If you've never heard of him, he has coached LB Poly to 18 Track Championships. He was also instrumental in the development of numerous NFL players as an assistant coach for the LB Poly football team. With Antonio Pierce taking over as LB Poly football coach, this will be an interesting transition period for the athletics program at Poly.

http://www.presstelegram.com/social-affairs/20140506/long-beach-polys-don-norford-most-successful-coach-in-california-high-school-sports-to-retire

LONG BEACH >> The year was 1958, and there was a track meet taking place on the dusty oval circuit at Long Beach Poly. There were hundreds of fans in the stands cheering on several All-American talents, with local greats like Dee Andrews and Willie Brown blazing past the competition.

But the screaming fans weren’t the only spectators: Beyond the far side of the track, peeking through the branches of a mulberry bush, was Roosevelt Elementary School student Don Norford, who had hopped the fence to watch his heroes slay the competition.

“All I wanted was to be a part of it,” he says now, with his trademark easy, wide smile.

He has, in fact, become much more than just a part of it. Norford would run for Poly, graduate in 1964, and then return to make his mark on his alma mater. After 38 years of coaching with the Jackrabbits, Norford, 68, says he will retire after this track season, making him the third prominent Poly coach to step down this school year.

Norford leaves behind an unprecedented record of success.

As head track coach, Norford won 24 CIF Southern Section championships and 18 California State championships, both records. Norford’s 18 state titles are more than any other high school in California can claim. He’s also been an assistant coach on 10 of the Jackrabbits’ 19 CIF football titles and tutored more high school gridiron players who went pro than any other prep coach in the sport’s history.

Simply put, Norford is the most successful high school coach California has ever seen.

Asked to compare other coaches’ success to Norford’s, Cal Hi Sports Editor (and California preps historian) Mark Tennis can’t. “None are close,” he says.

He points out that Disney is making a movie about cross-country coach Jim White, who won nine state titles and who’s being played by Kevin Costner.

“Who is going to play Norford in his movie?” Tennis asks. “He’s as much of a legend as anybody.”

A GRIDIRON GREAT

Norford began coaching Pop Warner football in Long Beach in the early 1970s and in 1976 was hired on campus at Poly as an assistant coach to Gene Noji. Over the past 38 years, he has been a position coach for every different grouping on the field and has seen 45 former Jackrabbits move on to the NFL. His reputation for speed training brought non-Poly pros like Jason Taylor and TJ Housmanzadeh to the Jackrabbits’ campus.

In 1996, the NFL honored Norford by naming him their High School Coach of the Year. It was an overwhelming experience for the coach. Norford and his wife, Carol, are famously humble: They bought a house on Easy Avenue less than 3 miles from Poly in 1975, and Norford still lives there to this day (Carol died in 2003).

“We were sitting down at the banquet, and it was gold everything. Gold plate, gold cups, everything,” recalls Norford. “And me and my wife looked at each other and were like, ‘Oh wow, we’re royalty!’ ”

The honor came with a $5,000 check. Norford cashed it and immediately donated the funds to the school.

Mark Carrier, the NFL’s Rookie of the Year in 1990 and currently a coach with the Cincinnati Bengals, said in an interview for a documentary about Norford, “I owe that man a lot. Don came into my life right when I needed it. He was a father figure and he was a disciplinarian. He taught me how to succeed.”

Willie McGinest, a three-time Super Bowl champ with the Patriots, adds: “Don really taught me how to play—he taught me how to be relentless on the field and never stop working. He’ll never take the credit, though.”

TEARING UP THE TRACK

Norford’s influence on the football field has been indelible, to be sure, but it’s on the track that he’s truly cemented his legacy. He was hired as the head coach of both boys and girls track teams in 1989. At that point, the Jackrabbits had only won one Moore League title in the previous eight years and hadn’t won the league with the girls team in seven tries.

It was important to Norford for his teams to travel and gain exposure, but in that first year, he was learning as much as they were.

“We had an invitational in Oakland, and it was wild,” he remembers. “We just piled ’em all into three old vans, stayed at this seedy hotel. It was a crack up.”

This year, the Jackrabbits are a little more experienced at traversing the country. They have a travel agent, and just a few weeks ago they won their fourth straight national championship in the 4x100 relay at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia.

In the intervening 25 years, the Jackrabbits have rewritten the history books in California. The Poly girls track team has won 13 state titles, more than the second-, third- and fourth-best teams in state history combined (Berkeley High has the second most with five).

Poly holds the national records in the 4x100 and 4x400 relays, and Poly runners have been crowned world champions so many times at the Penn Relays that there are a few Penn Wheels—the most coveted prize in high school track—that are still in their original boxes in a storage closet at Poly.

What really sets Norford apart, however, isn’t just his success—it’s that he really doesn’t care about the awards or trophies.

‘PAPA DON’

Several years ago, someone broke into the Norfords’ house on Easy Avenue and stole several of his CIF rings. A friend offered to help replace them, but Norford brushed the offer aside. “They’re not why we’re doing this,” he says.

It’s difficult not to discuss hardware when summing up Norford’s career, but it isn’t what he wants to talk about. “The most important thing to me, the only important thing to me, is my relationship with the kids,” he says. “We love to win, but if you aren’t helping the kids, what does a championship mean?”

Jerry Jaso coached on the Poly football team with Norford for two decades, and as head coach from 1985-2000 got to see how valuable Don and Carol’s personal touch was.

“He was everybody’s father, and so many guys needed that,” says Jaso. “He’s a stabilizing force, and a factor in a lot of people’s lives. The guys used to go to his house back in the old days, and Carol would feed them.”

Norford, for his part, credits his wife’s locally famous cooking for the family-like feel his teams had.

“She fed everybody in the whole neighborhood,” he says. “Sometimes I’d come home, and she was feeding people I didn’t even know.”

But the impact went well beyond full stomachs. Crystal Irving, Norford’s assistant head coach for the last several years at Poly, ran for Poly under Norford.

“He was a father to me, and Carol was a second mother to a lot of us,” Irving says. “Don helped me to get over a speech impediment while I was in high school, he gave me my self-confidence.”

The door to the house on Easy Avenue was always open—even for extended stays.

Darrell Rideaux ran for Norford in the late ’90s and was a four-year starting defensive back on the football team as well, before going on to play with USC and the Indianapolis Colts. While in high school, he was living with his single mother and sharing a garage with his two sisters.

“It wasn’t the most conducive educational environment for me at the time,” he remembers with a smile. “So I went to stay with coach Don and Carol for a while.”

He recalls when the Jackrabbits were planning a trip to Oakland — planes this time, not beat-up vans — and he arrived at the Norfords’ house with his “luggage.” In each hand, he held a plastic 99-cent Store grocery bag, overstuffed with socks, underwear and other clothes.

“I’d never been outside of Long Beach at the time,” he says. “I thought if I went to Orange County it would be like crossing the state line. They could’ve easily made fun of me and my bags, but they didn’t. They just gently explained that I needed something a little sturdier for the plane.”

Norford then helped Rideaux repack his belongings into the NFL duffel bag he’d been given with his National Coach of the Year award.

Rideaux says it’s those moments that will last with the generations of Long Beach children Norford has worked with.

“That’s why we call him ‘Papa Don’ and not just ‘coach Don,’ ” he says. “You entered that program as a boy or a girl, but you left as a young man or woman. That was a part of the culture.”

NORFORD FAMILY TREE

When you coach as long as Norford has, you create your own kind of family tree. Jade Lewis, a Long Beach State-signed senior on this year’s team, has a mother who ran for Norford and a grandmother who ran with him at Poly. More than half of the Jackrabbits’ coaching staff were coached by Norford in high school, and more than a dozen athletes on this year’s team had parents who ran for him.

“Oh yeah, I got roots,” Norford says with a deep chuckle.

Those connections are what he said will make it toughest for him when he retires.

“That will be hard,” he says. “That will be very hard, not seeing all those people every day.”

Nonetheless, Norford is not wavering in his decision to step down.

“It’s been 38 years of being here for six, seven days a week, for 12 to 14 hours a day,” he says.

Norford survived a health scare in 2008 but found himself unable to take the time off his doctor recommended.

“It’s time for me to slow down,” he says.

He also knows he’ll be leaving the team in good shape. In truth, Irving has been probably at least a co-head coach for the past few years. She hasn’t sought any additional credit, however.

“I’m not at Poly because of fame or money,” Irving said, echoing the comments her mentor has been making for nearly four decades.

Like Norford, Irving had offers to become the head coach of a college team but turned it down. “I truly believe this is where kids need the most help. I don’t need my name on anything.”

“She’s an amazing person,” says Norford. “And I know this program will be in good hands for a long time to come.”

A LASTING IMPACT

The mulberry bushes that once hid a young Don Norford are no longer lining Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Countless changes have taken place on the Long Beach Poly campus since then. Norford is like a walking time capsule, talking about the racial upheavals that took place at the school, the development of the football team into a powerhouse, the way girls sports have overtaken boys sports in bringing home championship hardware.

As a kid, all Norford wanted was to be a part of what he called “the Poly mystique.” Now, as he prepares for a retirement he plans on filling with charitable work and feeding the homeless, even he has to admit he has become perhaps the biggest part of continuing that mystique.

“I’m a humble man. I’ve tried to be a humble man my whole life,” he says. “When I look back at what we’ve accomplished, it’s astonishing. This school is known worldwide now. It’s an incredible blessing.”

Norford figured out how to make an impact at Poly—now the school will have to figure out how to replace the living legend. For some, the idea is impossible.

“Don Norford is synonymous with Poly,” says Rideaux. “The thought that he won’t be there anymore is very difficult to imagine—it’s actually very emotional for me, and for a lot of us. Don Norford is Long Beach Poly.”

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Long Beach is the spot where I serve my caine - Snoop