Bill Price; an O.C. Coach on a Mission

Bill Price, who as coach and athletic director worked to rid the Cypress College football program of its losing image, died Saturday of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 70.

Price was born in Texas and raised in Long Beach. He graduated from Polytechnic High in 1948 and was a lineman on Cal State Long Beach’s first football team.

He began teaching in the mid-1950s in Compton and by 1961 was a football coach at Anaheim’s Magnolia High, where he helped guide teams that won five league titles. In 1968 he was hired by Cypress as a football assistant and golf coach. Two years later, he become head football coach, taking over a team that had won only five games in its three-year history.

Price spent long hours trying to make Cypress football respectable. But midway through the 1972 campaign, already suffering from stomach ulcers, he had a heart attack and doctors ordered him to resign as football coach.

To his chagrin, Cypress dropped football in 1979, but Price went on to serve for two years as Cypress athletic director and 10 more seasons as golf coach. He retired from teaching in 1989.

Survivors include his wife, Dottie; sisters Zeta, Gail and Kathy; son, Brad; daughter, Jeannie; and six grandchildren.

Services will be Thursday at 1 p.m. at Garden Church in Anaheim Hills.