The original ‘Big O,’ long before Oscar

ROGER CARLSON

As a prep in Athens, Ohio, he was the team leader and quarterback.

As a freshman at Notre Dame, he was on the roster, but didn’t play

and the football career of Dick Coury was at an end.

Well, sort of. No longer the player, he became The Coach.

When Orange County coaching legends are considered there aren’t

many who can put up the numbers which Coury and his Santa Ana-based

Mater Dei High Monarchs of 1957-65 produced.

These were the Friday Night showcase events which lit up the

sports pages.

In those days the Daily Pilot’s coverage, labeled as “The Orange

Coast Area,” consisted of Newport Harbor, Corona del Mar (1962),

Costa Mesa (1960), Huntington Beach, Westminster (1959), Mater Dei and two brand new schools in 1965, Marina (Huntington Beach) and

Estancia.

Mickey Flynn and the Anaheim Colonists ruled the roost in 1955 and

1956, and Mater Dei was just warming up under the hand of Steve

Musseau’s 10-1 and 12-0-0 powers on the CIF 2-A level.

Exit Musseau for Orange Coast College, enter Coury for Mater Dei,

who had been with the Monarchs for four years, starting as former

Notre Dame teammate Tom Carter’s assistant for two years before two

years under Musseau, and including stints as a head coach in

basketball and baseball.

Coury’s prior experience as a football coach was with the U.S.

Army, who, with a recommendation from Notre Dame Coach Frank Leahy,

became a coach for the Camp Drake Bulldogs in Japan during the Korean

War. It would be the closest Corporal Coury would come to the shores

of Korea.

Before USC’s John McKay would lure Coury away in 1966, the always likeable and gracious Coury would guide his Mater Dei teams to a

collective record of 84 wins, 9 losses and 5 ties, capped by the

12-0-1 CIF 4-A champions of ’65.

“I really thought I was going to stay at Mater Dei for good,” said

Coury. “When Coach McKay offered me the job I had to think about it.”

He had four trusted assistants in Bob Woods, Jim Knapp, Marv Bain

and Ed Bain, and a loyal following that put him in a class by

himself.

Game after game the Santa Ana Bowl overflowed, and the

scarlet-clad crowd rocked.

McKay was well aware of Coury’s awesome record, especially

defensively, and named him his defensive coordinator with an emphasis

on the secondary.

Small wonder. In those 98 games over nine seasons his Monarchs had

shut out 51 opponents. In 1964 they blanked seven foes and finished

7-1, losing only to Servite, and failed to get a playoff spot.

“Shutouts were a big part of our game,” said Coury. “The fans

loved it and we had a lot of good defensive players.”

They reveled in it and called it the “Big O.”

Recalling the ’64 disappointment: “They only took one team from a

league, it was unreal,” said Coury.

The Monarchs would precede their games with their patented moving

block of players slowly marching up the field in a “hut drill,” first

instituted by Musseau, and a crisp, well-executed style of play put

them in an elite field.

The middle linebacker was the key and Coury had a lock with such

standouts as Dick Litzinger, Bill Coston and Eric Patton.

He began with a CIF 2-A championship team in 1957 with running

back Henry Enriquez, featured future Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner

John Huarte in the 1960 CIF 2-A championship year and finished with

the Bruce Rollinson-Pete Sanchez championship team of 1965, capping

it with a 21-0 victory over Mickey Cureton and the Centennial

Apaches.

Cureton had been running wild all season long, but was shut down

that night. He shared CIF 4-A Player of the Year honors with Sanchez.

The UCLA-bound Cureton would be the sole CIF Player of the Year the

following year, despite the lack of a finals berth for Centennial.

And throughout the reign, success after success, Coury’s teams

played with the personality of their coach, displaying the rules of

sportsmanship and class.

“We never wanted to be showoffs,” said Coury.

With a big holdover, similar to Coury’s situation in 1957, the

late Bob Woods guided Mater Dei to an 11-1 record in 1966, losing to

Anaheim, 12-7, in the semifinal.

The glory years would not be revived until 1989 when Rollinson

returned to Edinger St. and they’ve been on a roll ever since.

The road for Coury would continue ... and before he would retire

from coaching football in 1999, there would be 17 family moves.

“And this is the last one,” promised the vibrant 74-year-old

resident of Lake San Marcos.

Three years at USC and a national championship in 1967 preceded

his move to California State College Fullerton where the Titans were

beginning a football program.

There was no schedule for 1969 and the following two years were

obliterated by the tragic plane crash when his three assistants, Joe

O’Hara, Bill Hannah and Dallas Moon, along with the pilot, were

killed in November of 1971.

“It was just a terrible year, losing my staff,” said Coury, who

even today finds it difficult to discuss.

The flight was from USIU in San Diego where the Titans had played

an afternoon game and the assistants were off to scout a game that

night at San Luis Obispo, Fullerton State’s next opponent.

Overall his two Fullerton teams were 6-4-1 and 7-4, but Coury’s

only recollection of his days at Fullerton was the flight that broke

his heart.

Two years with John Ralston and the Denver Broncos followed before

becoming the head coach of the Portland Storm in the ill-fated World

Football League. His offensive coordinator was Craig Fertig, who is

approaching his second year as Estancia High’s head coach.

From there, back to the Eagles, then a three-year tour as head

coach with the Breakers in the USFL, a year at a time in Boston, New

Orleans and Portland before a return to the NFL.

The Rams in Anaheim, the New England Patriots, Houston Oilers and

the Rams, this time in St. Louis, would force more calls to the

moving van companies before he finally called it a day in 1999. Now

he’s retired and “still trying to get used to it.”

But he has a lot to keep him busy, especially in the fall where

one of his sons, Steve, is in his 12th year as the coach of his Lake

Oswego High football team in Oregon.

Steve was a receiver for Fertig and the Oregon State Beavers out

of Mater Dei, and is one of five sons and two daughters.

The roll call for Dick and Bonnie includes Mike, Rick, Steve, Rob,

Catherine, Linda and Tim. And many grandchildren.

He has a grandson (Jordan) in Oregon playing for his dad in his

senior season this fall and another, Linda’s son, Robert Chandler, a

wide receiver at La Costa Canyon High.

And, he needs to squeeze in some Mater Dei games in the cracks, so

it’s a busy schedule despite the retired status. What an

ace-in-the-hole locker room item for Rollinson.

Those remarkable years at Mater Dei, the national championship

season at USC, a Super Bowl appearance with the Eagles, are all

bright memories for Coury. But he has a way of putting a lot of

things on his “important items,” with a seemingly endless number of

entries on his friends and family list.

Those days and personalities of the ‘50s and ‘60s are but echoes

now. But the traits of a class winner and the respect which evolved

under the hand of Dick Coury at Mater Dei High remain as pillars of

strength in the community of high school athletics.

Hey! See you next Sunday!

* ROGER CARLSON is the former sports editor for the Daily Pilot.

His column appears on Sundays. He can be reached by e-mail at

rogeranddorothea@msn.com.