A Coaches’ Team : Carson’s Vollnogle Makes Prep Football Stuff of Legend

One Sunday evening in the early 1980s, Gene Vollnogle was contemplating what it would it be like to coach football at Long Beach State.

“So we (Vollnogle and assistant Paul Huebner) got to thinking about it,” said Vollnogle, Carson High School’s football coach, “and we decided we’d put in for the job. On Sunday we were trying to figure out who we wanted as coaches and Monday morning they announced that they had hired somebody new.”

It wasn’t Vollnogle.

“That didn’t bother me whatsoever,” Vollnogle said, looking back. “The real coaching is done in high school. College football is mostly recruiting, and I would never want to do that. I want kids to come to me and want to play for me. I don’t want to go get them.”

The record shows that Vollnogle considered coaching at Harbor College in the late 1950s. But had he been hired, Carson might not have won 201 games and lost 61 since 1963, the year the school opened and the year a local legend began.

Vollnogle, the winningest coach in the history of California prep football, is the Tom Landry of the high school ranks. He is the only coach the Colts ever had. Landry, of course, still leads the Dallas Cowboys, but his team has faded like the Old West.

Vollnogle has rounded up eight career City section 4-A titles, and his team is favored to lasso another against Granada Hills (8-3) on Friday at East L.A. College.

People expect the Colts--who are ranked No. 2 nationally by USA Today--to ease past the Highlanders, since Carson dumped Granada Hills, 42-14, in October. Speed, strength, ability, discipline--they’re all in Carson’s favor.

Carson (11-0) wins so consistently that one might think Vollnogle does recruit. But it was coaching, not talent, that cut down the Highlanders last time. And at a school that has produced 306 All-Pacific League and 136 All-City players in 24 years, the Carson coaches clearly play a dominant role.

“I like our program, I like our coaches,” said senior receiver John Lark. “They are trying to make me as good a player as I can be and that’s all I can ask.”

“The coaches look at the kind of player you are, and they want to place you where you can do your best,” said quarterback George Malauulu.

Lark’s and Malauulu’s comments may seem obvious, but this doesn’t detract from their coaches’ ability.

In the Colts’ victory over Granada Hills, a well-taught defensive unit recovered a fumble, intercepted a pass and put the Highlanders in a 14-0 hole in less than four minutes during the second quarter.

“We knew what they were going to do, and that’s why we scored on defense,” said Carson defensive coordinator Jim D’Amore. “Granada Hills might think those were breaks in the game, but those were coaching things. We told our kids something might happen and it did.”

With four staff coaches and seven volunteers, the Carson brain trust often tells its players what opponents will do.

Until this season Banning High had the only program in the City section that rivaled Carson. After winning the 1985 city championship, Banning’s system dissolved when Coach Chris Ferragamo left before this season started.

Now the Pilots, who finished at 6-4, are rebuilding, something Vollnogle rarely thinks about.

“New coaches are bad for football,” he said. “It’s the turnover. Banning was so good for so many years, and now look at the problems they have. When you flip-flop coaches, it screws things up. I really think it’s important to have the same coaches around for a long time.”

Vollnogle has maintained most of his current staff since 1980. Loyalty to a winning program is the key.

When Ferragamo moved to Harbor College he phoned Vollnogle, hoping to lure a Carson coach to Harbor. Vollnogle told Ferragamo he could talk to all of the Carson coaches. Vollnogle also told him that none of Carson’s coaches would want to leave. Not one left.

Most have stayed with Vollnogle for extended periods, and each year those who played for Vollnogle return to volunteer.

Huebner coached with Vollnogle at Banning from 1958 to 1963, rejoined Vollnogle at Carson in 1969, and remained until 1981. D’Amore has been at Carson since 1973. Offensive line coach Saul Pacheco began in 1964 and moved up to the varsity level in 1979.

In his second season at Carson, defensive line coach Marty Blankenship, a 1967 graduate of the school, actually yields in years at Carson to several volunteer coaches who also played for Vollnogle. Blankenship, 38, coached seven years at Banning, but “I’m sure I’ll probably still be at Carson 20 years from now,” he said.

Volunteer linebacker coach Willie Guillory, a member of Carson’s 1971 championship team, also may still be at Carson into the 21st Century.

For four years, Guillory has logged 15 to 20 hours a week with the team in addition to his school security duties. He is sure that a program designed by experienced coaches keys Carson’s success.

“I know it’s the system of coaching,” Guillory said. “The kids just believe in the system. They believe they’re going to win, and that carries over every year.”

Lark agrees. “Something sets these coaches apart because of the fact that Carson consistently wins,” he said. “It looks like Carson always has such great talent, but there is not always talent at every position. These coaches know how to get the best out of what they have.”

Vollnogle’s system assures such economy in using talent. He said his staff is so good that it’s really a staff of head coaches, not assistants, that accounts for all those victories.

Huebner thinks that Vollnogle’s style is largely responsible. “He fits the game to the players he’s got; he doesn’t fit the players to his game,” he said. “He’s a player’s coach.”

Vollnogle’s own time as a player helps explain his unselfish approach. He played offensive line in high school and college and now, Huebner said, Vollnogle remains loyal to the guys who never get to carry the ball.

“We always spent an equal amount of time with the linemen and the skill players, which is more than most teams get,” Huebner said. “Voll always wanted to meld the two, give each equal time and come out with a team.”

A winning team, to be sure. The statistics startle. In the last 10 years Carson has won close to 90% of its games. Since 1963 the Colts have outscored opponents, 7,472-3,255, while averaging 29 points a game.

A long lineman tradition behind him, Vollnogle lauds his offensive line coach for Carson’s dominance, particularly since three linemen on this year’s team are less than six feet tall.

“They don’t come any better than (Coach) Pacheco,” Vollnogle said. “It almost never happens that our line gets outplayed. People think we always have big guys, but that’s not entirely true. All that credit goes to Pacheco.”

Pacheco would rather talk up his team’s leader.

“Gene is a guy who never looks over your shoulder,” Pacheco said. “He’s not going to come over to make sure you’re doing the right thing. He lets each of us handle our own responsibilities, and he’s certainly not going to get on you for a breakdown.”

Added Blankenship: “Gene oversees and we’re there to put the pieces together.”

This season, the puzzle is close to complete. Vollnogle and his staff can earn the final piece against Granada Hills.

But there will be more puzzles. Vollnogle, 57, said he’ll continue at Carson for another four years. He also said his leaving should not affect the team. “I really think that I could disappear into the woodwork and the program would continue at or near its present level.”

Pacheco said, however, that whenever Vollnogle retires, several coaches will also. The problems Banning suffered this year could then beset Carson.

“I’m concerned about that a little,” Vollnogle said. “But I’m sort of hoping that they’ll stay around and they’ll phase out slowly until we find new people.”

Whoever comes to Carson in the future will likely find students of the game. Blankenship said that the players’ football education begins in 10th grade.

“You’ve got to have a good B program and a good JV program, so that when you move up to varsity, the transition is really smooth, and we have that,” Blankenship said. “The players are really familiar with the basics, so we (at the varsity level) don’t have to waste a lot of time teaching.”

Instead, Carson’s varsity coaches impart increasingly complex techniques to their players, especially the linebackers and linemen.

This season, middle linebacker Rick Tiedemann is making more positioning changes just before the snap than any linebacker has in Carson history. Meanwhile, Coach Blankenship has defensive linemen blitzing and stunting constantly.

But, D’Amore said, “I think we’re doing far too much and (Blankenship) would like to do even more. Still, we do a lot more complex things now because we have a lot more time to do things.”

The time is a product of the number of coaches at Carson, Vollnogle’s hands-off style, athletes who play only one position and the efficiency of Carson’s practices.

Mistakes cannot be avoided, D’Amore said, just minimized. And that starts in practice. “It’s my fault if a player screws up,” D’Amore said. “It’s not his fault. The screw-ups in the game come from what happens in practice. You can’t wait to Friday night and expect them to do it right if they are not doing it during the week.”

Such attention to detail this season has contributed to what Vollnogle calls a team with no glaring weaknesses.

If its head coach were to leave now, Blankenship said, it would ruin a synonym.

“Gene Vollnogle is Carson High football,” he said. “He has a reputation as a winning coach and he bands the players together. He’s been there since the beginning. Everyone knows his name.”