Sacramento’s longtime greats of high school coaching forced to learn new tricks
There was anguish and concern in their voices when they normally boom of good cheer.
Mike Alberghini, Guy Anderson, Dave Hoskins, Frank Negri and Mary Jo Truesdale would make for quite a Mount Rushmore of regional high school coaching giants, golden-great oldies who have run out of room in their trophy cases for all the hardware accumulated over decades.
A big part of their lives are also on hold amid the coronavirus pandemic, sheltered in while they are used to being the focal part of any room. Each of these five coaches are aware of being at higher risk of serious complications from the disease at 65 years or older. Or, as football lifer Negri says in a light moment, “much, much older!”
The disconnect these coaches have with others is an additional challenge that cannot be found in any coaching manual. Only Truesdale, a softball lifer, and Anderson, a baseball lifer, engage on social media. Collectively, this coaching lot are mentors to coaches and student-athletes, though that adjustment includes, for now, mentoring without human contact.
With a combined 105 years of football coaching to their credit, Alberghini and Hoskins equate a hard drive to something their players do on off-tackle plays more than computer.
“What’s going on is the strangest thing I’ve experienced,” Hoskins said. “You drive around in some places and it’s like a bomb went off. No one is out there. Very few cars. Places are closed down. No school. It’s very eerie. What the hell happened? Any my wife and kids remind me every minute of every day — Wash your hands! Be safe!”
Grant’s Mike Alberghini
Alberghini is closing in on his 74th birthday. He has coached for 52 seasons, including 29 as head coach at Grant.
He is the region’s winningest football coach with 283. He has led eight Sac-Joaquin Section championship teams, and his 2008 group remains the only one in Northern California not named De La Salle to win a CIF State Open Division championship, the highest classification. He is so revered on campus and in Del Paso Heights that the football field bears his name.
Alberghini is used to being on school grounds, visiting with coaches, checking in on students, talking to parents. He misses them and he worries about them.
“It’s the first time that I feel like I’m retired,” Alberghini said. “It’s frustrating, different. The alienation isn’t even a question. What we’re doing — staying home — is the right thing for all people. We have to hang in there. But a lot of us are climbing the walls. What do we do if this (social distancing) goes on another six, seven, eight weeks?”
He added, “I worry about parents who have lost jobs, or those trying to keep their kids inside. Kids are going to be kids. Kids need to be around other kids. It’s big for their social growth. And coaches need to be around kids.”
In the meantime, Alberghini said wife Mary reminds him there are “plenty of weeds to pull in the yard.”
“I worry about the coronavirus. Everyone should,” Alberghini said. “But I’m optimistic we will be OK.”
Capital Christian’s Guy Anderson
Anderson is 87 but looks much younger and remains a tireless soul, as his daughters like to remind that he has redefined aging.
Anderson won a Northern California-record 927 baseball games at Cordova before his stunning termination and feel-good rejuvenation at Capital Christian as an assistant the last four seasons. He and wife Karen keep active because that’s what they do — walks, bike riding and even yoga on TV.
“I miss baseball, badly,” Anderson said. “I have my fungo bat right here, ready to go. I’d go to a local park right now and offer to help any kids. But we have to all stay in. I get that. I worry for society. Humans need to socialize, and it’s good to get out and be active.”
Born in 1932, Anderson has seen and experienced plenty, but nothing like this. Family doctors told Anderson’s parents when he was 5 that he may not survive pneumonia, a lung infection.
“I barely made it,” Anderson said. “I never took living for granted.”
Growing up in Napa, Anderson remembers the fear of World War II reaching American soil.
“I remember in 1941 when President Franklin Roosevelt came on the radio to (announce the United States entry into the war after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor),” Anderson said. “People put black shades on their windows at night to make it dark in case bombers flew over. Cut all the lights. Make it dark. That was scary, but the country didn’t stop like it is now.”
He added, “My biggest disappointment now is for the kids we all coach. We don’t get to see them and they don’t get to see their buddies or play ball. It’s a huge loss for people everywhere without schools or sports.”
Anderson said he’s in “great shape” but reminds that, “I don’t have to walk across the freeway to prove that I won’t get hit. I stay home. None of us who are alive have had anything of this nature like this before, and right now, we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s mind boggling. But we will see that light.”
Cosumnes Oaks’ Dave Hoskins
Hoskins turns 74 in August, the heart of football conditioning drills season. He hopes the drills become reality amid concern that the coronavirus school shutdowns could last months.
In 53 years of regional coaching, Hoskins has had assistant and head-coaching stops at Christian Brothers, Valley, Elk Grove, Capital Christian and now Cosumnes Oaks. He was the first area coach to stress strength and conditioning on a year-round basis, starting in 1966 at CB, and he coached some of the greatest players on the greatest teams.
When he took my call, he offered a familiar jovial line of, “Davidson, I’m tall, dark and extremely handsome, unlike you!”
But the one-liners are not happening in person. His part-time teaching gigs at Elk Grove High and Sacramento City College are done online now, a challenge for a man who is not computer savvy. He still jots down line formations on a file-cabinet folder.
Hoskins urges people to stay active even with gyms shuttered to enforce social distancing.
“I’m a big believer in cardio workouts,” Hoskins said. “People can still do push-ups and sit-ups and jump rope. It’s old school, but it works. But I’m like everyone else. We all want to get back to normal.”
Hoskins knows football but he learns by the day about horses, a passion of wife Estella. But he won’t ride one. He might consider jumping rope, however.
Woodcreek’s Frank Negri
Negri will turn 86 on Thanksgiving, and he will forever joke that he used to coach the Pilgrims’ off-tackle plays.
He played in the Rose Bowl for Oregon State in the 1950s — “before steroids!!” he said — and was the founding football coach at Foothill, starting in 1965. Negri has 248 career victories and has in recent years worked as an assistant at Roseville and Rio Linda and is now a play-caller at Woodcreek.
Negri lives to laugh, but he also understands the seriousness of what’s going on.
“I’m not a doctor, but I’m very aware that this coronavirus can and has and will kill older people, and I’m alarmed by that,” Negri said. “It’s not the way any of us old-timers would want to go. I know a lot of people a lot younger than me are dying from this. It’s terrible. The news is all bad on TV. My daughters call me all the time to check on me. I can only imagine how younger people — the kids — are going bananas.”
Married since 1955 to his sweetheart Marleen, Negri keeps busy at home in the yard. He misses gym workouts with coaching buddies or former players, or on-campus workouts to show that he can still throw a football at his advanced age.
“I stay in a lot because I’m not a dumbass,” Negri said with a laugh. “I have plenty to do in the yard, pruning trees. I can’t wait to start coaching again. I have a hard time being away. I’m so darn effing old, but I still have a lot to give. I got into this like other coaches, to influence and help kids for the love of sports, and I love to be around kids and coaches, and that’ll happen again soon, I hope.”
Sheldon’s Mary Jo Truesdale
Mary Jo Truesdale started coaching softball in the 1970s, and she has headed the Sheldon program for 23 years, a stretch that includes winning eight Sac-Joaquin Section championships. She has won 759 career games. Truesdale is eager for No. 760 in a season that may not ever really start, with all high school sports seasons on hold.
She golfs and walks but would rather be coaching and mentoring.
“I miss all of it,” Truesdale said. “I worry about the well-being of my players, especially the seniors, who don’t have a next season to play in high school. I keep in track through Facebook, texting. But it’s not the same. We know there are things going on in life that are much bigger than softball, and that’s what we’re all learning. We just can’t wait to get back out into the dirt and play ball.”
Truesdale said she takes more naps than usual because she’s saddened by what’s happened in trying to adjust to a new normal.
“A lot of that comes from just not feeling that good with what’s going on in the world, missing the kids, missing life as it was,” she said. “I know this will pass but it will leave some definite scars. Being my age, of that over-65 group, and people reaching out to comfort or help, it’s comforting.
“We’re so used to living our lives very fast, moving all the time — school, practices, games. The uncertainty of how many people have the virus adds to the stress, and the hardest part is being patient.”
This story was originally published March 29, 2020 at 4:00 AM.