Promises Add Up as Aliso Niguel Opening Nears : Priority Is to Finish Facilities, Not Finish First

ALISO VIEJO —  Aliso Niguel High School’s principal, Denise Danne, promises a state-of-the-art experience for students who attend the fledging school this fall. She also has grand intentions for its athletic programs.

She promises on-campus coaches. She promises winning. She promises she’ll do everything in her power to make Aliso Niguel No. 1 in the hearts of students, community and scoreboards.

What she can’t promise is that the athletic facilities will be completed on time. She can’t promise it will be smooth going. She can’t promise there won’t be some burdens to bear in this first year while contractors put the finishing touches on a huge gymnasium complex.

The football field won’t be used until August, 1994. The aquatic center, the product of a $1.5-million private donation, and gymnasium are running about two months behind schedule. So are the baseball and softball fields.

The school won’t be a $50-million white elephant, but as a first-year athletic institution, students, coaches and boosters must make some sacrifices in exchange for being first. And that shouldn’t be confused with finishing first.

That’s because new schools struggle. They have smaller student populations and younger players. Available facilities are a problem and there are unforeseen obstacles because it’s a new experience for everyone. Aliso Niguel is no different.

Aliso Niguel’s Sept. 9 opening will impact two schools--Dana Hills (current enrollment 2,543), which will lose more than 500 students, and Capistrano Valley (2,687), which also will lose about 500. Aliso Niguel is projected to open with 1,400 students, about 450 of them juniors, according to Tom Anthony, director of secondary education for the Capistrano Unified School District.

It hasn’t helped that Danne was hired late, on March 1. Football Coach Joe Wood was hired March 25 and the athletic director, Curt Westling, was named last Friday.

“I think we’re behind schedule,” Anthony said, with an explanation. “With the financial crisis we’re in, we weren’t able to hire (Danne) a year ahead of time like she should have been. It has put us on the fast track.”

A very fast track. Outside of football, start-up equipment for the fall sports--tennis (nets, for example), water polo (cages, balls), cross-country--has not yet been ordered. Neither has anything for the winter and spring sports. That leaves very little lead time for the supplier.

“A month ago, I met with the vendor,” Anthony said. “We’re cutting it close (for fall), but he’s going to take care of us.”

Keep your fingers crossed all the uniforms don’t come back misspelled Alisa Niguel or Wolferines. It happens, you know.

Danne, hired after a nationwide search, is a former assistant high school principal at Santa Monica and Culver City, where she also was an athletic administrator. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in French language and literature at UCLA during the John Wooden years, and at Pepperdine she got a master’s in school administration and a doctorate in institutional management. She was employed by UCLA as an athletic tutor and even schooled Jimmy Connors. She’s a mover and shaker, as well--she is head of the committee for legislative action for the Assn. of California School Administrators and lobbies in Sacramento on important school issues.

Danne’s fingerprints will be on every hiring decision, from custodian to cafeteria manager to assistant principal. She calls it “my school” and wants to create the best ever. That means hiring the best people, having the best facilities, hoping for the best always.

She said all the coaching positions will be filled by the week of June 21, and that she could have used an athletic director’s help earlier in the campaign.

“I am being positively swamped by people to coach at my school,” she said. “People who want to be paid and people who don’t want to be paid. They just want to get in on it because it’s exciting to start a new school and get the tradition going.”

For most, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Wood says this will be his last coaching job.

THE MAN, THE MISSION

One of the first hires Danne made is also the most visible.

Wood, 43, was named the school’s first head football coach. He was the defensive coordinator at Capistrano Valley High School the last six years, and before that, he went 5-4 and 6-3 as a head coach at Layton (Utah) High, a program that had not had a winning record in its previous seven seasons.

As if he doesn’t have enough on his mind--trying to find uniforms and opponents, coaches and boosters--his wife, Annalee, is expecting their first child in the next three weeks.

That deadline doesn’t bother him, though.

“If it was a varsity program (due in three weeks), I might be under some stress,” Wood said. “It’s an exciting time for me, obviously.”

Wood isn’t sure how far he can stretch his budget, and he’s even less sure about where the team will practice and play in the fall. The Wolverines’ first home game won’t be a true home game, but will be played at another high school within the district.

“In terms of fields, we’ll probably be practicing at some park and playing games at Capo Valley, Dana Hills and wherever,” Wood said. “I’m hoping I’ll at least have my teaching facility done, which is the weight room.”

Not likely. The 35-foot by 75-foot weight room, which is part of the gymnasium complex, isn’t expected to be finished until after the start of school, according to designer David Hansen of PJHM Architects. Even if there is a push to complete it by September, it won’t be available for use during the summer.

“There’s going to be a learning process along with this,” Wood said. “Something is going to come up that we didn’t anticipate, but when you don’t have your own athletic facilities, you’re like on an island a little bit and you don’t have a home base and it takes extra effort by the students and coaching staff.”

Players also must be content to play a non-varsity schedule, and they must be content to read about their exploits in the school newspaper--if there is a school newspaper. Football is a game of guts and glory, but at Aliso Niguel, it will just be a game of guts. The media doesn’t clamor toward junior varsity programs.

Two weeks ago, after the mascot selection, Danne happened to be in Michigan, where she gathered Wolverine paraphernalia. It was a trip worth making, but it didn’t help Wood, who said his time has been spent trying “to get the people doing the hiring focused on hiring.”

With spring practice at most schools scheduled to begin May 24, Wood has only one person on his coaching staff--Westling. He has a list of 13 other potential coaches, but doesn’t know if there are teaching positions available for the three from outside the district.

Danne interviewed more than 100 transfer requests from within the district last week.

Because this has been a slow-going process, Wood is approaching his task unlike any other coaching position he has held.

“We (are likely going to) have a lot of experienced, gung-ho coaches,” Wood said. “But we’re going to have to take a step back and build a foundation. We can set the foundation and work on the fundamentals, but in terms of ‘win, win, win,’ it’s going to be very difficult. Working on Saturdays and working late (in the evening), there will be none of that. We’re working with young kids, just teaching them the game. It’s going to be a slow process. . . .”

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

When the Wolverines take the football field, they won’t get pounded. At least, they won’t get pounded by varsity teams. Wood has made it clear to administrators that he doesn’t want the football program playing a varsity schedule in its first season.

“We’ll be working with a lot of sophomores--very few juniors--and I’m hoping that when we go into a league, it’s the Pacific Coast League because the caliber of football there is such that we possibly could compete,” Wood said. “We are a long way from competing at a really high level. It will take us some major time.

“Other sports might be in a position to (have a varsity program), but football is too big, too important. A state study came out, and it says, ‘So goes your football program, so goes the enthusiasm of your school.’ . . . There’s no reason to be foolish about it and go against people that will pound you right off the bat. Nobody has more desire toward winning than I do, but I’m not going to be stupid, either.”

The first season, the school will play a non-varsity free-lance football schedule. Freshman games won’t be hard to find, Wood said, but sophomore and junior varsity games will require a more creative tack with games Thursday, Saturday or Monday.

“In terms of trying to find a 10-game JV schedule, that’s tough,” he said. “We might pick up eight to 10 games, but they might come in a four- to five-week span.”

Scheduling in all sports is an area in which Mark Ochsner recommends haste. Ochsner is the athletic director at San Diego Rancho Bernardo, which opened three years ago with demographics almost identical to Aliso Niguel--about 1,450 students, 300 of them juniors from a predominantly affluent white-collar suburb--and already has won section championships in boys’ volleyball, girls’ basketball and girls’ swimming.

“We offered 21 (varsity) programs,” Ochsner said, “and if you’re not in a league and you want to offer those numbers of programs, they (at Aliso Niguel) need to be working on scheduling,” he said. “We were working on scheduling in January, and we were in a league. It’s tough to fit into schedules--lots of people have things set.”

When the Wolverines finally do join a league, there is another reason the Pacific Coast League is preferable. Students who will attend Aliso Niguel are coming from Capistrano Valley and and Dana Hills high schools--members of the South Coast League. It is considered desirable to keep former teammates away from each other in a battle between an established school and its newer counterpart until the new school gets up to speed.

Though Westling wants varsity teams in all sports but football in the first year, which sports will field varsity teams is unknown.

“It’s impossible to tell,” Danne said. “That won’t be possible until the coaches see what kind of talent they have.”

More than 30% of the high school students in the district have the choice of where they will attend, which creates an environment for recruiting. Danne says she has been recruiting students in an effort to fill her classrooms and help downsize the classes at Capistrano Valley and Dana Hills.

“It’s a good thing,” she said. “Kids coming to the new school positively impact the numbers of other schools--all schools want smaller class sizes.

“(The principals of Aliso Niguel, Capistrano Valley and Dana Hills) don’t think about ‘Don’t take our star athlete’--we’re educating kids. We have an agreement that the kids should have a choice.”

If the choice is to be an athletic pioneer at the new school, there could be some bumpy roads ahead.

Aliso Niguel Growth Chart Facility: Two softball/baseball fields Comment: Big push for completion Project completion date*: September Facility: Two soccer/P.E. play fields Comment: Big push for completion Project completion date*: September Facility: Gymnasium with three basketball courts Comment: Locker facilities might be accelerated Project completion date*: Between September and January Facility: Pool, 25 meters x 25 yards Comment: Diving area; 6’7” deep for water polo Project completion date*: Between September and January Facility: Two baseball fields Comment: Potential for bleachers Project completion date*: Between September and January Facility: Football field Comment: Won’t be used until August, ‘94** Project completion date*: January Facility: Track and field Comment: Athletes will have to keep off the grass Project completion date*: January Facility: Six tennis courts Comment: Wired, but no lights at this time Project completion date*: September Facility: Paved play courts Comment: Seven exterior P.E. basketball/volleyball courts Project completion date*: September Sources: * designer David Hansen of PJHM Architects of San Clemente; ** Tom Anthony, school district director of secondary education.

Breakdown of the football, track and field facility

Item Comment Bleachers Fixed aluminum Seating Home 1,937, Visitor 638 Facilities Concession, restrooms each side Communications Hard-wired for PA, coaches Track surface Decomposed granite dust mix Lighting Complete, metal halide luminaries