JUST PREPS : Role Playing : Sullivan Is a Coach at Fremont, but He Also Acts as Lawyer, Counselor, Friend and Salesman to Get the Pathfinders on the Court

It wasn’t a perfect performance, but Sam Sullivan is still smiling.

His Fremont High boys’ basketball team easily defeated South Gate on Monday, 89-61, to start Sullivan’s 19th season as coach.

Sullivan had done his job: get a team on the floor for opening night. But he has done much more in preparing this season’s team, ranked as high as 11th in the nation and second in the state by Cal-Hi Sports.

Some days, Sullivan is simply a coach, but on others he is a salesman and a lawyer, a counselor and a friend.

All of the roles have their places.

“There is so much more than just coaching basketball,” he says. “You have to be able to do a lot--and tolerate a lot--to be a successful coach now.”

Because this team has as much or more talent than the 1991 team that finished 34-2 and lost in the state finals, expectations are high. And alumni that never seem to leave had been predicting great things long before Monday’s opening tipoff.

Sullivan had started working on this team in the summer, when he put on his salesman smile and began convincing his Pathfinders that they could be the best team in California, even without their best player.

Leon Jones, a 6-foot-4 guard who averaged nearly 15 points a game last season, had moved to Battle Creek, Mich., during the off-season.

Sullivan wipes his face with his hands and sighs when he talks about Jones. He has a stack of recruiting letters in his office for the junior guard, who was one of three Fremont players invited to the prestigious Nike camp in the summer.

“It was a blow losing him because he is awfully talented,” Sullivan says. “But I have to work with the players I got, not the ones I could have.”

Still, the Leon Watch is in full force at Fremont and Sullivan has his binoculars out.

“There is a chance he could come back,” Sullivan says. “That is what I hear. And it is hard not to think about it.”

He has talked with Jones, talked to the boy’s father. There are positives to being at Fremont, Sullivan says, and then gives his best pitch.

He is selling all year. In a city that allows students to transfer seemingly at will, a coach must keep his players in school and develop a reputation that will make transfers want to play for him instead of the competition.

“Kids are always looking to go where they can make a name for themselves,” he says. “You are always going to lose some kids, that’s easy. The hardest part is convincing parents to let their children come to Fremont. It’s a hard sell.”

But Sullivan is good. Except for Jones, all of his eligible players returned from last season. He also got two transfers--Matthew Holyfield from Leuzinger and Ron Jenkins, who spent time at Gardena and Crenshaw.

“I came here because coach has a reputation of getting the best from his team,” Holyfield says. “I knew he wasn’t going to play favorites, that if I came in here and worked hard that I would get my chance.”

The game of transfers is the reason Sullivan sometimes has to turn lawyer.

He has been brought up before the city’s Interscholastic Athletic Committee three times, most recently two years ago when he was accused of recruiting Crenshaw senior Tommie Davis, who had played at Fremont his sophomore and junior seasons but was dismissed from the school because of disciplinary problems.

Sullivan was cleared each time.

“I have come to expect those allegations,” Sullivan said. “It is one of the turnoffs about coaching now. I think it comes with winning. That a lot of people don’t want to give inner-city coaches credit for being good coaches.

“They think we just go out and get ourselves a 6-6 kid when we need one. But I would like for them to see what goes on at a Fremont practice.”

What goes on is Sullivan’s counseling. He cares about his players, but only if they care about the team. He plays mind games, exacting the reactions he feels are best for the group.

At a practice the week before the opening game, Sullivan closed the day by making Darryl Houston, a reserve guard, shoot two free throws. Houston had to make both for the team to skip running drills.

“That one,” he said pointing to Houston, “is one I thought wouldn’t be out here. He just made it.”

Houston barely made grades as a member of the junior varsity last season and slipped below a 2.0 in the spring. Sullivan talked with Houston’s father and with the player about tutoring.

Sullivan has come to expect losing one player to grades every year. Houston made the marks, but grade time is coming again soon and Sullivan wanted him to feel more responsibility to the team.

He put Houston on the free-throw line and . . . swish , swish . . . he became the most popular player on the team.

“You can’t be on this team unless you’re going to be completely dedicated,” senior Eian Daniels said. “That is what Coach is all about. That is the only way he will have it.”

That is one luxury that Sullivan has over many of the city schools. His players concentrate. For most, Fremont basketball is their life.

“I know it is not that way at many schools, and I think I am lucky because I have some great kids,” Sullivan said, “but I see less and less kids willing to work each season, and it is making a coach’s job harder.”

He spends more and more time with them and their problems, and he understands them less and less.

Although he says he still enjoys working with the kids, the transfers, the accusations, the lack of players really willing to work are turning him off to the job. So much so that he derives the greatest pleasure from simply putting a team on the floor for opening night.

“I’d say that I am done in two or three years,” he says. “By then I think I will have had enough.

“I’ll just be tired of playing all the roles.”