Date: Monday, November 02, 1998 7:26 PM
Subject: Sacramento Bee: High school football (mentions Encina)

Encina alumni,

Here's another Sacramento Bee article. This one is about the problems some high 
school football programs have. It mentions Encina's football program. You may 
remember Rett Smart's comment that Encina's team was thin, with only five players 
on the bench as reserves.

This morning I heard from Deborah Young, who's son Neil Young plays football for 
Encina. Deborah says, "I still have one child at Encina, Neil Young  (he is 
really a basketball player (6'10"), but for fun played football this year #75, 
he is a junior)." 

Deborah read about the website in the Encina paper the "Bulldog Barks", where 
Heddy Crowder was nice enough to insert a blurb about the Encina website. 
Deborah's twin daughters Ann Young 98 and Eliza Young 98 are the most recent 
graduates from Encina to be listed in the class directories.

Harlan

+++

Resilient Golston helps San Juan keep the spirit

By Joe Davidson
Bee Staff Writer
(Published Oct. 15, 1998)

Mark Golston was addressing the troops at Monday's practice, marching like a 
battalion leader, when he became unglued. At least as mad as he's capable.
Golston is San Juan High School's football coach, and a split image of Al Bundy, 
the TV sitcom character. Like Bundy, Golston is tall and lanky, eccentric and 
popular with his audience.

Fed up with some inattentive players, Golston threw his hat to the ground and 
barked at them. "Can we just shut up for a second here?" he shouted.

Brad Elmer, a stocky defensive end, raised his hand and said, "Coach, you look 
like you need a hug." Golston, looking as if he had just taken a forearm to the 
chops, went from scowl to guffaws.

"Meet you half way," Elmer said. Coach and pupil embraced as the rest of the 
team smiled.

It was a poignant moment -- what, hugging in football? --and it captured San Juan's 
mood of late. The trophy case may be void of any evidence that football even has a 
pulse on Greenback Lane -- San Juan's 50-year league championship drought is the 
longest in the area -- but to a man, the players will tell you that they have each 
other. And if pride is the foremost fabric in molding a successful program, San Juan 
already has the foundation of a winner.

The Spartans won for only the second time in two years, 15-8 over Highlands on Friday, 
scoring more points in 32 minutes than they had in the previous four weeks combined. 
The homecoming dance was festive for the first time in many years. On Monday, players 
returned to campus to be greeted by open arms and slaps on the back.

That San Juan even fields a football team is often viewed as a victory within itself. 
The Spartans, like other San Juan Unified School District teams such as Mira Loma and 
Encina, are in short supply of money and students who have been groomed to play football. 
This is no Elk Grove High, which is fed experienced players each year from its 
surrounding junior high and Pop Warner programs.

The Spartans frighten no one. They field no athletes headed for a Division I scholarship. 
On some days, 24 players will arrive for practice. On others, 20 show up. The number 
depends on how many athletes have to work that day, either at a fast-food chain or for 
the school's regional occupational program.

Golston encourages all his athletes to stick with the extra-curricular programs, 
even if they are behind on the playbook come game day. To lose them now, he says, 
is to risk losing them forever.

And Golston, a 41-year-old red-haired, red-faced man, is the reason most of the 
athletes are even in pads in the first place. The football field is a place to get 
away, players say, to find companionship and something fun to do, even if the fun 
is gauged in first downs and yards instead of scoring sprees and winning streaks.

Golston's wit and enthusiasm has drawn kids who had never played the game, or might 
not have ever experienced teamwork had someone not shown an interest.

He preaches that athletics is a means of bringing students together, including the 
Latino, African-American and Ukrainian students that are sprinkled throughout the 
sports programs. Golston convinced a Polish exchange student to try track and field. 
The kid responded that he didn't know what he was doing and Golston said that was OK, 
it was his job to teach him. He's talked Ukrainian students into trying out for the 
girls or boys basketball teams.

And in Ukrainian born Andrew Shiskin, he has found a nugget who has become a starter 
on the defensive line. Shiskin never played sports until this fall. 
"Golston is the best teacher or coach I could ever have," Shiskin said. "He's made 
this fun for me and everyone. He reached me and gave me something to do."

Golston's coaching office has about as much appeal as a muffler-shop waiting room 
with ancient file cabinets, old coffee cups and a shag carpet. But it's here where 
an endless stream of teenagers, football players or otherwise, come to talk about 
their problems, their prospects and just about anything else.

The last couple of weeks Golston has done a lot of listening. Ukrainian student 
Vladimir Gayduchik, a childhood pal of Shiskin, was found bludgeoned to death in a 
campus wood shed on Oct. 5.

Golston and other educators at San Juan continue their open-door policy to try and 
make sense of it all. Students wonder why the TV cameras only come out when something 
horrible happens, why there's never a sign of the news media when someone aces the SAT.

Golston says he can relate to most of his students. He's been a starter and a bench 
warmer. His high school teams went 18-2, and his last two years at Sacramento State 
20 years ago were a dreadful 1-19. He's been hurt, he's been healthy. He didn't grow 
up in a broken family like so many of his students, but he says 70-hour weeks breaking 
down film and running a boot-camp practice did little to save his marriage. So now 
he's a single father who travels some three hours every weekend to see his four 
young kids.

And he knows the grief of losing a parent. Golston regularly looks to a letter his 
father wrote to him on his deathbed as motivation. It reads in so many words that 
wins are secondary to molding the lives of teenagers. When Golston would rub his 
father's back, aching and covered with scars from lung surgeries, Hardy Golston 
would ask his son if he understood the letter.

"My dad died 10 years ago from cancer but he's still with me and that letter is 
so true," Golston said. "I live by it."

The Spartans are headed by honor students Mike Wegsteen, quarterback, and David Fear, 
defensive lineman. They are also the school's rally commissioners.

Wegsteen has followed in the quarterbacking footsteps of his brother, Jon, a three-year 
starter now graduated. Fear and Wegsteen vowed to do their share to boost campus morale 
this fall by encouraging students to attend sporting events, to clean up the grounds and 
to move on in light of the campus' most recent tragedy.

And for several hours on Friday night, San Juan felt very much like a modern-day high 
school again. Faculty members met with coaches after the game to go over strategy and 
to devour pizzas.

"We're trying to show that we do good things here, that we have good people here," 
Wegsteen said. "The kids have a lot of spirit here. We like going to school, we're 
proud of the school and people need to know that."

Still, Wegsteen says he grows tired of defending his school colors when he goes to 
the mall or to a rival school to compete. The 85-year-old school in Citrus Heights 
is nestled on Greenback Lane, which was once a two-lane road that now resembles a 
freeway. The school looks its age in some parts, but $5 million worth of renovation 
has spruced up the place. There's new paint, floors and lights in the gym. Classes 
are fitted with new air conditioners.

Still, there's a sense that the remodeling is incomplete.

"Communities judge a school by how well their football team does and that's not fair," 
said Jim Clay, who has coached and taught at San Juan for 33 years. "But you know, 
the kids are resilient. They handle this stuff pretty well."

Meanwhile, back at practice, Golston points to encouraging signs. He has 16 juniors 
on the field. His best player, fullback Jarred Beddow, is getting back into shape 
after hurting his shoulder. The freshman and JV squads are spirited and competitive. 
San Juan's era of chronic shortcomings may be numbered. 
A moment later, Golston was rubbing the considerable belly of Fear, who responded by hoisting his coach and carrying him around like a rag doll.