 |
|
|
|
Coach Scott Downs watches varsity wrestlers warm up before a meet.
|
Team Work
The success of the LGHS wrestling program has a lot to do with no one caring who gets the credit
By Dick Sparrer
Photographs by Paul Myers
The cheers of the crowd poured out the open gym door, immediately catching the attention of the timid and diminutive high school sophomore who just happened to be walking by.
He couldn't resist taking a look inside to see what all the excitement was about.
It was an afternoon in 1967, and not long after school had let out for the day. Still, the bleachers in the gymnasium were filled to capacity with students, parents and teachers. The room was alive with the excitement of high school wrestling.
"I'll never forget ... it was a match against Westmont for the league championship, and Gary McNeal was wrestling for Los Gatos," said Scott Downs, now in his second tour of duty as the head wrestling coach at Los Gatos High School. "I had never seen a gymnasium filled with people so interested in a kid that weighed 95 pounds."
Scott Downs had caught the fever.
He would go on to wrestle as a junior and senior for the Wildcats, but it was not as a wrestler that Downs made a significant imprint on Los Gatos wrestling--it would be decades later when he would return to the school as a teacher and coach.
"First we'll be the best, then we'll be first."
The success of the Los Gatos wrestling program predates Scott Downs. In fact, the program came to life just about the time the 50-year-old coach was born. And it was a man who dedicated half a century of service to Los Gatos High School who was there when it all began.
Ted Simonson, who began his career as a teacher and later went on to become dean of boys and eventually principal, teamed with Bill Crosby to bring wrestling to the high school in 1951. The program would blossom over the next decade under the leadership of Paul Ferris. It was under George Talman's watch, though, that wrestling really took off at the school.
Talman took a team capable of winning league championships to the next level. His Wildcats won the Central Coast Section title in 1969.
"He's why we made the jump ... he made us a power," said Downs, a member of that '69 squad.
But Talman's influence goes deeper than any successes on the mat.
"He's one of the real fathers of the program," said Dr. Howard May, who has volunteered his time as a Los Gatos assistant coach off and on since 1990. "He set a standard for what coaches should be. Good coaches are positive people."
Talman reached Downs in an even more profound way.
"George Talman is the reason why I'm a teacher today," Downs said. "I wanted to return to the program what it gave to me."
"I was not a great wrestler," Downs said. "But with all the studs and stars we had on those teams, he treated me like I was one of them.
"I thought, 'What better thing could you do?'"
So Downs has been doing just that for most of the past two decades.
"It's always too soon to quit."
Coaches Scott Downs (center) and co-head coach Arno Dominguez (right) review the matchups between wrestlers before a match. Dominguez runs the pre-match sequence for the team.
Scott Downs is a man of numerous quotations, many of which adorn the walls of the high school wrestling room to provide a source of motivation for the athletes. But one that he certainly would not agree with is Thomas Wolfe's oft repeated, "You can't go home again."
Downs graduated from LGHS in 1969, then in the mid-1980s returned to the school as a teacher and coach. He joined the wrestling program as an assistant to head coach Brian Ganz.
"Brian revived the program because, for whatever reason, it had fallen on hard times," Downs said.
At the time, Los Gatos was a powerhouse, but only in the circles of the rather weak West Valley Athletic League. When Downs took over as the head coach in 1988, the Wildcats were on the move into the more powerful De Anza Athletic League.
"The first year we did OK," Downs said. "But the next year we went into the tank because we had nothing left."
Downs had two choices: quit, or roll up his sleeves and get to work. Obviously, he chose the latter.
He remembered what he had heard from a parent who had been a competitive athlete at the collegiate level.
"You don't have a program," said the parent, "you have a season."
Sure the Wildcats were having successful seasons, but there was no foundation for the sport in the community.
"I looked around for a school that was like us," Downs said. "Cupertino was the closest thing I could see. They had a summer program, and they had a junior high as a feeder school."
A big part of the success of Cupertino wrestling is the program that Chuck Heinrich has developed at Hyde Middle School.
"I couldn't understand why their freshmen were beating our seniors," explained Downs.
It was simple. Wrestlers would show up at Cupertino with three years of experience. But in the late 1980s, Los Gatos had no such program.
"That's when I started my summer camps in 1989," the Los Gatos coach said.
That was the beginning, but a major part of the puzzle still had to be solved.
"The tougher the job, the greater the reward."
The job was a tough one for Downs. There was much work to do to build the high school wrestling program to the level of prominence it had once enjoyed.
The success during the Talman years was a direct result of the strong program at Fisher Junior High School. Talman had coached at Fisher before joining the Wildcats, and many of those wrestlers would later become high school champions.
Bob Kensinger maintained the program throughout the decade of the 1970s, but by the '80s wrestling had disappeared at Fisher.
"We knew we had to get something going at the junior high," said Downs. "And then the key piece fell in place when a P.E. teacher, Tom Kennedy, came to me and said he wanted to start a wrestling program [at Fisher]."
Los Gatos assistants Mark Murrillo and Jeff Garlick soon took over the Fisher program, and later former Los Gatos wrestler Steve Shank and his son Ted would start a similar program at C.T. English.
Los Gatos High had its feeder program up and running again.
The final piece fell into place when Roger Mahugh stepped forward to run a freestyle club for young wrestlers at the high school.
"That got us going," said Downs. "It got kids involved and it upgraded some of our younger kids."
The foundation was set, and even after Downs stepped away from the program in 1994, the Wildcats experienced great success under the leadership of head coaches James Fanshier and Garlick.
"James took a very good team and kept it at a high level," said Downs, "and Jeff ... well, it wouldn't have happened without him."
When Garlick moved to Colorado, the Los Gatos wrestling program was in the market for a new head coach. So it was decision time again for Scott Downs. But when Arno Dominguez agreed to be a co-head coach, the decision was an easy one.
"He was a mentor to me when I first started as a head coach," said Downs of Dominguez, a veteran of 20 years as a head wrestling coach at San Jose High and Gunderson. "I always liked the way he treated his kids."
Dominguez, a teacher at Foothill College, had served as an assistant to Garlick over the past two seasons, and he now shares the head coaching role with Downs.
Varsity wrestler Chris Smith (right), 191 pounds, prepares to put his Lynbrook opponent in a cradle hold.
"You can do amazing things when no one cares who gets the credit."
There are many who share in the credit for the success of the Los Gatos wrestling program. Downs is quick to pass along the credit to others while claiming little for himself. Others may disagree.
"The success of the program has a lot to do with the quality of the coach," said May of Downs. "The kids like him, he likes the kids and the kids respond to him."
What's more, the focus at Los Gatos is on more than just winning.
"Scott is really involved in the character-building aspects of wrestling," added May.
Naturally, Downs deflects that attention back to May and the others.
"Howard is very, very much a part of what we've done," Downs said. "He provided maturity, and he's been a stabilizing factor. For me, he is the one who has been the constant in this thing."
Howard May, an outstanding wrestler for Talman's 1967 squad, developed a successful dental practice in the area, and he offered his help as an assistant coach back in 1991. He's been involved in the program ever since.
"No question, it's the most enjoyable thing in my life right now, other than my family," he said. "It pays me the least--nothing--and it costs me the most in terms of time away from my practice, yet it gives me the most enjoyment.
"It's something I do in my life that gives me a lot of pleasure with no other reward than the job well done that the kids do."
May's love of wrestling goes back to his junior high days at Fisher and his four years as a high school wrestler at Los Gatos.
"It's a sport that teaches kids that they can accomplish far more than what they thought they were capable of," May said. "It taught me the value of staying with something, that hard work pays off, and it gave me confidence."
Those values are what May hopes to share with the wrestlers of today.
While Downs gives much credit for the success of the program to May, he's quick to point out the contribution of Murrillo.
"A real piece of this puzzle was Mark Murrillo," Downs said. "He was a big factor in turning around this program. He came in after my 1-5 season--we were kind of dead in the water.
"He's a good technician, and he's a tough individual who helped me toughen up our kids."
This list of contributors goes on to include John Gyselbrecht, Kenny Troquato, Mike Cho and Kyle Hand of Fisher and C.T. English, who keep the junior high programs flourishing, and current high school assistants Dean Vinson, Richie Figueroa and Kyle Smith.
"It's all about roles--the roles we're trying to play in this thing," Downs said. "Our focus is to continue to get better, and to involve as many people as possible."
"The harder you work, the luckier you get."
Luck paid a visit to the Los Gatos wrestling program when the administration targeted an addition to the school's main gym as a new wrestling facility. And another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
"When we were wrestling, it was a seasonal sport," said May. "It wasn't a year-round program."
It is now. And what has helped to make that possible is the new facility located next to the high school gym.
Downs helped design the new wrestling room that opened for business this fall. And what's it mean to the program?
"We have our own place where we can run a year-round program," said Downs. "It also serves notice that we're serious about the sport.
"And it's self-respect."
Respect for the sport has remained constant through the years, under the leadership of Ferris, Talman, Ganz, Downs ... and there have been others:
Larry Mathews, who coached the team that won the first league championship back in 1961; Eric Holcomb, who brought a toughness to the program in the middle of the 1960s; Tony Fiorentino, whose teams would win league titles and a CCS crown in 1970; and Kit Lauer, whose 1973 team finished second in CCS.
And, of course, there's the man who started it all.
Ted Simonson worked as an assistant wrestling coach for seven years before moving from the faculty to the administration. But while his active participation in the sport lasted less than a decade, his devotion to the program is still strong more than five decades later.
"Ted has been our guardian angel," Downs said.
"Through this door walk the hardest- working wrestlers in the CCS."
Los Gatos wrestling is poised on the threshold of greatness. The Wildcats were chasing a league championship last week, and they'll be gunning for a CCS title on Saturday at Independence High School in East San Jose. Beyond that, the Wildcats hope to cap the year with a solid showing at the state tournament at University of the Pacific in Stockton.
Reaching this plateau is quite an accomplishment for the Wildcats. But getting to this point has taken much hard work and dedication on the part of many different people ... coaches, wrestlers, administrators and supporters-- not to mention the efforts of a little high school sophomore who fell in love with a sport more than 30 years ago.
|
|
|
|
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
