Organization Man : Buena’s Venerable Joe Vaughan Has Built a Basketball Dynasty Through Meticulous Preparation

VENTURA —  The occasion of Joe Vaughan’s 500th victory as Buena High girls’ basketball coach begs the question asked about every perennial winner from Ulysses S. Grant to Michael Eisner.

What’s his secret?

What enables this graying, wiry whirlwind to field teams that have lost only 51 games in 21 seasons?

The answer might trouble anyone seeking shortcuts or believing in get-rich-quick schemes.

For every victory logged, Vaughan cites a maddeningly picayune detail, a fine point, a particular that all add directly, without detour or delay, to sustained excellence.

He’s as organized as the practice schedules painstakingly handwritten daily, activities charted to the minute.

He’s as precise as the statistics not made public until he confirms them by reviewing game films.

He’s as straight-edged as the chairs he meticulously lines up on the sidelines before he and his assistants can sit.

He’s as methodical as the crisp passes his players unselfishly make until someone is open for a shot.

And he is as thorough as the 91-40 beating his Bulldogs administered to Canyon on Thursday in a first-round Southern Section Division I-A playoff game that marked victory No. 500.

Vaughan is the winningest girls’ coach in the state, 47 victories ahead of his closest colleague.

With no apologies to Madison Avenue, the relentless pursuit of perfection is conducted in Ventura by an intense, 51-year-old lifelong coach. Perfection was attained by Vaughan’s 31-0 team in 1983-84 and is something he has feverishly worked to replicate.

Buena (24-1) is forever nearly unbeaten, having lost no more than four games in any season under Vaughan. Yet in all but the state championship seasons of 1982-83 and ‘83-84 the final game has been a defeat.

And it is in those devastating season-ending losses that some of Vaughan’s deeper secrets surface.

“I’m rational enough to know you can’t win them all,” he said. “It’s at those times I have my most-important job, helping the girls deal with the disappointment and reminding them of their accomplishments. I let them know they will always be loved in our program.”

Along with trophies and news clippings, Buena players exit with a clear image of a caring coach.

“Mr. Vaughan is a good friend to all of us before and after the season as well as during it,” said Kori Sebek, a senior who has started at guard for four seasons. Buena is 97-12 with two Southern Section Division I championships in her tenure, but each season has ended with a loss in the state regionals.

“We are down and crying, but he makes us realize what a great season we had,” Sebek said. “Mr. Vaughan is more than a coach. He’s everyone’s role model.”

A model, maybe. A mannequin, never. Vaughan, also the Buena athletic director, is in constant motion, crisscrossing the campus at a brisk pace. He sleeps only a few hours each night, jogs several miles in the morning, and works 12-hour days during the season. He brown-bags his lunch and eats on the fly.

For all his frenetic movement, Vaughan is easy to find. Besides traveling to tournaments and taking two or three weeks’ vacation on Catalina every year, he is at school or at home with his wife, Kathy.

“Our life centers around Buena girls’ basketball. It is our entire social circle,” said Kathy, a 1969 Buena graduate who married Vaughan in 1978. “I came to terms with that long ago.”

Only at home does Vaughan take five. His wife wishes others could see him that way, pensive and a tad vulnerable.

“Joe is so organized and thoroughly involved that people believe he is rigid and unfeeling,” Kathy said. “He is actually extremely emotional and sensitive.

“Joe cares about these girls, how they do in school, how they are emotionally and how their family life is going.”

Family and community are paramount to Vaughan, who has a 10-year-old daughter, Aimee, with Kathy and two adult daughters from a previous marriage. He is a Ventura native whose parents came to California from Oklahoma in the ‘30s and opened a restaurant.

Vaughan graduated from Ventura High in 1962 and attended Westmont College in Santa Barbara on a basketball scholarship. He began teaching at Buena in 1967, served in the Army for two years and returned to Buena to teach and coach the boys’ junior varsity team until 1975.

“One reason I haven’t left Ventura is that I’ve always had a feel for this community,” he said. “This town is so important to me.”

Vaughan has frequent contact with countless former players, female and male, including a scrawny junior varsity guard named Kevin Costner, who attended Buena as a sophomore. The actor returns to play in alumni games and Vaughan was his guest on the sets of “Waterworld” and “Dances With Wolves.”

“In high school Kevin was really small and worried about not growing,” Vaughan said. “I spent a lot of time with him after practice working on his skills. We are very close.

“When I think of him it reminds me how important it is to treat people right. You don’t realize the impact you have as a coach. It’s kind of amazing.”

Dependability, dedication and commitment are the values Vaughan holds dearest, and his players must measure up.

“At my first practice he scared me,” said Ann Larson, an All-Southern Section player in 1983 and the current junior varsity coach. “Here was this little, fiery man with a high, weird voice. Basketball was obviously important to him, and he instilled the importance of doing whatever you do to the best of your ability.”

Forty-three of his proteges have played in college and 11 of his teams have played in section finals.

“Let’s look at the common denominator here,” Larson said. “It’s that little balding guy.”

The roots of Vaughan’s influence run deep. He coaches his daughter’s Ventura Youth Basketball Assn. team on weekends, runs several camps and clinics, and has close ties with a local club team, the Ventura Stars.

The Stars’ coach, Mike Giordano, had three daughters play under Vaughan. The Stars attract top junior high players throughout Ventura County, although most live in Ventura.

Rival coaches have long complained that the team serves as Vaughan’s personal farm system.

“Joe and Mike are on the same page but they do not work together,” said Dave Erickson, who has two daughters on the Stars and one, Christie, playing at Buena. “The idea that the Stars funnel players to Buena is not true. Girls end up at Ventura, Nordhoff, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, all over.”

Giordano bristles at the notion that the Stars are a recruiting mechanism for Buena.

“Buena was good before the Stars were formed and Buena is still good because of Joe Vaughan,” he said. “That man couldn’t do anything dishonest if he tried.”

When it comes to Vaughan’s secrets, none seem particularly dark. On a bus ride home from a game, he’ll confess to Larson that he longs for a piping hot baked potato with all the trimmings.

Chances are, he’ll be eating it while studying game film.

“He is a video nut and scouting might be his biggest advantage,” Larson said. “He breaks down team and players’ tendencies very well. Then he is able to relay what he’s learned to the players in understandable terms.”

The result is a team that is fun to watch. The Bulldogs’ success has created a loyal legion of fans, including Jim and Dona McConica, Buena graduates who have seen nearly every game for 12 years.

“I enjoy watching regular people go to their highest capacity,” said Jim McConica, a former Southern Section swimming champion who once swam from Catalina to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in record time. “Joe takes a bunch of gals who are reasonably good athletes and they play well together. There are no individual stars. Buena’s teamwork is inspiring to watch.”

Part of the inspiration for this year’s team is the memory of Vaughan’s father, Grady, who died in October at age 83. Grady and Zell Vaughan never missed a game.

“On parents’ night this year it was an emotional time,” said Sebek, the senior guard. “Mr. Vaughan’s parents always came down to the floor along with the players’ parents, and this year it was only his mom. I went over and gave her a hug.”

A secret Vaughan hasn’t kept very well is that he dedicated the season to his father. After a particularly well-played game he’ll tell the team that the old guy is up there smiling.

Whether this team can produce another section or state championship is questionable. Although Sebek and junior center Nicole Greathouse are excellent players, Buena lost four-year starter Eboni Conley two weeks ago because of a knee injury. Her absence was glaring in Buena’s only defeat, a 63-50 loss to Woodbridge.

“This season has been very trying because of my father’s death,” Vaughan said. “I’ve set some goals to accomplish in his honor. But I’ve come to terms with it. If you do everything in your power to put yourself in a position to win, the result is OK either way.”

And there is always next season. Vaughan shows no signs of slowing.

“I’ll coach as long as I’m effective,” he said. “Every year it’s like a puzzle. You have to put the puzzle together, get all the kids to swallow their egos for the benefit of the team. That’s the challenge.”