Vista’s Football Program Finally Gets Out of the Red : Football: Lean years over, Panthers are 5-0 going into Friday’s game against RBV.

VISTA —  Inside the coaches office is a shrine of sorts, like something you would expect to find in the home of some Elvis Presley fanatic. Only the object of affection is a football program, not a rock and roll icon. Everywhere you look you see the same words. On the bulletin board. On the stapler. On the tape dispenser.

Big Red Football.

It’s on every wall and every mind. It’s on everything except maybe an umbrella stand in the corner.

Big Red Football.

It’s not just a slogan, it’s an attitude.

Dick Haines is the man behind the red.

He is the genius behind Big Red Football, its success, its mystique. He’s the one who takes credit for Vista’s failures and tries spreading the credit for its successes.

The successes are many. Vista football can compare with any program over the past 22 years. The Panthers have won 73% of their games since Haines set foot on the campus and made school district superintendent G.C. Eikermann change his mind about who should replace Gary Schultz. Haines lobbied to bring two coaches--sight unseen--with him from Dover, Ohio, Steve Kocheran and Dave Parks. Eikermann agreed, with a promise.

If they aren’t good teachers, he said, I’m going to fire all of you. Kocheran retired last year; Parks is still on the staff.

And Eikermann, he looked like a genius. For the past two decades, Haines has taught San Diego County how to win football games. He is 171-67 as a Panther, all the more remarkable considering Vista was 6-4 in 1987, 0-10 in 1988, 4-6 in 1989, and 6-6 in 1990. It was a sudden turn for the worse.

Losing seasons in Vista--or even so-so ones--are less common than leap years. The Panthers had only three losing seasons during Haines’ tenure before 1988. They were 4-5 in his first year, 4-5 in 1975, and 4-6 in 1982. They were always at least three games over .500 otherwise.

Big Red Football dominated the Eighties. From 1980-86, the program was 67-18. From 1984-86, it was 35-3. Vista was 3-A champion in 1981 and ’85 (and named state champion), runner-up in 1984 and ’86. Then the wheels started coming off.

What happened?

Rancho Buena Vista.

Vista this season is the county’s No. 1 team and ranked eighth in the state. Unbeaten in five games, the Panthers play Friday against a team it has never beaten, fourth-ranked Rancho Buena Vista. A victory will ensure a winning record for the first time since 1988 and match their 1990 victory total with at least five games remaining.

The split of Vista High School into two schools--Vista and RBV--coincided with the downturn in Big Red fortunes. Vista High’s enrollment dropped, drastically, from about 3,464 in 1986 to 2,215 in 1987.

The record of the program also took a tumble, from being San Diego Section 3-A runners-up with a 12-1 record, to being out of the playoffs the following year at 6-4. Student enrollment dropped to 1,901 in 1988 and the football program hit bottom, 0-10.

Big Red Football? Big Dead Football.

“I didn’t handle it well at all,” Haines conceded. “I probably spoke my mind and made a few people work harder against us. I can understand why. I didn’t engage my brain before opening my mouth.”

Specifically, Haines made excuses and charges all in the same complaint. He huffed after football games that Rancho Buena Vista Principal Alan Johnson had “gerrymandered” school boundaries to accommodate RBV’s football program. Today, Haines defers on the subject, passing it off as stupidity on his part.

“I think that’s a dead issue,” he said. “I haven’t said anything about it for a couple of years.

“At that time, it was emotion and a true belief, but that doesn’t make it right. We’re going down the road and proving that hard work can overcome obstacles. . . . My bitching days are over on that thing.”

The last coach to beat Vista during the Panther heyday was Tom Pack, whose Fallbrook team upset Vista, 28-14, in the 1986 San Diego Section 3-A final, Vista’s only defeat of the year.

He has also watched the program’s resurrection.

“It’s my opinion, but they started making excuses,” Pack said. “RBV was winning with kids that had been going to Vista. . . .

“I was talking to some (Vista) coaches and I felt like they wanted to get away from letting the kids make excuses. The parents were making excuses and everyone was making excuses. I don’t think the coaches were because that wasn’t in their nature, but it’s very hard when you’re 0-10 to not find reasons for losing.”

While Vista was going 0-10 in 1988, RBV, with approximately the same enrollment, was going 13-0. Rumors abounded that Haines was going to retire at the end of the season, but he stayed and once again won. Last year’s 6-6 season may have been his best job of coaching ever, said Marlow Gudmundson, Vista’s freshman football coach, “because he didn’t have the talent.”

Maybe the Big Red Mystique was kicking in again.

The obstacle Vista overcame was apparent on the sidelines. When the school split, 1987, Vista retained its senior class but lost many students from the lower levels. The varsity and junior varsity were scraping to get 50 players, combined. Today’s varsity has 47 players. The 1987 varsity finished 6-4 and finished fourth in the Palomar League, but the fifth-place team, San Dieguito, made the playoffs instead. RBV had no seniors, finished 4-5-1 and missed the 2-A playoffs.

Gudmundson has been with the program since 1960 and has seen it all.

“I had 80 to 90 players constantly,” he said. “The first day of practice after the split, I had 24. . . . You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. We didn’t become poor coaches overnight.”

Haines, who has remained true to his proven methods, agreed.

“You split anybody, I don’t care who it is, and they’re not going to be as good for a while,” he said.

Recent history supports that theory. Rancho Bernardo opened a high school last year and split the enrollment of Poway and Mt. Carmel. Rancho Bernardo is 3-2 this season; Poway and Mt. Carmel are a combined 0-10.

So it went with Vista.

Pack joined Fallbrook in 1971, coached against the Panthers at every level and became the head coach in 1978. Because Vista beat other schools and communities soundly at every level, from the Pop Warner program that Haines resuscitated through the junior varsity, opposing varsity players knew they couldn’t beat Vista.

“Even though Dick had some teams that were not at the same level as the 13-0 teams, they won because it was Vista football,” Pack said. “That’s something over the years that a lot of teams had to overcome.

“When the underclassmen left, then Vista started competing against schools with the same (enrollment) numbers and they weren’t beating people as freshmen, they weren’t destroying people, and then they started thinking that they were getting beaten. They were vulnerable.”

With a shallower talent pool, Haines found himself in circumstances unique to him. In hindsight, more trickery and finesse, and less power football, might have been a better course during those lean years.

“I don’t want to go through another one, but I respect that (1988 0-10) bunch as much as any I’ve ever coached,” Haines said. “They gave us everything they had and I didn’t have good game plans for them and maybe not even the right offense.”

Vista stuck with the power game, Big Red Football, and got it stuck right back in its face.

While the Panthers were reeling, RBV won the Avocado League and 2-A championships in its second year (1988) and the Palomar League and 3-A titles in its third.

The coach at RBV was Craig Bell, the offensive line coach for Haines the two years previous.

“(Vista) focused on what they lost rather than what they had,” Bell said. “As soon as that focus changed, they emerged as a good football team.”

Bell said that change occurred midway through 1990. Vista was 0-5--three losses were by one point--then won six straight, including a playoff game. Vista finished second to RBV in the Palomar League and, since losing 58-19 to RBV, the Panthers have won 11 of 12 games.

Big Red Football is back.

It was a minor heart attack.

That’s what Dr. Edward Evans told Haines two weekends ago. On the bus ride to Vista after beating second-ranked Orange Glen, Haines, 65, felt his chest tighten and his jaws ache. He was at Tri-City Medical Center’s emergency room 90 minutes after he got home and he didn’t leave for five days, but he still conducted coaches meetings from the hospital.

The competitive fire still burns in Haines’ heart. He was on the sidelines Friday night for a 14-7 victory over Mt. Carmel.

Is it any wonder, then, that he took a team that finished 0-9 in 1969 and turned it into a 4-5 team his first season, 38-4 over the next four seasons and a section champion in 1974?

“When Dick started beating everybody,” Gudmundson said, “(other teams) had to change.”

He was the first coach to begin a summer football program and the first to bring a certified athletic trainer into the high school ranks. He marketed his program to local businesses and turned high school football into a civic event.

He once even threw his eyeglasses toward the stands in a moment of frustration while coaching against his own son.

That’s Big Red Football.

Dick Haines’ Coaching Record

Season School W-L-T 1952-53 Adena, Ohio 11-6-3 1954-55 Triadelphia, W.Va. 8-12-0 1956-57 Cadiz, Ohio 16-1-2 1958-69 Dover, Ohio 91-26-4 1970-91 Vista 171-67-0