Discipline, Hard Work Produce Turnaround at Whittier High : Football: The Cardinals have a chance to win their second league title in six years under Coach Mike Fitch.

WHITTIER — Mike Fitch shakes his head and remembers how downright horrible it was six years ago when he left a comfortable job at a private school to become the football coach at Whittier High.

At least 12 years had passed since the Cardinals had had a winning season. Player morale was lower than low. The booster club was quick to criticize, and the budget was so tight that game jerseys looked like pincushions.

“Whittier was the cream puff of the Whitmont League,” said Cardinals Athletic Director Ed Lishok, a former football coach at neighboring Santa Fe High in Santa Fe Springs. “Everyone scheduled Whittier for homecoming because they knew they’d get an easy win.”

Feisty and tireless, Fitch erased those memories in 1989 when Whittier won its first Whitmont League title, the school’s first league crown of any kind in more than two decades. Now the Cardinals (7-1) have a chance to claim another when they play Santa Fe (7-1) at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the California High field. Win or lose, Whittier High is assured of its third playoff appearance in four years.

When Fitch, 37, was hired in 1987 after taking Brethren Christian of Paramount to the playoffs, he was the fourth Cardinals coach of the decade. His predecessor, Gene Zeller, had done better than most, leading the Cardinals to a 5-5 record. But Zeller, a walk-on, left to take a position at Long Beach City College, and former Whittier Principal Michele Lawrence wanted a coach who would stick around for a while. It was an easy decision to hire Fitch, she said.

“He wanted to create a successful program, and I believed he was capable of creating enthusiasm,” said Lawrence, now superintendent of the Paramount Unified School District.

Lawrence said student morale was poor at the time.

“The students lacked self-esteem and the ability to believe that they could win,” she said. “I believed that with some changes and staff modifications in general programs throughout the school the kids would become believers in themselves.”

But Fitch was not prepared for what hit him in the spring of 1987 when he took his first job in public education. Whittier players told him that the school did not care about them. Facilities at the aging school, like the former storage closet that served as a locker room, were in disrepair. The president of the booster club told him he was expected to change things fast.

“It was like Civil War,” Fitch said. “I stressed out a lot. There was a lot of dissent. I just wanted to get through each day.”

There was culture shock in the beginning, as well. At the team’s first meeting, players wore earrings, baggy clothes and offensive T-shirts.

“I’m not a redneck,” Fitch said about the earrings, “but I couldn’t tolerate those suckers.”

Cutting classes, something he seldom dealt with at Brethren, was a regular routine at Whittier.

“A lot of kids just come to school for social things, not for school itself,” said junior running back/nose guard Greg Ford.

Lishok, who transferred from Santa Fe to Whittier in 1985 and became offensive coordinator under Fitch in 1989, explained that Whittier has a unique set of geographical problems.

“Across Hadley Street in the hills you have million-dollar homes,” he said. “On the south side of the campus you have five families living in a single house.” Single-parent households are the norm, and although some students have money to spend on football equipment, most have to struggle just to pay for lunch, he said.

Fitch, who posted 2-8 and 4-6 won-lost records in his first two seasons, was determined to bring discipline to Whittier. Skip classes, you don’t play. Lift weights when you’re not in class. He wanted players who could hit as hard as their opponents.

Four-mile runs up the hills behind the campus were common. Blocking and tackling drills were simple and repetitive. Team meetings were held every day.

Some of the rules and training regimen did not sit well with returning players, and the varsity turnout plummeted from more than 50 a season to less than three dozen by his second year. Explained assistant Coach Jack Coppes, who supported Fitch’s methods: “(The quitters) may be good players, but who needs them? You tell them, ‘We’re going to win with you, but we’re also going to win without you.’ ”

In his enthusiasm Fitch sometimes got carried away. Two years ago, when Whittier (5-5) did not receive an at-large playoff berth that he thought the team deserved, the burly, brash coach said the CIF Southern Section was run by the Three Stooges. The school reprimanded him.

Fitch says now that those comments were made in the heat of the moment, but he still believes that the Southern Section did not follow its own guidelines in selecting playoff teams.

On campus, particularly in Fitch’s earlier years, teachers and students criticized him. Even today, Fitch contends, wanna-be football players who are unwilling to conform to the system are the first to criticize his way of doing things.

But those who know him say that Fitch is a compassionate man with a passion for football.

“Mike is a big old grizzly bear,” said St. Anthony Coach Dave Radford, who coached Fitch at Jordan High in Long Beach. “Whenever anyone is down he’s the first one to tell you not to question yourself.”

Like him or hate him, players who stuck it out say Fitch is long overdue respect for the monumental task he has accomplished.

“He’s the best thing that ever happened here,” said former guard/linebacker De Vaughn Egan, a 1992 graduate. “When we needed him, he was there. He always supported us. If we did something wrong, he’d punish us, too, but you always knew he was still behind you.”

Fellow football coaches at Whittier High call Fitch a tireless worker. When the football budget was slashed to around $2,000 a year in 1988, Lishok said, Fitch organized fund-raising activities that have generated between $10,000 and $12,000 a year--about the same as Fitch had at Brethren, a school with an enrollment one-fourth the size of Whittier’s 1,900 students.

Fitch’s fund-raisers, such as parking cars at sporting events and concerts, helped buy new weight sets, repaint the locker room and buy new uniforms. After a few turbulent years, a new booster club has emerged, one that Fitch meets with regularly. In a few years, he hopes, it will take over some of the fund-raising.

Fund-raising is important to the players, Fitch believes, because it builds morale.

“What you do,” Fitch said, “is put the kids in charge of their own destiny. They realize they can make a difference in their situation by fund-raising to make things better. If they want to succeed, it all comes down to how big that thing in their chest cavity is.”

Volunteer strength coach Walter Scott, a 1973 Whittier High graduate, says Fitch has taught players that they can win if they follow the rules, believe in themselves and work hard to obtain the objectives that have been set for them.

“There were years and years there when (Whittier) kids were beat before they took the field,” Scott said. “They would lose as freshmen and it would continue year after year. Now a freshman that comes into Whittier knows what is expected of him.”

There is a sensitive quality in Fitch, acquaintances say. Three years ago, a freshman football player stole a bicycle. Rather than kick him off the team, Fitch gave him extra physical fitness drills. Today, that player is still playing football.”

“Coach always tells us,” said junior nose guard Greg Ford, “that there are 1,900 students here and that the 35 of us out for football are the best of the lot.”

Another ex-player, whom Fitch kept an eye on while he was in school, was arrested for stealing beer during a melee at a convenience store last spring. He was sentenced to six months in jail. Fitch’s voice dropped two octaves as he pointed out the story, which is on a bulletin board in the Cardinals’ locker room as a reminder to the team. “That was a killer for me,” he said.

Fitch believes that Whittier will get even better in the next few years. He said one goal now is to win a first-round playoff game, something the Cardinals have yet to do.

Last week, Fitch put the Cardinals through practice in the shadow of a graffiti-marred warehouse next to railroad tracks. On the other side of the field, a giant Cardinal painted on a wall in brilliant red and white cast a watchful eye over the proceedings.

The contrast in views was striking, just like the turnaround that Fitch has accomplished.