Yin meets yang on gridiron Friday

Coaches for Vista Murrieta, Chaparral take differing paths, personalities to finals

JEFF SANDERS - | Posted: Friday, December 11, 2009 12:35 am

MURRIETA ---- He sent his sons through Chaparral. He sat on the committee that hired Vista Murrieta's founding head football coach. He mentored the Pumas' offensive coordinator a generation ago. He tutors the Broncos' starting quarterback.

Whatever line that is drawn in the sand between two schools sitting less than eight miles apart ---- whatever tiffs, differences and heated battles they've endured leading up to tonight's uber-climactic Southwestern League showdown, this one for the CIF Southern Section Inland Division crown ---- Vista Murrieta quarterbacks coach Rick Hansen sees past it all from his somewhat awkward seat on the fence between two rival programs.

"You get past all that and there's a mutual respect," Hansen said.

"The way they care, the way it's shown, the kids at both schools respond in a positive way. There's nothing but respect for what (the two schools) have achieved in football."

Indeed, there is.

Tom Leach leads Chaparral (10-3) into its third Inland Division finals berth in four years. The game pits the Pumas against Coley Candaele's Vista Murrieta team (13-0). The Broncos completed their third undefeated regular season in the last four years, but are making their first appearance in the finals.

It's a matchup set against the backdrop of the polarizing paths each program traveled in positioning itself for a chance to claim its first section title at 7:30 Friday night at Vista Murrieta.

Yin ...

"I still think if we play great and they play great, we win the game ..."

Ryan Tukua wouldn't have uttered those words. Not a chance. No coach would have in the aftermath of a 43-0 championship-game laugher at the hands of one of the Southern Section's most decorated football programs.

But Leach ---- a former junior college player ushered into the Orange County coaching scene by a pair of back injuries ---- has shown he's no ordinary field general since arriving on Chaparral's doorstep four years ago. A sit-down dinner with his athletic director and chief boosters provided a glimpse of what was to come when they labeled a victory over cross-town rival Temecula Valley as the top priority, only to have the Pumas' new coach set the bar higher.

"I said, 'I don't care about that,'" Leach said in August. "My goal was to win a CIF title."

Less than a year later, Leach had Chaparral in its first title game against Norco. After fighting eventual state champion Corona Centennial to a six-point loss on that stage again last year, the Pumas opened 2009 ranked among the top programs in the region.

Along the way, Leach's antics ---- the No. 1 jersey he clutches as he walks the sidelines, the spikey hairdo he dons Friday nights, the rabbit's feet he has his team pay homage to before games, and oh, those quotes ---- have dropped a spotlight onto his program.

"(Founding coach) Dennis Amador did good things there and built up a solid foundation, but I just think that, as it was put to me by people I knew down there, it was this giant pot boiling," said Hansen, whose son, Tyler, quarterbacked Chaparral to that 2006 title game against Norco. "Somebody needed to come take the lid off and let it boil over. I think Tommy is the perfect personality to do that.

"I think Tommy sometimes has trouble putting the lid back on the pot at times ... but that's Tommy. That's what he's all about."

If nobody knew who Leach was before the Norco title loss, they knew who he was when reporters gathered around him following that 43-0 rout.

Whether his coaches cringed over his words that day or not, they contend those who truly know Leach are those who see the 41-year-old coach locking himself in his office on a Thanksgiving night to prepare recruiting DVDs for players he's trying to move onto college. It's the same coach who vowed to keep his quotes out of the newspaper ---- and the focus off him, he said earlier this year ---- following a suspension and a soul-searching loss to Vista Murrieta in October.

Leach has a 54-23-1 record in six seasons as a head coach, including four at Chaparral.

"This year has been his best coaching job," Tukua, Chaparral's defensive coordinator, said of Leach. "He's done exactly what this team has needed him to do. Maybe in the past, those teams needed Tommy to talk more, but this team already had confidence.

"(The Norco quote) is the one we all laugh about with him to this day. Some people say that's crazy. We say that's Tommy. He wanted that team to have confidence for the next year. No other coach would ever say that."

... and yang

A look at the Broncos' Tuesday afternoon practice is a window into the soul of the team's founding coach. It paints a contrasting picture of a Wednesday night Chaparral practice in which coaches bark instructions over punk rock tunes pouring out of a sound system as the weather-displaced Pumas prepare at Great Oak High School.

No, Candaele's operation is a tightly packaged demonstration in which players hustle to and from drills at the sound of a timed buzzer. Candaele's usually in the middle of it all, too, lining up on special teams to show his players just how to get to all the kicks Vista Murrieta blocks and running the scout-team offense as a staff made of five former head coaches looks on.

You don't need to see a whole lot more to peg Candaele as a coach's son (Rick Candaele of UC Santa Barbara and now Claremont-Mudd-Scripps football).

It's not a surprise to hear the 38-year-old Candaele was a former California Player of the Year as a quarterback at Carpinteria, a multi-time state champion as a track and field athlete who later starred at Oregon and a section-title winner as a football coach at his alma mater in 2002.

It's not a coincidence that the staff at Vista Murrieta has remained largely intact in the face of new schools opening in Southwest County.

"How can you leave when you have somebody with tremendous character that you work with?" Broncos defensive coordinator Eric Peterson asked.

Candaele is 110-37-2 in his 13th year as a head coach.

The yin and yang of both coaches' personalities ---- and those of their programs ---- have added to the excitement on the field any time these two programs meet.

Before the Pumas' 32-13 loss to Vista Murrieta in Week 7 ---- a game in which Leach served a suspension after directing his team to point to the scoreboard after a victory the prior week over Murrieta Valley ---- seven points separated the two teams' four previous meetings.

The Broncos won three of them, with two coming during consecutive perfect regular seasons that ended in the quarterfinals against Norco and Corona Santiago in 2006 and '07. Chaparral got last year's one-point, overtime victory en route to a Southwestern League championship and the Pumas' second finals berth.

Whatever run-ins the two coaches have had over the years, respect for each other's successes really fuels this competition.

"It's become a big rivalry," Candaele said. "Anytime you have respect for anybody and you both play good football, you earn a different kind of respect for each other. ...

"The competition makes you better. I think Chaparral and Vista Murrieta have made each other better by trying to get better in the offseason, trying to get better during the season."

Works for them

If there's an innocent bystander in all this, it's Russ Strange. The Temescal Canyon coach doesn't share a town with either Chaparral or Vista Murrieta and he doesn't get wrapped up in whatever drama spills off the football field.

Instead, the 44-year-old Strange appreciates both programs for what they are: Budding powerhouses with kids buying into programs that have transformed the landscape of football in Southwest County.

"I think Tommy's funny ---- I do," Strange said. "Tommy is a different guy, but so is Coley. They are polar opposites. It's kind of like the odd couple. I appreciate them both.

"If you'd asked me if Vista Murrieta and Chaparral would be in the running to be here at the beginning of the year, I would have said 'Absolutely, they'd be there.'"