A new look for Orange Coast
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Rick Devereux
First in a series.
Things are changing for Orange Coast College athletics. The soccer
fields have been given a new surface. Legendary LeBard Stadium is
undergoing reconstruction. And the school has a new athletic
director.
Well, kind of new.
Barbara Bond was the assistant athletic director under Fred
Hokanson, who resigned after four years as AD for the Pirates and 35
years as a faculty member. Plus, Bond has been a coach at OCC since
1975, so ‘new’ is a pejorative word. She is a fixture at the college
and in the community.
“Barbara is just OCC through and through,” men’s soccer coach
Laird Hayes said. “She was the best choice. She bleeds OCC colors.”
The first color that Bond had to deal with was green, as in money.
One of her first duties was to rally the school for portions of the
more than $200 million bond, Measure C, which passed in November
2002. Thanks to her hard work and fortuitous circumstances, the
athletic and physical education department will receive major
upgrades and renovations.
“Physical education had all its ducks lined up and ready to go
when the bond passed,” Bond said. “We were lucky enough to get our
projects approved. Part of that is the soccer field was going to be
replaced with a soccer field. The rest of the school is if you take
down a building you don’t really know what type of building is going
to go up in its place. So for us the footprint was already there. The
soccer field was going to be a soccer field. Because the footprint
was already there, we’ve been the first ones out of the shoot.”
Bond is very familiar with the conditions of the soccer fields.
She has been the school’s only women’s soccer coach since its
inception in 1979. She said the field has such a crown to it that
people on the opposite side look like they’re kneeling because the
crown cuts off the view of their feet. Coincidently, the soccer field
will be the first facility to make use of the renovation and the
women’s soccer team will be the first to host an event on the new
facilities. Bond will be present at the dedication Aug. 31 before the
game against Mt. San Antonio College but won’t be able to coach on
the new field. She said a similar situation happened to her
predecessor.
“They redid the track and [Hokanson] was the track coach for like
32 years,” she said. “They get a brand new track and he never coached
on it. It was finished the year he became athletic director.
Ironically enough, the same thing is going to happen for the soccer
field. I’ve been the only soccer coach in the history of the school,
I think we’ve had soccer for 23 years, and the brand-new facilities
will be completed and I won’t be able to coach on it. So it’s pretty
funny. It’s still exciting, though. I can’t wait for the opening
day.”
Other renovations involve adding a synthetic surface to the soccer
and football fields, called FieldTurf. It is the same surface
installed at state-of-art stadiums for the Detroit Lions and Houston
Texans, built in 2002.
“Every time I go out there I get excited,” Bond said. “It’s
exciting to see the first tree go in. It’s exciting to see the logo
on the field. How can you not be excited about something new?”
Many people are excited about Bond as the new athletic director
because she has been at the college for so long.
“I have all the confidence in the world that Barbara will do a
great job,” Hayes said. “Se was hired the year before I was and she
has coached everything. It’s been a no-brainer. The transition has
been smooth and seamless.”
Bond graduated from Santa Ana Valley High and went on to play for
the volleyball and swim teams at Long Beach State. She then became
the field hockey coach at OCC in 1975, but suggested it be replaced
with women’s soccer in 1979 because of lack of interest. She guided
the Pirates to six conference championships and two state titles in
22 years at the helm and was named the Orange Empire Conference Coach
of the Year five times and the 2002 National Soccer Coaches
Association West Region Coach of the Year.
She has also coached the basketball, softball and badminton teams.
She said coaching was all the same, no matter what type of equipment
is used or how the score was kept.
“It doesn’t make a difference what the sport is, it’s all about
your coaching philosophy and your teaching, sportsmanship, character
and values,” she said. “It’s all the same from sport to sport. Maybe
the fundamentals and the advanced skills are a little bit different,
but you coach it all the same. I think, overall, I’ve been fairly
successful in my career as a coach. You hope the students will
develop character and ethics and all the stuff that you would hope
that an individual will learn. And that’s how we treat it, as an
outdoor classroom where we’ve got real important life skills to
teach. That’s how I look at it. It’s more of an education than a
win-at-all-cost situation. That’s never been the bottom line.”
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