COACH FINDS ROLE OF TEACHER MAKES JOB WORTHWHILE\Multifaceted sports talents experience used at Royal High.

Byline: Bryan Winchell Special to the Daily News

Player, coach, official - Andy Silva has enjoyed the world of sports from many perspectives.

As a high school and junior college student in the 1960s, Silva lettered in four sports at Hollister (Calif.) High School and in six sports at Gavilan Junior College.

After his college years, Silva began a coaching career in 1972 that has encompassed football, track and field, softball and soccer. At present, he coaches the Royal High School girls soccer and softball teams for the last two years.

And each fall for the past eight years, Silva has worked as an official at high school football games in the Channel League.

"I don't think I'll ever burn out on sports," said Silva, 48. "It seems like I've always been doing something with sports. I just love being outdoors."

For Silva, it's not the winning that keeps him involved in athletics, though he's done plenty of that. He took the Simi Valley's boys' soccer team to the Southern Section championship twice in 13 years and won 10 of 13 league championships with them.

Instead, it's his role as a teacher that makes coaching so rewarding.

"I like being able to show kids how to do certain things," Silva said. "I just love to watch them take something I've showed them and do it on the field."

When Silva thinks back to his days as a letterman in baseball, track and field, football and basketball, he especially remembers the passion of his track and field coach, Andy Hardin.

"I tell my athletes if you go out of here saying, 'I wish I would have . . .', I'll kick you in the butt," Silva said. "You only go through high school once. People later on always remember high school so you always want to give yourself the chance to do the best you can do in high school."

In addition to coaching and officiating, Silva has been involved this year in organizing six tournaments at Royal, and he just completed a softball camp for young athletes. He also attends clinics around the country on both soccer and softball.

And in his spare time, Silva enjoys trout fishing in the Eastern Sierras with his two sons, Scott, 21, and Danny, 17.

"Andy is really selfless," said Royal athletic director Terry Dobbins, who has worked with Silva for over 10 years as athletic director at Simi Valley and Royal. "He volunteers for everything. And no matter how trying times are, he can always wade through the mess."

When Dobbins and Silva were at Simi Valley together, Silva was running a Christmas soccer tournament. The fields were damp with rain, so Silva had a helicopter come in to try and dry them up.

"All it really did was move the mud around a bit," Dobbins said, laughing. "But that's Andy. He thinks grandiose schemes. "

One of Silva's latest challenges was making the adjustment from longtime boys' coach in soccer and football to girls' coach in soccer and softball.

"Coaching boys and girls is like night and day," Silva said. "It's not that the girls aren't good, it's just that the game is a little slower paced.

"It's been a great experience and I'm learning how to work with them more every day," he continued. "I love seeing the light bulbs go off in their head when they learn something. That's very gratifying to me."

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Photo Andy Silva Coaches Royal girls teams