These Coaches Lack Full-Time Status but They Spare Nothing in Effort

They’re scorned, but they’re happy. They’re in demand but underpaid.

Such is the paradox of walk-on coaches in high school sports.

Athletic directors would prefer to have full-time faculty members coaching all their teams. Walk-on coaches, they say, are unreliable, difficult to contact and often don’t know or care about school policies.

“They are a pain in the you-know-what,” said Leon Smith, boys’ athletic director at Santa Ana Valley High. “We have had so many problems over the years. At the end of the season, they are gone. At the beginning of the season, they don’t show up sometimes. Eighty percent of the problems in high school sports could be traced back to walk-on coaches.”

On the flip side, walk-ons endure low status and even lower pay--stipends top out at about $2,700 for a football or boys’ basketball coach for a season. Stipends for most other sports--not including playoff bonuses--are around $1,400, which coaches say is less than $3 per hour.

So why do they do it?

“[I] love the game, love to teach. I love to get the letters after these kids are in college, saying, ‘You were a big part of my life for three years,’ ” said Curt Bauer, walk-on boys’ soccer coach at Santa Margarita and part-owner of a window-cleaning business.

Joe Gonzales, in his seventh year as a walk-on softball coach at Foothill, has given up countless hours at the businesses he owns to lead the Knights to three Southern Section finals.

“I like to compete and coaching is a way to do that,” he said.

Walk-ons agree that their tenuous links to the schools and commitments to other jobs often lead to logistic problems.

“Obviously, the best situation would be if we were on campus and we had an opportunity to see our players on a regular basis. The communication between the administration and us would be much better,” Gonzales said.

The situation might not be ideal, but one thing is clear: Walk-ons are here to stay.

The majority of junior varsity and assistant coaching positions in the Southern Section are filled by walk-on coaches. And more and more, walk-ons are being hired as varsity head coaches.

A Times survey of Orange County high schools found that of the 1,347 varsity head coaching positions, 527 (39%) were filled by walk-ons. That is up from 1987, when a Times survey revealed 33% of the county’s 1,093 varsity head coaches were walk-ons.

Least affected is the triumvirate of football, boys’ basketball and baseball. Only 14% of the head coaches in those sports are walk-ons.

Football is especially immune to walk-on head coaches--there are only three in the county’s 70 varsity programs, at Calvary Chapel, Capistrano Valley Christian and Orange. Laguna Beach football coach, Dave Holland, will be a walk-on next season.

“I can’t imagine having a football and basketball and probably even a baseball coach that wasn’t on campus, that would just be a logistical mess,” said John Barnes, football coach and athletic director at Los Alamitos. “They have big numbers [of players]. . . . They are a more highly visible program and because of that, the coach has to be just as visible. There are so many things we do from 8 a.m. to noon with kids, making sure they go to class and make good grades. If you aren’t here, I don’t see how you can do that.”

In girls’ sports, 46% of the varsity head coaches are walk-ons. That’s an increase of 3% since the Times survey in 1987. Of the county’s 67 girls’ soccer coaches, 75% are walk-ons.

The reason for the rise in walk-on coaches is almost exclusively financial.

About the same time Proposition 13 slashed school revenue in 1978, the state Department of Education cut the high school physical education requirement from four years to two, eliminating the need for many P.E. teachers, who often also coach.

When teaching positions become available, schools’ academic needs are paramount.

“[It is difficult to] find the [coaches] who can teach in the right subject and then find the academic people willing to take the gamble on [coaches] they don’t know,” said Larry Doyle, athletic director at Marina, where 16 of the 22 head coaches are walk-ons.

One success story is Aliso Niguel, where all 20 head coaches are teachers at the school. Aliso Niguel opened in 1993 and Principal Denise Danne pushed to hire teachers who could also coach.

“I really believe in the power of student sports to motivate them to be academically very well-founded,” Danne said. “If students see their teachers not only as academicians but also as coaches in the area of sports, they get a very well-rounded picture of their teachers as a professional. Also, the teachers have so much more leverage with students in terms of making them accountable.”

The results are clear: 57% of the students at Aliso Niguel are involved in athletics and the school had the highest SAT scores of the four high schools in the Capistrano Unified School District last year and sixth-highest in the county. What’s more, all 20 of the teacher-head coaches that Danne hired in 1993 are still in place.

Still, it hasn’t been easy. For Danne, arranging classes so 20 teachers can have their afternoons off for coaching is a scheduling nightmare. For the coaches, the monetary compensation is meager.

“It’s a tough thing,” Danne said. “They do it because they love coaching and they love kids.”

Teachers receive the same stipend that walk-ons do in addition to their regular teaching salary. Sometimes, they are given a period during the day to handle administrative duties for the team.

Unlike Danne, most athletic directors find that those incentives still are not enough. At Costa Mesa, only seven of the 20 head coaches are teachers.

“No one wants to teach all day then put in another 40 hours coaching,” Costa Mesa Athletic Director Jerry Howell said. “It’s a war.”

At Cypress, where 16 of the 21 head coaches are walk-ons, boys’ Athletic Director Rob Walker said the environment does not encourage teachers to coach.

“The pay is not very good,” Walker said, “and you take the time, the parental pressure, the community pressure, and where are you going to find guys to do it?”

*

George Larsen, girls’ soccer coach at Mission Viejo and The Times’ Orange County coach of the year, makes most of his money coaching club teams and giving private lessons. Larsen, 23, figures his stipend works out to about $2 an hour.

“My needs aren’t that much right now because I’m single, but if someone is trying to support their family, you couldn’t do it,” he said. “[Coaching high school] has kind of opened some doors for me. They are just a great group of girls. I don’t do it for the money at all.”

Bauer, 30, estimates that when he began coaching at Mater Dei in 1984, his stipend worked out to about 50 cents an hour.

“I’m making at least double that now,” he said with a laugh. “Obviously, with high school, you don’t do it for the money, so you have to have another job. You do it for the love of the game.”

For many former athletes, it’s a way to stay in the loop.

Dolly Bartlett played volleyball for Rancho Santiago in 1976 and ’77 and Long Beach State in 1978 and ’79. She played for the U.S. national team in 1980, when the United States boycotted the Olympics.

Bartlett, 39, has spent the last 14 years as a singer and master of ceremonies for a Polynesian entertainment show called A Hawaiian Experience in Sunset Beach.

This year, Bartlett agreed to become the boys’ volleyball coach at Santa Ana Valley, giving her an avenue back into the sport she loves. It also allows her to spend more time with her son, Koa Likeke, a sophomore on the team. Bartlett’s daughter, Manu Haukea, is a freshman at the school and played with the girls’ junior varsity in the fall.

“The money, I don’t really care. I just want to get these kids learning about volleyball . . . thinking and respecting one another and being a team player,” she said. “I dig it.”

For John Vargas, 34, coaching water polo at Corona del Mar dovetailed well with his playing career with the U.S. national team. Vargas joined the national team in 1984 and was hired as a walk-on at Corona del Mar at the same time.

For the next eight years, Vargas’ schedule remained much the same: run morning workout with the Sea Kings, eat, lift weights with some local teammates from the national team, eat, run Sea King practice, eat, practice with the national team or swim. During the off-season, Vargas traveled and played with the national team and helped the United States finish fourth in the 1992 Olympics.

Vargas, who currently is an assistant coach for the U.S. national team, has led the Sea Kings to four Southern Section Division I titles.

“This position [at Corona del Mar] has been nothing but perfect because it allowed me to coach the game I love,” he said.

Many walk-on coaches are business people who arrive at their offices at the crack of dawn so they can head for the field in the afternoon.

“I have to take a full day and get it done a bit quicker,” said Bauer, who arrives at his office in Orange at 7 a.m. He works for his window washing company until 2 p.m. before returning to the field. Often, there are meetings and other details to attend to in the evening.

For Roger Holmes, 36, the work-day for his construction business begins at 6:30 a.m. so he can get to Marina basketball practice by 2 p.m.

The busy schedule doesn’t allow much time for family, so Holmes’ family time is shared with basketball: “My 4-year old son knows everybody in our program,” he said.

Walk-ons say the most difficult thing about their jobs is not being at the school during the day to keep tabs on their players and to attend to the administrative details of coaching.

Westminster baseball Coach Jim Doyle, 28, teaches at a nearby middle school. Although the schools are close, he doesn’t always have time to scramble over to the high school during the day to take care of things like rain postponements.

“It’s tough because I can’t see the field and I have to make a decision [to postpone it], then I go to the field and I see we could have played,” he said.

Of all the drawbacks to walk-ons, there are a few unexpected advantages.

At Foothill, Gonzales and his assistants have raised and also donated money to make their softball facility at nearby Hillview High one of the best in the county.

“We have the wherewithal to put money from our own individual businesses into the program and sometimes that’s a little bit more difficult for an on-campus teacher to do,” said Gonzales, 55.

In the end, the debate over walk-ons comes down to a simple precept: How well can they coach? That question only can be answered on an individual basis.

“[Playing] football is not the end, this is just the vehicle we use to develop character and ethics and morals and values,” Katella Athletic Director Tom Danley said. “What you’re really after is to get those kids to have a quality of life, that’s the biggie, giving them some tools they can use.”

* Systems analyst Gary Ambrose assisted in the researching of this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Walk-On Coaches

Percentage of county head coaches in each sport who are walk-ons.

Boys’ Sports

*--*

Sport Pct. Volleyball 51% Water Polo 50% Wrestling 49% Tennis 48% Soccer 43% Cross-Country 40% Swimming 38% Baseball 24% Track 24% Basketball 15% Football 4% All Boys’ Sports 35%

*--*

Girls’ Sports

*--*

Sport Pct. Field Hockey 100% Soccer 75% Basketball 52% Swimming 48% Tennis 46% Volleyball 37% Cross-Country 30% Track 24% Gymnastics 0% All Girls’ Sports 46%

*--*

Co-ed Sports*--*

Sport Pct. Badminton 38% Golf 20% All Co-ed Sports 26%

*--*