Lessons resonate beyond victories

Every weekend, I get into my car, drive to a high school football stadium somewhere in Southern California and write about what happens on the playing field, with the final score supposedly the most important information.

In truth, whichever team wins or loses is hardly going to matter 10 or 15 years from now, even to many of those involved. What will be remembered, however, is how the head coach influenced, molded and treated his players from the game’s beginning to its end.

If a principal wants to change the attitude and direction of a high school, it starts with the football team and its coach.

No other adult in a leadership role makes a greater impact on a campus than its football coach, who, if he’s good, produces players who display qualities of character and discipline.

How do I know? From walking the sidelines during games and observing coaches who understand that while winning matters, what it takes to get there matters more.

While watching the double-overtime thriller involving Anaheim Servite and Orange Lutheran, on the sideline was a former Santa Fe Springs St. Paul football player who was obviously caught up in the excitement of what he was seeing. He said it brought back memories of playing one season for Marijon Ancich years ago and how the longtime coach had taught him to live a life of character.

While riding the subway a week later, a fellow passenger told me what a memorable experience it had been playing for Joel Schaeffer at Reseda in 1992.

During the Newhall Hart-Canyon Country Canyon game, former Hart defensive lineman George Kase, a 1991 graduate, was on the sideline, carrying his daughter on his shoulder. Two more ex-Hart standouts from the 1990s, Pat Norton and Tim DeGroote, were walking the sideline too, cheering on the present-day players.

These are all college graduates and successful adults who never forgot the lessons learned from days of high school football practices, pregame talks, post-games highs and lows.

They won games, they lost games. But the fact they still cherish those days tells me their coaches did something right and exerted an influence far beyond what a final score reveals.

It’s something that current and future generations of coaches must swear to uphold.

Another example of a coach making a difference is Agoura’s Charlie Wegher, whose players twice in the last three years have had to deal with last-second, heart-breaking losses to Westlake Village Westlake.

In 2004, Westlake used multiple laterals to return a kickoff on the game’s final play to win. Last week, Agoura’s Matt Bradley was headed into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown on the final play of double overtime when he lost a fumble.

Each time, Wegher had to address his dejected players and find a way to motivate them to move on. They did in 2004, reaching the playoff semifinals. And they’ll do it again this season because Wegher is a classy, determined coach with integrity and humility.

Recently, I watched previously unbeaten Cypress get routed by Garden Grove Pacifica, 48-14. Throughout the game, Cypress players kept cheering for their teammates and never stopped competing.

These players have clearly learned lessons from their second-year coach, Ray Fenton, who tells them, “We feel discipline isn’t a sometimes thing, it’s an always thing.” He also tells them, “Character is what you do when nobody is watching.”

Coaching at the college and professional level is all about winning. You get fired if you don’t do it often enough.

Occasionally that happens in high school too, but a principal whose job is to oversee coaches, as well as teachers, as they train and prepare teenagers for adulthood, knows they should be graded on more than simply wins and losses.

So as I continue to walk the sidelines, watching, listening, observing and reporting, you’ll always get a final score in the story. But that doesn’t mean it was the most important news.

Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.