LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE—George Hurley, the winningest coach in the history of Newbury Park High football, will retire in June after 39 years at the school. Hurley spent 19 seasons as varsity head coach and complied a 130-81-6 overall record. He retired from coaching after the 2007 season. JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers George Hurley doesn’t look like a man nearing the end of a successful career.

He looks like he’s just getting started.

Hurley walks across Panther Stadium with a football cradled in his right arm. About a hundred kids are playing two ragged games of soccer on the turf.

It’s the nicest day of the year, and Hurley, wearing a visor, cream-colored collared shirt and khakis, is enjoying every ray of sunshine.

At this particular moment it’s hard to imagine Hurley, who has spent the last 39 years at Newbury Park High as a teacher, coach, mentor, friend and everything in between, will retire at the end of the school year.

“This is the right time,” Hurley said. “It’s a good time to move on.”

For many at the school and in the community, his impending retirement will be felt. After all, the man has fewer enemies than Mister Rogers in his own neighborhood.

“George is a legend around these parts,” said assistant principal Richard Urias. “He has so much wisdom, and he’s got a positive attitude that’s infectious. It’s a big loss for us. He’s a big part of who we are here.”

A lifetime of teaching

Hurley will fondly remember coaching high school studentathletes.

“It’s about the kids you coach,” he said, “kids that I run into and a couple former players who keep in touch. But mostly it’s the day-today things. I got to see kids grow. You see them win games, lose games and try their best.”

Hurley, who started for three seasons on the offensive line at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, coached the Panther football team for 36 years, including 19 as head coach.

He stepped down after 2007 with a school-record 130 victories.

The coach accumulated six league championships, four section semifinals, two finals appearances and a section championship to cap a 14-0 season in 1993. In 1998, the NFL named Hurley the high school coach of the year, and he was invited to attend the Pro Bowl in Hawaii.

In addition to the 1993 squad, the 1978 team that went 3-6 also holds a special place in Hurley’s heart.

“What a great bunch of kids,” he said fondly. “They worked hard and got the most out of their potential.”

Hurley’s legacy continues with the assistants who remain.

Current head coach Gary Fabricius, who has spent 29 years at Newbury Park, worked side by side with Hurley as an offensive coordinator. The relationship was more like a creative collaboration between friends than a stuffy dictatorship.

“He gave me a lot of freedom to experiment with different things. It wasn’t so much, ‘This is what we do at Newbury Park. This is what we need to do,’” Fabricius said.

“He wasn’t looking for yesmen. He was looking for ideas.”

Many former players coach or have recently coached at NPHS, including Doug Dagan, Keith Smith, Tony Weak, Anthony Foli, John Losey, Brian Hisel, Joe Smigiel, Chris Soury, Ryan Hurley and Kevin Koenig.

Dagan, a varsity assistant head coach, played wide receiver and defensive back at NPHS in 1981 when Hurley coached the linemen.

Hurley gave Dagan, then 25, a chance to coach on the varsity staff as a defensive coordinator. Dagan, a former defensive back at Southern Oregon, never forgot that moment.

“As far as what I’ve accomplished and the things I’ve accomplished in coaching, I owe it all to him,” Dagan said.

“He won a lot of football games, but he was also a guy who wanted to teach life lessons along the way and teamwork and overcoming obstacles. Off the field, he likes to have fun. He has a great sense of humor. He has a lot of good one-liners.”

Changing the game

The numbers during the Hurley era are astounding.

Newbury Park’s offense under Hurley was more explosive than a pinball machine jacked up on Red Bull and Mountain Dew.

Fourteen of the top 15 individual passing seasons in NPHS history occurred under Hurley’s watch as head coach.

Quarterback Keith Smith threw for 4,244 yards in 1993, the second-highest total in the nation and highest yardage in California that season, according to school records.

Smith’s 9,971 yards passing in a career are third all-time in the Southern Section. Newbury Park slinger Chris Czernek’s 9,821 passing yards rank fourth on that list. Czernek holds the NPHS single-season record for passing yards with 4,360 in 1995.

Wide receiver Leodes Van Buren holds the section record for career receptions with 269.

“I had more fun playing in high school than playing in college at Arizona and playing in the CFL (Canadian Football League),” Smith said. “The most fun I ever had was playing with my buddies in Coach Hurley’s offense.

“He was letting us loose and letting us have fun and letting us be kids. It was like a pickup game of football in the streets, but with shoulder pads.”

The mat rat

A younger generation of Panthers might not know Hurley coached wrestling for 12 seasons. The 61-year-old, who spent the last three years as athletic coordinator, coached grapplers at Newbury Park from 1974-1985.

During his second and final season as head coach, Hurley led the wrestling team to second place at the state meet in 1985 at the Spanos Center in Stockton. No other Ventura County team has ever finished that high.

“What other sport can a kid who’s 5 feet tall and 100 pounds be a state champion?” Hurley said.

Dealing with ups and downs

Hurley is an upbeat, gregarious guy.

But the stress of the job got to him sometimes, even if nobody on the outside knew.

“He is one of those guys who, outwardly, he’d be okay,” Fabricius said. “He did hold a lot in. There were times I knew things bothered him.”

A difficult moment in Hurley’s life was the transfer of quarterback Rudy Carpenter to Westlake before the 2003 season.

“At Newbury Park, we’re a family. On the transfer, George probably felt a little bit betrayed,” Fabricius said.

“I’m not sure what the right word is. Hurt, maybe. Hurt manifests itself in anger. Men don’t say they’re hurt; they say, ‘I’m mad.’ But he was probably hurt by it more than anything.”

Smith said he went to get his ankle taped in the training room before a game against Buena. He found Hurley lying on a table with his eyes closed.

“I asked him, ‘Coach, you okay?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m just nervous about this game,’” Smith said. “I said, ‘Coach, don’t even worry. We’re going to win. Let’s have fun.’ He kind of laughed and had this look like, ‘Are you kidding me?’

“We won by two touchdowns, and the rest is history.”

Before the 1993 section semifinal at Bell Gardens, Newbury Park had a minor transportation fiasco before the game.

One bus was more than two hours late after getting lost and fighting through horrendous traffic. During the second quarter, Hurley fainted.

The team doctor shouted, “George is down!”

Dagan, immersed in the action, was confused.

“I thought, how was I going to replace ‘George the player,’” Dagan said. “Oh, he’s the coach. I was so into the game, I couldn’t figure out who I needed to sub in. He had passed out just from adrenaline and dehydration and lack of food and probably sleep.

“When we tell the story now, it was the night I almost killed our head coach. We laugh about it now because it all turned out okay.”

A family man

Sports is a part of the Hurley family tradition.

His son Ryan, 31, is a line coach with the Panther junior varsity squad. Eldest son Ethan, 38, is an offense coordinator at Cienega High in Tucson, Ariz.

Both played football for their father.

“There was never an awkward moment having Dad as coach,” Ryan Hurley said. “We never got special treatment, and it was never weird at home. If anything, it pushed me harder. I had to represent my father and his name and make him proud.”

George Hurley’s daughter, Erin Williamson, played soccer at NPHS.

The coach said he’s looking forward to watching grandson Shaydon Williamson play football in Panther black and gold. The youngster will be a Newbury Park freshman next year.

Shaydon’s younger brother Mason, a seventh-grader, is right behind him.

“He promotes family,” Fabricius said. “There are other things to life than football.”

A new chapter

With his final days at Newbury Park approaching, Hurley can’t sit still.

He fidgets at his desk. He’s looking for a stat sheet, then a former player’s baseball card tacked to the wall. He talks shop with a fellow coach who stops by his office.

What’s next for Hurley?

He plans on spending more time with his six grandchildren—and a seventh on the way.

The coach talks about teaching American football in Europe with George Contreras, the former Rio Mesa coach.

Or maybe he’ll mill around the Newbury Park sidelines on game day, dispensing advice to whoever will listen.

He could pick up golf or fishing, but he never had the patience or time to do them before.

Maybe he’ll travel the world. Maybe he’ll stay in Newbury Park.

He talks about writing a bucket list then crossing off every item or leaving it wide open. A life complete and incomplete at the same time.

For Hurley, the future’s wide open. And the past doesn’t look so bad, either.

“This was just about a good life’s work,” he said. “There’s nothing I’d rather have done than teach and coach.

“I have no regrets. Everything was perfect.”

Quotes on Hurley

“He wasn’t looking for yesmen. He was looking for ideas.” — Gary Fabricius

“The most fun I ever had was playing with my buddies in Coach Hurley’s offense. . . . It was like a pickup game of football in the streets, but with shoulder pads.”

— Keith Smith

“As far as what I’ve accomplished and the things I’ve accomplished in coaching, I owe it all to him.”

— Doug Dagan

“I had to represent my father and his name and make him proud.” — Ryan Hurley

“George is a legend around these parts.” — Richard Urias