Earned confidence

Mike Sciacca

Jimmy Nolan battled through an injury-plagued senior year of high

school football to emerge a winner.

Ten years later, he took on his first head coaching job and turned

a once-dormant prep program into a winner.

Now, he’s bringing his game to Laguna Beach High.

When Nolan, 30, was hired in late March, he replaced the retired

Dave Holland and ushered in a new era in Breakers football.

“He went through two interviews to get this job,” said Ron

Schwartz, athletic director at Laguna Beach. “I am so excited about

landing Jimmy that I wanted to put on some pads and go out on the

practice field, myself.

“He’s the right guy, in the right place, at the right time. So

far, the kids have been very responsive to him.”

When Laguna began football conditioning a few weeks ago, Nolan

said that 15 athletes had come out.

Now, he said, there are more than 40 participants, some of whom

went through voluntary workouts during spring break.

“That’s really encouraging to me,” he said. “I’m noticing a

beautiful camaraderie among this group of kids. I’ve also noticed

that the intelligence level here is terrific. I walked in to find

some tall, good-looking players here at Laguna.”

Nolan began his prep coaching career in 2002, inheriting a

Cantwell-Sacred Heart of Mary program that had gone 3-27 between

1998-2001.

He also walked into a program that was low in numbers in terms of

players, yet managed to turn the Cardinals into immediate winners.

In his first year at the Montebello school, the Cardinals went

10-0. In his two years with the program, he guided teams to

back-to-back undefeated league championships and won the first CIF

playoff game in the history of the school.

He did it, too, with a team whose average player weight was

145-pounds.

“On my first day at Cantwell, we had only 11 kids show up to

play,” Nolan recalled. “They had been 3-27 the previous years, and

nobody cared. Three days before our first game in my first season, we

finally got enough kids to come out to play.

“And we began to win. Winning’s great, but the best thing about

that 10-0 year, is that we became a real team. We grew from about 15

players, to a total of 80 in the program. That’s a pretty big number,

considering the school has only 210 boys in enrollment.”

Nolan faces a similar challenge at Laguna, which is one of the

smaller enrollment schools in Orange County.

“One of the reasons I like coaching high school football is

because this is the most challenging time of a young person’s life,”

said Nolan, who once taught physical education at a juvenile hall

facility. “They can fall, or rise up. This is such a great chance to

be a positive influence on the kids.

“I see certain similarities between Cantwell and Laguna and what I

want to teach these players at Laguna is to work hard. I want to

build up their confidence level through that hard work. I call it,

‘earned confidence.’”

Speaking confidently, Nolan recalled facing uncertainty during his

senior year of football at Mater Dei High.

It was the 1991-92 school year, and he had missed nine games due

to an Achilles heal tear.

But he came back with a vengeance at seasons’ end, his confidence

soaring as he began to tear up the field at running back and safety.

He was named game MVP of the 1991 CIF-Southern Section Division I

championship final on a night when the Monarchs upset the nation’s

No. 1 team, Eisenhower, before more than 32,000 at the Big A.

He went on to play football at Golden West College and the

University of Utah and was named game MVP on a couple of occasions

for the Utes.

He played one season with the Utah Cats of the Arena Football

League, then came back to the high school scene to coach running

backs and free safeties at his alma mater, under head coach Bruce

Rollinson.

Among those he tutored at Mater Dei was Matt Grootegoed, who now

plays at USC.

He took two years off from coaching to play football in Italy, but

returned to the prep football ranks to coach defensive backs and

special teams for 1 1/2 years at Fountain Valley High.

From there, he accepted his first high school head coaching job

and with it, the challenge to resurrect the program at Cantwell.

“This past fall, we opened our season against Fountain Valley,”

Nolan said. “It was like David versus Goliath, but we were winning in

the fourth quarter. They picked up an errant lateral to score the

go-ahead touchdown and ended up winning, but we ended up inside their

10-yard line when the final gun went off.

“I had trained a lot of the kids at Fountain Valley for two years,

so I knew a lot about them. Their fans gave us a standing ovation

after the game. That was such a great day for Cantwell football.”

Nolan got the players at Cantwell to believe in his system and

now, he’s implementing the same game plan at Laguna Beach.

“I want to get these kids enthused and interested in my program,”

he said. “I will then get them to recruit new players into the fold.

We’re one family, one heartbeat.

“I also will instill in them that they are no better than anyone

else on campus. I learned how to work hard and put myself in position

to be a winner. Say ‘no’ to drugs, ‘no’ to alcohol, ‘no’ to sex. Good

things happen to good people and I truly believe that what you put

out, you get in return. The Xs and Os will come, but for me, playing

football is not about winning and losing. It’s about passion and

about teaching the kids how to deal with losing, with adversity, and

how to win with grace. It’s about character and intensity and through

that, winning will come. A kid who displays a lot of heart, both on

and off the field, well, he’s going to be a winner.”