Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Pierson created big-game aura at Sahuaro

Almost nobody goes to a freshman football game, at Sahuaro High School or at any high school. But when Sahuaro freshman coach Tom Pierson walked out of the Cougars’ locker room Thursday night, about 100 of his former players formed a corridor through which their coach walked.

At 66, Pierson would be coaching his final game at Sahuaro. It was a big deal and it should’ve been.

At 3 p.m., on school days, whether it is 100 degrees or 105, Pierson has coached the freshman football team at Sahuaro for more than two decades. He has won more than 200 games. Pay? How about $1,800 per year.

“Tom Pierson is one of the finest teachers, coaches and human beings I’ve ever had the pleasure to know,” said former Santa Rita football coach Bob Vielledent, also a former Sahuaro assistant. “If he’s coaching your son, you are in good hands.”

When he was inducted into the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame a year ago, Pierson described himself as “an average and ordinary guy.” That’s way off.

Chicago Bears assistant coach Skip Peete, who played for Pierson in the late 1970s, had all of the Bears sign a helmet and shipped it to Pierson on Thursday. After the victory over Sunnyside, Cougars volunteer freshman football coach, Earl Wadsworth, presented the helmet to Pierson during a post-game celebration at BZ’s Pizza.

Good people have always found a way to get next to Pierson. His offensive coordinator is former Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Sammy Khalifa, who played for Pierson more than 30 years ago.

All of those who started with Pierson on the impressive 1973 Sahuaro football staff, a veritable list of Pima County sport hall of famers, stood and applauded Thursday night.

That group included Howard Breinig, Virg Stan, Billy Lopez, Lance Prickett and Vielledent. All became head coaches. So did Pierson, a former wrestler at UTEP and Arizona; he became the head wrestling coach at Rincon and Sahuaro.

But it was as the freshman football coach at Sahuaro that he left an indelible mark.

“He didn’t do it for fame or money,” said Vielledent. “He did it because it was a way he could help the kids. How do you put a value on that?”

If you looked closely in the crowd at Thursday’s game you could see Matt Johnson, head coach of Ironwood Ridge’s 8-1 powerhouse, and the 2012 state champs. Johnson got to know Pierson from their long-ago coaching days at Rincon.

On the week of a big game against Salpointe, Johnson drove all the way from Oro Valley to Sahuaro to help honor Tom Pierson. It was a Big Game after all.

After his team was celebrated Thursday in San Francisco, a near-unanimous choice to win another Pac-12 basketball championship, Sean Miller got back into the coaching mode.

He told Kevin O’Neill in a Pac-12 Networks interview that the hard work starts now. “There are some things we’ve got to work out,” said Miller. “Who’s going to chase the other teams’ best scorer and shooter? Nick Johnson did that last year for 38 games and he wanted to do it. He wanted to make his mark that way.”

One of the key variables for Miller’s sixth Arizona team is to identify a defensive stopper. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, perhaps? Can Stanley Johnson effectively guard someone like Cal’s Jabari Bird or Colorado’s Xavier Johnson?

“I don’t know if anyone’s putting up their hand right now, saying, ‘Coach, I want to be the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year,” said Miller.

Johnson completed his preseason with the Houston Rockets last week. In 102 minutes, he shot poorly — 24.2 percent from the field and 18.2 percent from three-point distance. But he averaged 16 minutes per game and was generally the 10th or 11th man in a substitution pattern.

It suggests that Johnson will open the season with the Rockets on Tuesday. At some point this season, it’s likely Houston will dispatch him to the D-League to get extended minutes, though.

Tucsonans Brent Strom, pitching coach for the Houston Astros, and Craig Bjornson, the Astros’ bullpen coach, have arranged to bring Houston’s minor-league hitting coordinator Jeff Albert to Tucson’s Centerfield Baseball Academy for two days of instruction, Nov. 4-5. Under Albert, the Astros’ minor league system led all of baseball in runs and walks this season. Information: centerfieldhits.com.

Arizona’s 1989 All-Pac-10 outfielder Kevin Long, fired as the New York Yankees’ hitting instructor two weeks ago, was hired by the New York Mets in the same capacity last week. Long, 47, had been the Yankees’ hitting coach for eight years.

Sabino High grad Keanu Nelson did not catch a pass in three football seasons at Stanford. He transferred to BYU last spring and a week ago scored his first college touchdown, an eight-yard pass against Nevada. Nelson, who has one year of eligibility at BYU, has caught three passes for the Cougars. He has also returned five punts for 35 yards.

Reily Buechler, daughter of Arizona’s 1990 All-Pac-10 basketball forward Jud Buechler, was last week’s Pac-12 women’s volleyball freshman of the week. Reily is a starter on UCLA’s 17th-ranked club.

As it turns out, the high school football game of the year in Tucson will be 8-1 Cienega hosting 9-0 Sahuaro on Friday. Cienega coach Nemer Hassey coached Sahuaro to the 1999 state championship game. The Cougars are one of just two remaining unbeaten teams in Division II, with Phoenix Sunnyslope. Friday will be a good day.

Sahuarita football coach David Rodriguez inherited an 0-10 team when he began rebuilding the Mustangs four years ago. He has since gone 33-8, and is one of two remaining unbeatens in Division IV entering the final week of the regular season. Phoenix Seton Catholic is also 9-0. Rodriguez’s team spins around senior quarterback Calvin Jenkins, a dual threat who has completed 63.2 percent of his passes and rushed for 634 yards, or 8.5 yards per carry. Jenkins is as strong a choice as anybody to be Southern Arizona’s 2014 Player of the Year. He gets plenty of help from two standout junior defensive players: Tanner Liddicoat has 84 tackles and Jacob Ontiveros has 81.

The not-so-laughable irony of Mountain View High School’s football program being put on a one-year probation by the Arizona Interscholastic Association is that Marana School District superintendent Doug Wilson is the president of the AIA. The Mountain Lions are alleged to have improperly recruited players, including defensive back Demetrius Flannigan, who has committed to play at Arizona. Flannigan hasn’t played a game this year. He paid the price for those in the Marana School District who could’ve and should’ve stepped in and told him it wasn’t worth the risk.

Tucsonan Abdi Abdirahman, a four-time USA Olympic distance-runner, just completed his training season in Flagstaff. He told me last week that he will attempt to qualify for the 2016 U.S. Olympic team in the 10,000 meters; he would be 39. His training partner, Tucsonan Bernard Lagat, also a four-time Olympian, who will be 40 in December, also has committed to train for the 5,000 meters for two more years.

The UA’s “Surplus Property Office” sold 575 items, old athletic gear of every conceivable type, in an online auction Oct. 14. It produced more than $50,000 in revenue for shoes, socks, shoulder pads, jerseys, you name it. A set of old UA football shoulder pads received the highest price, at $650. A 1989, full-sized poster of Sean Elliott, went for $200. A box of white UA basketball “CATS” game pants went for $500. Too bad it couldn’t sell a piece of the goal posts, torn down in 1982, when Arizona shocked ASU 28-18 to knock the Sun Devils out of the Rose Bowl. At an SEC school, those things can go for $1,000 per foot.

Craig Lefferts, winning pitcher for Arizona in the 1980 College World Series championship game, is working for Major League Baseball as an ambassador to countries developing baseball programs. Now 57, pitching coach of the Class A Vermont Lake Monsters, Lefferts has represented MLB in Brazil and South Africa to help train coaches. He will be in Johannesburg, South Africa this winter in the same capacity.

Arizona alumnus Chip Hale, new manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, told me that the Kansas City Royals’ emergence as a power didn’t surprise him. “In the industry, we looked at them three or four years ago and said, ‘Oh my God, here they come,’” he said. “All that good young pitching, all that speed, you could see it coming.” Hale said that Tucson resident Dave Duncan, Tony LaRussa’s long-time pitching coach in St. Louis, will have an expanded capacity for the D’backs in 2015. “Dave has the uncanny ability to take a pitcher who’s struggling, make some tweaks, and put him back on the rails.”

Tucsonan Matt Grevers, an Olympic swimming medalist in 2008 and 2012, is favored in Saturday’s “Fastest Swimmer in Texas” swimming competition in San Antonio. The fastest to swim 50 meters in a three-heat event will earn $5,000. The women’s competition includes ex-Arizona All-American Lara Jackson, an American record holder who has come out of retirement to train for the 2016 Olympics.

Arizona’s women’s basketball team received 12 votes (from 12 voters) in the Pac-12 women’s basketball preseason poll. That’s as humbling as it gets.

Niya Butts has gone 28-80 in her six conference seasons at Arizona, but that’s not the worst six-year stretch in school history. From 1987-92, UA women’s basketball teams went 21-87 in league games.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Joan Bonvicini’s UA women’s basketball teams went to seven NCAA tournaments in a nine-year stretch, 1997-2005. It can be done.

The Wildcats will stage their annual Media Day on Monday at McKale Center. Unlike media days for UA football and men’s basketball, the women’s media session will include a free lunch.

It would be nice if someday soon UA women’s hoops doesn’t need to serve lunch to draw a captive audience.

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