PLACENTIA – He was going to become something important in life, probably an attorney.
But then the phone rang and Mike Marrujo went from searching for his career to discovering his purpose, discovering it in the most innocuous of places:
On a football field, one full of high school freshmen.
Now, 40-something years later, it’s hard to believe Marrujo could have done anything more important than this.
“I always tell my young guys,” he says today, smiling, “‘Any punk can coach for five years.’”
Yeah, the phone rang. It was Marrujo’s calling calling.
Thankfully, he answered. Thankfully, so many of them answered and continue to answer, the staggeringly high level of high school sports being played in Orange County is sustained in no small measure by coaches like Marrujo, coaches who have given so much of themselves for the sake of someone else’s children.
We’re blessed around here, folks, and this column is meant to stand as a reminder of just how blessed, this brief, 800-word pause today to express our gratitude.
“You don’t realize what’s involved in this job until you’re actually doing it,” says Marrujo, who is entering his 34th season as Valencia High’s football coach. “It’s unlike anything else you can do in any other profession. It’s just different, and so many of us love it.”
So they think nothing of sweating for relative cents, of giving up entire Saturdays for film breakdown, of rising at 5:30 a.m. each Sunday to game-plan for another three hours, of ordering takeout every Monday after practice and toiling until midnight approaches.
When they aren’t coaching, they’re scheming. When they aren’t scheming, they’re scouting. When they aren’t scouting, they’re worrying.
And, all the while, they’re teaching. So many of them. At so many schools. In so many sports.
“Teaching is important to me, but I’ll be honest with you,” Marrujo, 63, says. “I never would have gone into teaching just to teach. I was a football coach and this is what I wanted to do. Now, a big part of coaching is teaching. But it goes beyond that, too.”
He was a senior at Long Beach State, studying history and thinking about law school when one of his former coaches called. Warren Simmons asked if Marrujo would help with the freshmen team at his old school, Pius X High in Downey.
At that moment, he never had considered the possibility of coaching as a career. Then the practices began.
“When I got over there, I realized I really enjoyed this,” Marrujo says. “I enjoyed the competition and the camaraderie with the coaches. It’s one of those things that kind of grew on me, I guess.”
He was the varsity head coach at Pius X by age 26, accepting the job only because the school’s principal informed him that, if he didn’t take it, he would need to be relieved of his teaching position, too.
Marrujo taught full-time, coached football and baseball, spent all summer working with the Pius X athletes and was paid an annual salary of $4,250.
Of course, back then, his monthly car payment was $52 and his apartment cost less than $100 a month.
“I remember getting a gas bill one time,” Marrujo says, “that was $1.18.”
But then he met Luci, the cheerleading advisor at Pius X, the woman who would become his wife of now 35 years and give him two daughters, Kara and Kelsey.
Marrujo knew he needed a higher paying, public school job. In late-summer of 1981, he started at Valencia as football coach and history teacher. In late-summer of 2014, he’s still committed to doing both jobs.
That, however, isn’t to suggest everything’s the same.
“If you would have told me 30 years ago that kids would have green hair and be wearing earrings – the boys, I mean – I never would have believed you,” Marrujo says, smiling again. “I always tell the kids, ‘When I was young, only pirates wore earrings.’”
The kids. How many kids do these coaches impact? How many lives do they influence? How about a coach who has been at this nonstop for four decades?
Marrujo is a blessing, yes, but he understands about being blessed, as well. So he makes a point here to mention the loyalty of his assistant coaches, the backing of his principals over the years and the support of his school in general.
Marrujo stops his praising only when the equipment manager walks in to see why the lights are still on in the weight room. Bob Morgan has been at Valencia since the day Marrujo arrived.
He certainly has built a program here, one that won just a single game three years ago but has rebounded with consecutive eight-victory seasons.
But this column isn’t about wins and losses. It’s about ties, the ties that bind coaches like Marrujo to their schools, to their jobs, to their kids. No, to your kids.
“Honestly, I just go year-to-year,” he says when asked about the future. “Sometimes, believe me, it’s day-to-day.”
And Mike Marrujo smiles one last time, a man thankful for the call that changed his life on the day we’re thankful the world is short one lawyer.
Contact the writer: jmiller@ocregister.com
