Hill takes the helm

Mike Sciacca

The words scribed on a blackboard in a conference room at the base of

Dugger Memorial Gymnasium on the Laguna Beach High School campus,

reveals the three principles Mark Hill uses to run a basketball

program.

Coachable. Discipline. Work ethic.

Each was discussed, at length, last week when Hill met his team

for the first time.

On Tuesday night, Hill was officially introduced as the new boys’

varsity basketball coach at Laguna Beach.

He is the 20th person to hold the position and he replaces Rob

Cullinan, who resigned at the end of last season.

“I’m really excited to be the coach at Laguna Beach High,” Hill

said Tuesday. “I took this job first, because I love Laguna Beach and

second, because I love a challenge.”

Hill, 44, inherits a program that has won just one league

championship in the past 36 years -- that coming in 1999 -- although Laguna teams on three occasions have finished in second place and

twice placed third since 1990.

“We’re very fortunate to land someone like Mark Hill,” Laguna

Beach Athletic Director Mario Morales said. “The great thing about

Mark is that he is firm but fair. He’s got a proven track record as a

coach and I think he’s going to be very good for our program.”

Morales said that he received more than a dozen applications for

the position and interviewed five prospects.

Hill said that not many head coaching jobs opened up this year,

noting that Katella, Orange and Laguna Beach were the three schools

with vacancies.

“I wasn’t really looking around but I knew that I wanted to get

back into coaching,” he said. “Laguna was the only school I pursued.”

Hill first made a name for himself when he coached Esperanza of

the Sunset League from 1988-96.

He turned around an Aztecs program that had not been to the

playoffs seven years prior to his arrival and had won just one league

championship in the school’s first 17 years.

Hill guided Esperanza to three Sunset League titles in his last

five years at the school and his final seven Aztec teams qualified

for the playoffs. His teams consistently were ranked in Orange County

polls and in his final year, his 1995-96 squad finished the season

25-4, was ranked second in the CIF Southern Section’s largest

division, Division I-AA, and was ranked third in Orange County.

He left Esperanza and pursued his master’s degree at Azusa Pacific

University. A year later he returned to coaching and served for two

years as an assistant at Orange Coast College.

He then spent two years as the Pirates’ head coach and this past

season, he helped out his former player and assistant coach, Nate

Harrison, now the head coach at Canyon in Anaheim Hills.

“I started from scratch when I began coaching at Esperanza,” he

said. “It was a similar situation at Orange Coast College and all

four years I was there, we made the playoffs.

“My strength as a coach, I feel, is that I get my teams to play to

its strengths and minimize our weaknesses. To be successful, a coach

needs to know how to put the pieces together. Taking on the Laguna

program is a new challenge and I’m starting from square one.”

Hill’s coaching tour has taken him from one of the county’s larger

schools, Esperanza, with an enrollment of 3,000, to the collegiate

level at Orange Coast, and now, at Laguna which has one of the

smallest enrollment figures among county public schools.

“It’s going to be interesting but I’m not backing down from the

challenge,” said Hill, who played at El Toro High and spent his

youth, he said, playing on the courts at Main Street Beach. “I’m

familiar with this city and I enjoy Laguna Beach very much. I still

spend a lot of time down here in the summertime.”

Hill said the first order of business will be to evaluate the

talent in the program and establish a “comfort level” with the kids.

He’ll also drive home those three principles he shared with them

on that first meeting.

“My whole coaching philosophy is not based on winning, but those

three goals: that the kids be coachable, to instill discipline and to

have a solid work ethic,” he said. “I’ve found through all my years

in coaching that when you implement those three principles, winning

takes care of itself.”

* MIKE SCIACCA covers sports for the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot.

He can be reached at 494-4321 or by e-mail at

michael.sciacca@latimes.com.