LJ FB: Curious thing

Some of new Head Coach Tyler Roach's

football players. (Photo Ed Piper, Jr.)

By Ed Piper, Jr.

At the parent and player reception for Tyler Roach, the new La Jolla High head football coach, speaker Kamal Assaf made an insightful comment.

(I may have used "curious thing" in the title to lure you to read this.)

The former Viking varsity head basketball coach, whose teams won two CIF titles, said, "An off-campus coach has special challenges" in implementing his program.

Assaf's statement was in the context of one, a recognition of the strengths of the La Jolla community, resource-wise and academically--"it's a special community," he said--and two, a plea for support and involvement on the part of the players' families.

"We had more than a team," said Assaf, who stepped down five years ago to balance family responsibilities with his teaching position at Bishop's and coaching in a less-demanding basketball program, a middle school team at Bishop's. "We had a movement" at La Jolla, he said. It involved families who were heavily involved and willing to share their talents and time to the program.

In describing the special challenges Roach will face as a coach who is not a campus teacher, Assaf was putting his finger on an issue that was discussed when Matt Morrison was named head coach a year ago: How do you build a program (at that time, football was in dire straits) if you are a leader who will not be on campus throughout the day, to have contact with your players, be a highly visible ambassador for La Jolla High football, and take care of and trouble-shoot the million-and-one needs that accompany any program?

Morrison tried to juggle all this while teaching at a parochial elementary school miles away across San Diego. I remember his hoarse voice the first days of Spring practice in May 2016, when it looked like he was carrying an immense load. What he ended up doing in his brief year at La Jolla, he did well.

Falling right into Morrison's lap was the solution to all of this: Francis Parker School offered him not only the head football coaching position for next year, but also a full-time position on campus--at good pay, John McColl said at the reception for Roach--teaching physical education.

What a cherry position, one that would come by once in a lifetime for a young coach ready for a long-term coaching position at his alma mater, following in the footsteps of his father John, who will likely be on Matt's coaching staff as an assistant. He couldn't possibly turn that opportunity down.

Now, it's Roach's chance to keep the dishes spinning in the air. He said to parents and his future players that he spent "23 hours a day" working on offensive schemes at La Jolla (presumably 23 hours a day on defensive schemes in his position as defensive coordinator the past year at Country Day). He said he went to his boss, after talking with his wife, and his boss gave him his blessing to "do what he loves" to do alongside the day job he holds. "It pays the bills, then I do what I love," is basically what Roach told the assembled Vikings.

He'll have to handle the administrative details, the fly in the ointment, in addition to coaching teenagers in football and running a coaching staff. But he's a bright guy, and he seems to have the ability, and the blessing of the Viking family, to figure it all out.

Hopefully, his alma mater won't offer him the Centurion head coaching position too soon.