Coach keeps on the right track

Jessica Garrison

CORONA DEL MAR -- Maybe it’s an accident that Coach Bill Sumner’s

Ray Ban sunglasses are rose-colored, but parents, teachers and runners on

his cross-country team don’t think so.

Sumner, who is known to one and all as “the Coach,” has 136 runners on

his team.

That’s one out of every 10 students at Corona del Mar High School.

“And I want each and every one of them to feel like they’re the heart

and soul of the team,” Sumner said.

In a school where success is the No. 1 goal, where high school can

feel like one long season in a pressure cooker, runners, and their

parents, cherish the three hours a day they get to spend behind The

Coach’s rose-colored glasses.

From the fastest, Olympic-caliber athletes, to their slow, injured,

barely-make-it-across-the-finish-line teammates, all immediately mention

“the support,” “the spirit” and “the fun” when they talk about the team.

That’s the way the Coach wants it.

“I gotta tell you,” said the Coach, leaning in conspiratorially.

“People say we’re a little bit loosey-goosey on this team, and I’m not

offended. I’m not. I’ve got 136 kids who are not afraid to come to the

start line, who are not afraid to fail.”

That makes the coach happy.

“In this community,” he added, “and it’s not just this community, it’s

a lot of communities like this, you’re supposed to go 100% or you’re not

learning a lesson. Well I think 80% is OK.”

Another thing that makes the coach happy: Even with some runners at

80%, the cross-country team is in first place.

“I see kids coming onto that team who have never done another sport,

and never thought they’d be good in athletics,” said Corona del Mar PTA

President Karen Yelsey. “You see them running around town, and they’re

working really hard, and they’re feeling some personal success from

that.”

Like all great coaches, preachers, and politicians, the Coach is full

of mythic anecdotes that explain and illustrate his world view.

Got a discipline problem? The Coach has a solution, and an anecdote.

Are you a disgruntled parent? The Coach will listen to you, and then

maybe he’s got an anecdote for that too.

Want to raise $200,000 for a new track at Corona del Mar High School?

The Coach has a story for how to do that, too. In fact, thanks to the

Coach’s tireless work, and support from parents and students, the track

was completed last year.

But the story the Coach tells the most often, and most passionately,

is the one about how he first realized why it’s important for everyone to

get into the game.

This is his coaching philosophy:

When the Coach was a kid, growing up in a tough East Los Angeles

neighborhood, he used to play a game with the neighborhood guys called

Three Flies Up.

The idea was someone would go up to bat, and hit balls out into the

field, where all the other players waited with open gloves.

The first one to catch three flies got to be the next up to bat.

Well, one day, the Coach decided it wasn’t fair that most of the kids

who were playing never even got the chance to go up to bat.

So the next time the Coach caught his three flies, instead of taking

his turn at bat, he handed the bat to another kid, a scrawny, unathletic

boy.

Despite the outraged queries of the more athletic players, the Coach

continued to do this for the rest of the game.

And he realized he was hooked on getting people into the game.

But it was some years before the Coach was able to put this into

practice at Corona del Mar.

First, he survived being stabbed and shot at in his neighborhood. He

finally moved out on his own at the age of 15, and worked his way through

high school. He got drafted, and served a tour of duty in Vietnam.

And when he came home, he didn’t want to go back to East Los Angeles.

As a child, his uncle had taken him to Huntington Beach, and he

decided to go there.

“I thought I was in LA, LA land,” he said.

Always athletic, the Coach continued to play sports, and he was asked

to help a friend coach.

Finally, 15 years ago, he wound up at Corona del Mar, “which is even

further out there,” he said.

And he loves his adopted kids.

“They’re like kids anywhere,” he said. “You get outta that

neighborhood, you think its going to be different. The only difference is

it costs $3 a day for lunch there, and here it’s $12.”

The Coach maintains his connections to the old neighborhood. He runs a

program called “Magic Shoes,” in which he gives donated running shoes to

runners at disadvantaged high schools around the Southland.

“People ask me why I am helping them,” he said. “Because some of these

teams beat the heck out of us. But I am helping them.”

His students help too. They clean the shoes, and even make deliveries

to athletic directors at other schools sometimes.

Jenny Cummins, 16, said she thinks her coach is different from all

others she’s ever had “because he’s always right.”

And also because “you really have to do it yourself. He doesn’t make

you do it for him. He basically takes your goals and helps you achieve

them.”

The Coach and his assistant coaches and the other players have stories

of triumph about each and every member of the team.

Every member is known, is valued, they said, one after another.

The Coach smiles. He likes his life. He lives in Turtle Rock, he wears

shorts every day. He doesn’t have children of his own.

“I’ve got 136 kids, five days a week,” he said.