Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Pueblo turns to ex-UA standouts for coaching help

In the past six months, Pueblo High School assistant principal Frank Rosthenhausler has changed the local template for hiring head coaches.

Last week, he selected Kelvin Eafon, a two-sport athlete at Arizona, to coach the Warriors basketball team. A few months earlier he chose ex-UA safety Brandon Sanders to coach Pueblo’s football team.

Given the UA’s high profile in Tucson sports, it’s difficult to believe that Pueblo’s hiring of Sanders and Eafon are virtually unprecedented.

Sanders was captain of the UA’s 1995 football team and twice an All-Pac-10 first-team safety. Eafon, who initially played basketball at Arizona from 1994-96 (he played in 31 games as a reserve guard), was the captain of Arizona’s 12-1 football team in 1998, a fullback with a big voice and big heart who scored 16 touchdowns that year.

Sanders and Eafon both were inspirational leaders of their UA football teams. Both seemed destined, someday, to be coaches. Sanders kicked around at several local high schools and at Pima College; Eafon has mostly coached youth groups and given private basketball instruction.

The last time a Tucson school hired a former UA team captain was when 1960s football lineman Howard Breinig became one of the state’s top football coaches at Sahuaro from 1983 to 1994.

Before that, it was the late ’50s, when basketball standout Ed Nymeyer went on to become a Hall of Fame coach at Flowing Wells. Before that, it was 1944 UA basketball captain George Genung, who coached so well at Amphitheater that the school’s gymnasium now bears his name.

It’s not that capable UA athletes haven’t given high school coaching a try here. All-Border Conference lineman Ed Brown became an institution at Cholla. Tony Morales coached Tucson High to a pair of state basketball championships in the ’60s.

UA football player Paul Schmidt was the head coach at Mountain View and Marana; Pueblo hired ex-UA football standouts Larry McKee, Adrian Koch and Don Bowerman. Salpointe’s football team was coached in the early ’70s by ex-UA lineman Jerry Davitch.

UA football starters Sam Giangardella, at Sunnyside; John Kaiser, at Catalina; and Vincent Smith, at Tucson, coached briefly before moving on.

Sahuaro’s Scott McKee and Mountain View’s Clarence McRae, both of who lettered at Arizona over the last 15 seasons, are doing well in rebuilding situations.

But never have two prominent ex-Wildcats —team captains — coached simultaneously at the same school, both running their own program.

It’s not going to be easy. Eafon takes over a basketball program that was 1-26 two years ago. Sanders is coaching a football program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2002.

Before the much-anticipated start of Arizona’s 2014-15 basketball season, Lute Olson’s family has planned a notable celebration for Arizona’s Hall of Fame basketball coach.

Olson will turn 80 on Sept. 22. Hard to believe. Let’s hope he enjoys this landmark as much as he did on his previous landmark birthdays:

Olson turned 20 in 1954: That was the year he became an all-conference basketball player at Augsburg College in Minnesota.

Olson turned 30 in 1964: That was the year he coached first-year Loara High School in Anaheim, California, to the championship of the Orange League, using only sophomores and juniors.

Olson turned 40 in 1974: He coached Long Beach State to a 24-2 season.

Olson turned 50 in 1984: That was his first year at Arizona, one in which he rescued the Wildcats from a 4-24 season and put them on the path to greatness.

Olson turned 60 in 1994: He coached the Wildcats to the Final Four.

Olson turned 70 in 2004: The Wildcats won 20 games and were ranked as high as No. 3 in The Associated Press poll.

I once asked Olson about his season at Loara, 50 years ago. “I coached JV baseball, was the counselor for the sophomore class, taught Driver’s Education and drove a ’62 Rambler,” he said.

Arizona’s basketball program wasn’t much different than a ’62 Rambler when he arrived in Tucson 30 years ago.

Arizona soccer coach Tony Amato, in his second season, has started the year 4-1-1. That’s rarefied air for a UA women’s soccer program that was on a 9-52-6 conference skid since 2006 before Amato was hired. The Wildcats are likely to sweep Lipscomb and Idaho and open Pac-12 play at 6-1-1. Then comes the difficult terrain. In the current Top 25 rankings, UCLA is No. 1, Stanford is No. 4, Cal is No. 11 and USC is No. 14. 

In Pima College’s strong 4-2 start to the women’s soccer season, Sabino High grad Devyn Hunley scored three goals after a redshirt year at Arizona. She is the daughter of LaMonte Hunley, a first-team All –Pac-12 linebacker at Arizona in 1984.

Former UA point guard Mustafa Shakur, who is 30 now, last week signed to play for Neptunas Klaipeda of Lithuania, a Euroleague team. Since leaving Arizona in 2007, Shakur’s pro basketball career has been a wild ride. He has played in Poland, Spain, Greece, France, Italy and Lebanon, and for Tulsa, Rio Grande Valley and Erie in the NBA D-League. His NBA career consists of 22 games for the Washington Wizards and three games for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Arizona’s No. 4 women’s golf team opens the season Sept. 28 in, of all things, the Annika Intercollegiate, in Orlando, Fla. The 12-team, invitation-only field is named after two-time UA All-American Annika Sorenstam and is considered the top event of the fall golf season. Five Pac-12 teams will be at the event: Stanford, ASU, UCLA, UA and USC.

The UA athletic department will hold open auditions to be the Voice of McKale Center for 2014-15, meaning that Jonathan Norris, who has been the school’s basketball public address announcer for 18 seasons, will not necessarily return for Year 19. Norris had an extremely tough job to follow in 1996-97, when he replaced Roger Sedlmayr, the voice of UA basketball from 1978 to 1996. Sedlmayr was considered a big part of the McKale Center show; Norris has been less so but he is capable and professional. Clearly, the school wants more “show time” pizazz, and that’s not Norris’ shtick. (He doesn’t do shtick.) A bring-Norris-back petition is being circulated on Facebook. Let’s hope McKale doesn’t become home to one of those NBA-type, shout-to-the-gods hypesters so prevalent in big-time basketball.

Sean Miller and his wife, Amy, are staging a “Chalk Talk” at Richard Jefferson Gymnasium on Sept. 26, with proceeds going to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Tables cost from $3,000 to $10,000. Individual tickets are $300. It is the see-and-be-seen basketball event of the season.

It seems inevitable that Arizona will soon add another preseason event to its basketball calendar, keeping pace with those like John Calipari at Kentucky. Calipari has invited representatives of all 30 NBA teams to an “NBA combine” at Rupp Arena on Oct. 11-12. It will be a recruiting weekend of note for UK. All 30 NBA teams will likely send scouts/reps to McKale Center during the 2014-15 season, as they do most seasons. But Calipari is the first to spin it around recruiting visits. NBA scouts are not permitted to interact with college players, but nothing says you can’t make them comfortable and give them up-close access.

OB Sports, a national golf management firm that has taken control of day-to-day duties at Tucson’s five municipal courses — Dell Urich, Randolph, Silverbell, El Rio and Fred Enke — has been an early success for one reason: The courses have been in better condition in brutal summer conditions than in many years. It’s clear OB’s key course maintenance people know what they are doing. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen fewer people playing golf, on the city courses and elsewhere, ever. Over the next few years, I wouldn’t be surprised if four or five Southern Arizona golf courses are shuttered, much the way Green Valley’s Canoa Hills and Vail’s Santa Rita have closed recently.

Longtime Tucsonan Rick Waits is surely enjoying the top season of any pitching coach in the majors. Waits’ Seattle Mariners lead all of baseball in ERA (3.00), fewest runs allowed (473) and opponent’s batting average (.228). Waits spent the previous 11 seasons as a minor-league pitching instructor for the Mets and Mariners before getting his own big-league staff this year. He’s an overnight success at 62.

UA baseball coach Andy Lopez signed three players in the summer of 2009 who ultimately bypassed college and made it to the big leagues. The latest is Detroit lefty Kyle Lobstein, who has been outstanding in his first month in MLB. He is from Flagstaff. Lopez’s ’09 class also included outfielder Anthony Gose of Toronto and pitcher Edgar Olmos, who has played for Miami.

Sabino grad Brooks Reed, an All-Pac-12 defensive end at Arizona in 2010, had his best game as an NFL linebacker last week against Washington. Reed was awarded a game ball by Houston Texans coach Bill O’Brien, who told reporters “Brooks played one of the better games I’ve seen an outside linebacker play.” He had five tackles, a quarterback sack, and three hits on Washington QB Robert Griffin III.

Baseball America last week selected 2012 Arizona College World Series MVP Robert Refsnyder to its Class AAA All-Star team, which encompasses all Pacific Coast League and all International League players from 30 teams. Refsnyder hit .300 for the Scranton/Wilkes Barre Yankees as a second baseman.

UA swimming coach Rick DeMont is in the process of compiling the type of recruiting class that made Arizona one of the NCAA’s top four or five women’s swimming programs for 20 years. Already this month, he has commitments from Top 20-type swimmers Mackenzie Rumrill of Salem, Oregon; Katrina Konupka of Spartanburg, South Carolina; and Quinn Carrozza of Austin, Texas. This is DeMont’s first full year of recruiting as a head coach. So far, so good.

The vast Pima County Junior Soccer League, which has about 5,500 young players and more than 10,000 parents and family members, instituted a Respect the Game policy this year in which parental (and player) behavior is monitored.

When play began last week, “Be Kind To The Game” signs were erected at all playing facilities. New code of conduct rules, which don’t tolerate verbal abuse to players, coaches or referees, are monitored by newly-appointed PCJSL marshals.

District commissioner Ted Schmidt, a Tucson attorney, said there were no violations in the first week.

By comparison, there were nine ejections of players/parents in Phoenix as part of the greater Arizona Youth Soccer Association, of which Tucson is a member.

Schmidt said there were two fights involving parents in Phoenix games. In another incident, a parent stopped her van to let several players out to assault a player from the opposing team.

Schmidt is hopeful PCJSL conduct rules will be absorbed by the statewide AYSA next season.

Is this year too soon?

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