Dean Juipe: Revitalized Stein takes Rams’ reins

Wednesday, May 14, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

HE REALLY thought he was done with coaching. It had been a great run -- as his 553 career victories attests -- yet when Joe Stein stepped down as head basketball coach at Western High School in 1994, he was all but certain that portion of his life was over.

His immediate focus was a back surgery that led to a second back surgery. Recovering, he took a job at Rancho High School last fall that put him in charge of physical education, health and driver's ed programs.

Basketball was not a priority.

But it is now.

"It's refreshing," he said this week, reflecting on replacing Tony Hopkins as the Rams' head coach. "It's going to turn out OK. I'll just get the kids together and we'll have some fun."

Stein, who turns 61 Friday, left Western in '94 after 15 seasons and 308 wins with the Warriors. He also left with a bad taste in his mouth.

"I'd had enough," he said. "I was totally burned out. I said goodbye and thought there was no way I'd ever coach again."

But when Rancho principal Ernie Jauregui asked Stein to replace Hopkins, Stein gave his OK.

"Ninety percent of coaching is off the field and Joe's committed to that part of it," Jauregui said. "He'll develop the structure we need if we're going to do our best for our kids."

With a reporter in front of him, Jauregui used the opportunity to issue a warning of sorts to Rancho's other coaches. "We may have some more changes to announce in a week or two," he said.

The school has three other prominent ex-coaches on its teaching staff, including Lanny Littlefield, Cary Mitchell and Rich Whitehead. It could be that Jauregui is trying to talk each of them into returning to the coaching fold.

"It's a graveyard for coaches around here," Stein said with a smirk. "But older coaches sometimes are worth their weight in gold."

One of Stein's greatest players, Western grad Prince Fowler, said he was happy to see Stein return to the game. Fowler spent Monday visiting with Stein at Rancho.

"It's about time he got back in it," said Fowler, who just completed his sophomore season as a guard on the Texas Christian University basketball team. "I always thought Coach Stein should be coaching."

Well, now he is again.

"I'm going to make an effort to turn things around here," Stein said. "What appealed to me is that this is an opportunity to work with people who really do care about the kids.

"The people who know me, know it's all about the kids. Wins and losses? Hell, when I first started it was different and I always wanted to win, but now that part of it doesn't mean anything."

He said he saw the Rams "five or six times" last season and is still getting to know his players. His first priority is getting his would-be seniors and juniors ACT and SAT tested.

"I'm not faulting anybody, because some coaches just don't know what's important," Stein said. "But none of the juniors (on the '97 Rams) have taken their tests. Not one. And yet anytime a college recruiter calls, the first thing he wants to know is how the kid stands academically.

"We'll get it to where all our juniors have taken their tests -- and passed their tests if at all possible."

Rancho, of course, has its challenges. While it has become a magnet school and its facilities have been upgraded, there's still a great deal of turnover among its students.

"I shouldn't say this, because it makes us look bad," Stein said. "But we're going to lose kids to the streets, to drugs, to gangs. We've got 57 percent Hispanic and 30 percent black, and the turnover rate is phenomenal. It's a sin that we have kids that drop out, but one thing I can do as a coach is to be strict about going to class.

"I'll have my players in a grade-check program right off the bat."

His players tend to get through school and many go on to play collegiately.

"When I was at Western, we put more (players) into college than the rest of the city combined," Stein said. "The players knew what they needed to do in the classroom."

Stylistically, Stein is notorious for his run-and-gun strategies that often turn a basketball game into a shootout. His 1990-91 Warriors, for example, averaged an astounding 103.1 points per game (in a 32-minute game).

In 33 years of coaching, Stein won 553 times. Many of those victories came during an earlier, six-year tenure at Rancho that peaked with a state championship in 1977.

Those were but distant memories as Stein retired at Western in '94.

"I couldn't walk," he said. "Honestly, I couldn't walk. So I had back surgery (to repair a degenerative disk that was pressing against nerves), but it didn't work. So I had it again."

Rehab -- "I had to learn to walk all over again," he said. -- kept him from teaching for two years. But he was feeling better last summer and took a teaching position at Rancho in part because of a long association with Jauregui.

After Hopkins was relieved of his coaching duties, Jauregui leaned on Stein again.

"He said, 'There's going to be a change and I want you to take over,'" Stein recounted. "I was a little surprised at first, but I went for it. The situation seemed to be right."