention of the Southern Section, said Rob Wigod, the section’s assistant commissioner in charge of football. “No one has self-reported anything to us,” he said.

The district violation resulted from improper transportation arrangements made for summer passing league games.

Twice, Olson didn’t directly return to school with his team from the game site, which he said the district considered a liability issue. And on one of those occasions, players rode home in the shell of a pickup truck. “I’m sure that’s what it was,” Olson said.

“Nobody brought up [the violations] until [Takahashi] wanted to come back,” Olson said.

Takahashi, 48, stepped down as Los Amigos’ varsity coach in 1998, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. He returned to coaching last year, guiding the freshman team to a 10-0 record.

Olson, who was Takahashi’s defensive coordinator for five seasons before becoming head coach, said he has no hard feelings toward the new varsity coach.

Takahashi said he admired what Olson had accomplished the past two years. “Now that I’ve returned to the program, I can see the fruits of his effort,” Takahashi said after looking over grade-point averages to determine which players would be eligible. “The GPAs are a lot higher than they used to be.”

Auxier, who has been in education for 29 years, called the coaching change “the ugliest thing I’ve ever been involved in. . . . [Olson] did some great things. He established mandatory study hall, really promoted the academic end of it, established a firm set of rules and followed through on them.”

Nevertheless, Auxier considers Takahashi one of the top five coaches in Orange County and said he wants him to run the Lobo football program.

“I think it’s unfair the way this whole thing has played out,” said Charlotte Andrews, an English teacher at Los Amigos who echoed the sentiments of a number of faculty members. “It’s too bad when high school sports become less about the kids and more about the politics and the parents.”

Olson hopes to continue teaching at Los Amigos, but he has also spoken with two other schools about becoming a varsity assistant in the fall.

“A lot of teachers are sad that he’s not coaching [at Los Amigos],” Andrews said. “We’re losing a good coach, one willing to go the extra mile.”

Olson knows he isn’t the first coach to lose his job after parents complained to the principal, and then to the principal’s bosses. But he would like to be he last.

“The way the system is should be changed,” Olson said. “Good coaches and good people should be given some protection. The same thing could happen to any coach at the school.”