Junior Tagaloa

Bryce Alderton

Junior Tagaloa has high expectations for his receivers.

The former Orange Coast College standout wide receiver in 1986-87,

who broke several school receiving records, heads into his third

season as receivers coach at OCC with the goal of seeing every one of

his receivers someday play on Sundays in the National Football

League.

“Just playing football is not what this is about,” said Tagaloa,

the 35-year-old Costa Mesa resident who has a wife, Wendy, and a

6-year-old daughter, Kailualani. “I’m teaching them how to play

someday in the NFL, to push my guys to live up to that level.”

Beginning the third week in December players start working out and

get only two weeks off before the next season starts in Tagaloa’s

regimen.

He coached OCC’s tight ends in 1990 and said he employs the same

drills then as he does now.

“I teach my receivers footwork, handwork and catching the ball

because if you can’t get to the ball you can’t catch the ball,”

Tagaloa said.

And catching the ball was something Tagaloa did a lot of during

his two-year OCC career in 1986-87. He holds two-year records in

receptions (119), touchdowns (22) and receiving yards (2,132) and

holds single-season records for receiving yards (1,190) and

touchdowns (17), both in 1987 when the Pirates went 8-2, 7-2 in the

Mission Conference, good for second place.

He attributed his play to his then-girlfriend and now wife Wendy,

who opened up a certain record book.

“(Wendy) took out the OCC record book and highlighted all the

records I had to beat,” Tagaloa said. “I tell my receivers day-in and

day-out that if you want a full-ride (scholarship) this is what you

do.”

But Tagaloa remains modest about his records and would like to see

them broken.

“As long as a record stands, players don’t go where they need to

go,” Tagaloa said. “I tell these receivers to break my records and

that what they do on the field is expected of them and if the

accolades come with that, fine.”

He is dedicated to football seven days a week. With practices now

beginning at 7 or 8 a.m. each morning, he has each player strap a

tire to themselves using a harness and drag it across the field.

Even Tagaloa’s daughter gets in on the tire-dragging, lugging the

rubber item to get herself ready for the upcoming soccer season.

He then leaves for his job as an account executive at Bertolini,

Inc., a furniture manufacturer.

“My wife says I’m sick but Kailualani would rather come to

football practice and when Wendy comes with her friends to pick her

up she doesn’t want to leave,” Tagaloa said chuckling. “When

‘Remember the Titans’ came out people began calling her ‘Little

Coach.’”

Coaching OCC’s receivers has been Tagaloa’s first coaching job and

he does it out of love.

“I’m giving back to the kids and giving back to the school that

allowed me to do what needed to be done,” he said.

After graduating from OCC in 1987, Tagaloa played at UC Berkeley

and signed with the Rams before a kidney injury sidelined him and he

went back to Cal to get his degree and then play for four years in

the Arena Football League-2.

Before Tagaloa and his family moved to Costa Mesa in 2000, they

lived in Utah where Tagaloa spent time playing for the AFL-2 team

based there. He also played for the Albany Conquest of the AFL-2.

OCC’s quarterbacks coach Phil Cooper asked Tagaloa if he would

like to coach the receivers when the Tagaloas were living in Utah.

Tagaloa accepted with open arms.

“To come back and coach was icing on the cake, it was good to come

back to California,” Tagaloa said.

“My wife always said if I wasn’t coaching then she wouldn’t live

with me anymore.”