Hard Lessons on Winning and Losing From Northgate High

By: Kevin Nelson

Everybody loves a winner. Winners get gold medals draped around their neck. They earn scholarships and the entire school turns out for rallies in their honor. Winners get their picture in the paper and hear cheers and receive "Way to go!" back slaps from total strangers. Winners have that indefinable something -- whatever it is, a piece of stardust, lightning in a bottle -- and everybody else wants it.

But losers? Ah, who needs them anyway? All losers hear are snickers and wisecracks. They hang their head after a game, thinking about all the things they did wrong and could have done different. Nobody wants what they have. Tortured by doubts, they pace the floor at night wondering how to turn things around and grab some of that stardust for themselves.

Ted Tellian, head coach of the Northgate High Bronco football team, knows both sides of it -- winning and losing, although lately, it is true, he has been known mainly for losing. His Broncos lost 23 straight games until opening this season with a 35-14 win over San Lorenzo that ended three years of frustration for the Walnut Creek school and its passionate, prideful coach.

"This is my 26th year of coaching and teaching," Tellian said in an interview with EastBaySports.Com, "and my 21st year at Northgate. I became head coach in 1989 and before that I was an assistant coach for fifteen years. We have a lot of passion, pride and respect at this school. I eat, sleep and breathe cardinal and gold. Nobody likes to be in the limelight when they're losing. But I didn't bail. I stuck. And my kids never quit."

Losing hurts, and a 23-game losing streak hurts a lot. "Nobody coaches to lose," as Tellian says. But he learned a lifetime of lessons during his team's ordeal, and what he learned may be useful to other coaches, players, parents and the followers of teams whose fortunes may rise, and fall, and perhaps rise again over the course of the 2000 season.

Earlier in Tellian's coaching career he was a red-hot about winning. Coaching for him was all about winning games, all about satisfying his own ego. He sees this attitude among youth league coaches --"weekend warriors," he calls them -- who push their players too hard and squeeze all the fun out of soccer or football or Little League or whatever sport they're engaged in.

Tellian admits that he has made "lots and lots of mistakes" as a coach. Being too tough, too intolerant. But also for not keeping two eyes on each of his players -- "one for him as an individual and one for him as a player." Coaches -- and parents too --can focus too much on win-loss records and lose track of the child underneath the jersey and those big pads.

Tellian, 49, teaches biology at Northgate in addition to his coaching duties. Like many coaches who split time between coaching and the classroom, he sees himself as an educator whose teaching extends onto the football field. And for much of his coaching career, he's been a winner. Northgate was an East Bay prep football powerhouse for much of the past decade. In a three-year span in the early nineties, the Broncos only lost two games. In 1995 the Broncos went 12-1 and nearly won the North Coast 2-A Section championship. Riding high with success, Tellian thought he'd never get bucked off. He thought he'd keep winning, keep getting results from his time-proven methods. Boy, was he wrong.      

When the Bronco program started losing, and losing, and losing, it was particularly frustrating for Tellian and his staff because they weren't doing anything different from when they were winning championships. "We didn't become stupid overnight," said Tellian. "The kids kept working hard. The coaches kept working hard. But no matter how much effort we all gave, it wasn't enough. It was very difficult. The school and the community were embarrassed, and all the critics came out of the woodwork. People have to blame somebody, so let's blame the coach."

In the depths of the losing streak, much of what Tellian did -- as coach and motivator -- came under sharp, critical review. In a preseason parents' meeting this year, one father of a Bronco player asked, "Are you going to be competitive this year?"  Tellian bristled. "We're competitive every year," he replied. "You never saw a Northgate kid quit. Ever. We may not have won games, but we always competed." One of the truisms Tellian discovered was that you can be competitive, you can work your tail off--and you can still lose.

Northgate was compared, unfavorably, with De La Salle in neighboring Concord. Articles appeared about the four Bronco players who, from their freshman to senior years at the school, never played in a winning game. But the constant drumroll of negatives produced an unexpected dividend--for the beseiged coach as well as his outmanned players. "I changed my focus from winning and losing to teaching," said Tellian. "I found ways for us to measure success other than wins and losses. We just tried to get better every week we played."

Last season, against traditional rival Ygnacio Valley, Northgate knew it stood little chance of pulling off an upset. So Tellian's approach was to focus his defensive unit on shutting down two running plays that Ygnacio Valley did well and that no one had stopped all year long. "No one had stopped those plays, and we did," said Tellian. "We lost the game, but we made them beat us in a different way.

Motivating a winning team isn't hard. But motivating a team on a losing streak -- keeping spirits up, keeping everyone together -- may be the biggest challenge a coach ever faces. However much he learned during the streak,

Tellian is glad that that challenge is over.

This year's Northgate roster includes talented players such as Quarterback Tom Nelson, Running Back Nick Smith, Wide Receiver Dutch Lawson, Linebacker Zach Bresinger, Running Back-Linebacker Mike Chapman, and Defensive Lineman Curran Commerford. If this team accomplishes nothing else this season, it can take pride in one thing: it buried the streak.

After the Broncos beat San Lorenzo September 8 Tellian got calls from around the Bay Area from people who had heard about Northgate's plight and wanted to express their support. Some of the happiest calls came from former Northgate football players, all of whom had suffered right along with their coach during the darkest days of the streak. Though now graduates, they still could share in the joy that the school and community were feeling. "We did it!" they told Tellian. "We did it!" Indeed, they did. For one day, at least, they were all winners.