Hall of Fame: Bill Pizzica (Newport Harbor)

Richard Dunn

It has been since 1989 when Bill Pizzica retired as Newport Harbor

High athletic director and sold his house in Newport Beach, but his

influence in the department and appearances on the football sidelines

remain ever present.

“I never miss a Newport Harbor football game,” said Pizzica, who lives

in Hemet and is a standout third baseman on a men’s 70s senior softball

team.

“I wasn’t born and bred there, but I sure have Newport in my blood,”

added Pizzica, the Sailors’ head football coach for five years in the

1970s, when Newport Harbor was a school of 3,200 students and competed in

the CIF Southern Section’s large-school division, advancing to the

semifinals in 1974, ’77 and ’78.

Pizzica spent his entire 22-year career at Newport Harbor, from 1967

through ‘89, including the last 10 years as athletic director, when the

school’s student-body numbers crumbled each year like a shack in a

hurricane.

“In 1974, they had 3,200 students, and when I left in 1989, (the

enrollment) was down to 1,400, so it was a time when Newport Harbor was

really shrinking,” Pizzica said. “We were losing hundreds and hundreds of

kids each year. I don’t think the young kids could afford to live there,

and now it’s coming back. The young kids who can afford to live there are

finding it.”

As athletic director, Pizzica hired current Newport Harbor AD Eric

Tweit and head football coach Jeff Brinkley, who has become the all-time

winningest coach in the Newport-Mesa District.

“That’s what I was looking for, somebody to keep (the Tars’ winning

football tradition) going, and they really have,” said Pizzica, who added

that hiring Brinkley “was one of my brightest decisions.”

Even in retirement, when Pizzica and his wife of 47 years, Betty,

lived in Northern California, they’d drive down every autumn and set up

camp in Hemet, where they bought a home last year.

“We couldn’t handle the wet winters and snow,” Pizzica said of

Magalia, where he lived for 12 years, before coming back to Southern

California.

Pizzica started at Newport Harbor as an assistant football coach under

Wade Watts, for whom Pizzica played in high school in East Liverpool,

Ohio.

While attending a fifth year of college at Fresno State to earn his

California teaching credential, Pizzica got a call from Watts one day

about an opening at Newport Harbor.

“I jumped on that real quick,” Pizzica said. “Wade started hard-nosed

football at Newport Harbor, then there was Ernie Johnson (in 1970) and I

stayed with him, then Don Lent (from 1971-73), then I took over. We just

kept the same program and I tried to keep them playing hard-nosed

football. That’s what we were known for. We didn’t win any really big,

but we didn’t lose any really big, either.”

In a Sunset League era when the Sailors always played teams like

Fountain Valley, Edison, Huntington Beach and Marina, they advanced deep

into the CIF Big Five Conference Playoffs on three occasions, with

perhaps the Tars’ best chance of winning it all coming in 1978, when they

lost to league rival Fountain Valley, 14-9, in the semifinals.

At least four of Pizzica’s assistants went on to become head coaches

-- Hank Cochrane, the late Larry Doyle, Dave Perkins and Bob Seevers (now

the principal at Big Bear High).

“I really attribute much of my success to those assistants,” Pizzica

said. “Without them, I’d fall flat on my face.”

Pizzica, born and raised in East Liverpool, Ohio, was a rock-solid

5-foot-9, 220-pound left guard at Mt. Union College in Ohio, following a

four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force.

Pizzica played at Mt. Union for four years and graduate in 1959.

Although he began his collegiate career as a fullback, he was switched to

left guard and made the All- Methodist College All- American team. He

played every minute of every game, except once when his coach, Duke

Barrett, took him out of the last game with one minute left.

“He said he didn’t want any records that couldn’t be broken,” Pizzica

said.

Pizzica, the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame,

and his wife have four grown children, 10 grandchildren and became great

grandparents for the first time this year.