HIGH SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT STARR BUCKS TREND WHEN IT COMES TO PLANNING.Byline: KEVIN MODESTI Welcome to the place that Troy Starr, the Taft High School football coach, calls ``my office.'' Would you like room for cream in your grande decaf de·caf n. Informal Decaffeinated coffee. de  caf adj. iced Caffe Americano?
You never know whom you'll run into at the neighborhood Starbucks. In the coffee house wedged between the hairstylist and the pharmacy in the Ralphs shopping center shopping center, a concentration of retail, service, and entertainment enterprises designed to serve the surrounding region. The modern shopping center differs from its antecedents—bazaars and marketplaces—in that the shops are usually amalgamated into at Ventura Boulevard Ventura Boulevard is one of the primary east-west thouroughfares in the San Fernando Valley; as it was originally a part of the El Camino Real (the trail between Spanish missions), Ventura Boulevard is the oldest route in the San Fernando Valley. It was also U.S. and Winnetka Avenue in Woodland Hills, I've spotted Alec Baldwin (just sitting alone at a tiny table near the window, reading what must have been a script), Gabe Kapler Over his broadcast career, Sunderland has covered almost every major sport played in Southern California. (good to hear his voice after the rough treatment by the Lakers). But none of them sparked my curiosity quite as much as that football coach hunched over the square table between the napkin and straw dispensers and the coffeemaker cof·fee·mak·er also coffee maker n. An apparatus used to brew coffee. shelves, a venti cup of house blend House Blend (2002) was a pilot for an American Television Series written by Anne Flett-Giordano and Chuck Ranberg and directed by John Whitesell. It was made by Paramount Network Television Productions. It first aired on May 1, 2002. at his left hand, a mechanical pencil A mechanical pencil, lead pencil or clicky pencil (usually called a propelling pencil in British English; other names include clutch pencil, or Pacer and a practice schedule at his right. Football and Frappuccinos, now that's a strange blend. ``It is kind of a unique place,'' Starr said across his usual table a little before 8 a.m. on a recent Monday as game-planned for Friday night's season opener at Crenshaw cren·shaw also cran·shaw n. A variety of winter melon (Cucumis melo var. inodorus) having a greenish-yellow rind and sweet, usually salmon-pink flesh. [Origin unknown.] High. ``But I'm an early-morning person, so it's perfect for me.'' It's hard to picture Bear Bryant drawing up plays at Starbucks, even if there'd been Starbucks back then. And it's one thing to remember John McKay holding court over cocktails with Sinatra in the air at Julies, but something else to imagine him sipping a doppio espresso while the new Dylan plays in the background. The typical football coach prefers to rev his mental machinery in an office with all the charm and fragrance of a bomb shelter, double locks on the door and an armed sentry patrolling outside because you never know when a rival team's spies might try to steal his off-tackle plays. Starr, the intense and sometimes controversial chief of one of Los Angeles' top football programs, fits the coaching stereotypes in a lot of ways. His preference for doing much of his planning and plotting among the yuppies munching banana loaf at Starbucks is not one of them. He begins practically every work day at this Starbucks, five minutes from his Woodland Hills home and across the street from Taft, sometimes arriving at dawn and not leaving until a couple of hours -- and a couple of ventis -- later. ``I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. , I just think the atmosphere (suits me),'' Starr said, sitting beneath a poster advertising some tangerine tangerine: see orange. tangerine Small, thin-skinned variety of the mandarin orange species (Citrus reticulata deliciosa) of the rue family (citrus family). concoction. ``A lot of people come to Starbucks to study. I just happen to come here to do my football stuff.'' The $1,000-a-year habit (as he calculates it) started in 1999, the year after Starr led Taft to the City championship. Starr and an assistant coach would meet over coffee to go over the practice schedule. He began to see the advantage of hiding in plain sight. Few other customers seem to recognize him at Starbucks, and there are no phone calls and knocks on the door. ``People can be productive in different ways,'' Starr said. ``Whether it's a quiet office or a Starbucks, everybody's a little different.'' Don't let the Starrbucks routine give the impression that he's less than committed to his football. The Crenshaw game is a rematch of December's City Section championship game, a 20-14 Crenshaw victory at the Coliseum, and Starr admits to a certain anxiety. The Taft offense features quarterback Exavier Johnson and running back Malcolm Smith, brother of Taft graduate and USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. receiver Steve Smith. The key to Taft's season, Starr believes, will be what he can get out of lesser players. With that in mind, unshaven and dressed in a gray T-shirt and gold basketball shorts, Starr sits with a legal pad and a manila folder in which the top sheet is a carefully handwritten hand·write tr.v. hand·wrote , hand·writ·ten , hand·writ·ing, hand·writes To write by hand. [Back-formation from handwritten.] Adj. 1. practice schedule for the afternoon. His playbooks are in his Toyota Camry. The day's theme is written at the top of the practice script: ``Tempo.'' It begins: ``4:00-4:10 -- Agility.'' ``We're limited by time,'' Starr said, noting a difference from pro and college football. ``We've got school buses that roll (at a certain time). We can't stay after. It comes down to how efficient we can be.'' He follows principles of preparation that he picked up while playing linebacker in the early 1980s for head coach Ken Wable at Mount Union College History and profile Mount Union was founded in 1846 by Orville Nelson Hartshorn as "a place where men and women could be educated with equal opportunity, science would parallel the humanities and there would be no distinction due to race, color or sex. , not far from Canton, Ohio. Wable's proteges include Dom Capers, the former Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans head coach. ``I want perfection in myself,'' Starr said. ``In our last 50 games, we've lost five. All five are probably my fault. I mean, we've had the talent.'' In the December game against Crenshaw, Taft was trailing by six when it drove to the 16-yard line in the final minutes. Johnson tried a pass into the end zone against triple coverage and had it intercepted; there went the Toreadors' last best chance. ``I don't regret the play call,'' Starr said. ``I do regret not reminding (the quarterback), `It's first down, you can throw it away (if nobody's open).''' Next time, presumably pre·sum·a·ble adj. That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. , Starr will be more alert. Or what's all that caffeine for? ``Good coaches make (play calls) during the week,'' he said. ``You have to prepare for all those big calls.'' Starr barely paused. What he said next sounded perfectly natural to him. ``They're made here at Starbucks,'' he said. heymodesti(AT_SIGN)aol.com (818) 713-3616 CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- color) Taft High football coach Troy Starr usually plans his strategies at a nearby Starbucks. Tina Burch/Staff Photographer (2) Troy Starr and Taft High will play City champion Crenshaw High on Friday night. Daily News |
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