George Mattias, Millennium Hall of Fame

Growing up on playgrounds, it didn’t take long for George Mattias

to figure out his destiny.

“I thing I remember most are my coaches, the guys I played for,” he

said. “I owe so much to them. They were real role models ... coaches were

the guys I looked up to the most, and I knew when I got out of (Whittier)

high school what I wanted to do, and that was teach and coach.”

Mattias, hugely popular with his athletes and coaching peers, is a

retired Orange Coast College football and tennis coach who started the

college’s club volleyball team in the early 1960s under Athletic Director

Wendell Pickens.

Mattias, whose specialty was coaching offensive linemen under OCC

football coaches Dick Tucker and Bill Workman, changed in midstream upon

accepting the OCC men’s head tennis coach position, doubling his

recruiting work load, yet leading the Pirates’ tennis teams to six

conference titles and a 124-30 conference record in 13 seasons.

“I knew how to coach football. I had to learn how to coach tennis,”

said Mattias, whose timing was impeccable in terms of landing at OCC,

which won its first JC national football championship the year he

arrived, 1963.

Born to coach, Mattias was well-versed in sports -- a two-way starter

at end in football, which he played in high school, as well as Mt. San

Antonio College and UC Santa Barbara. Mattias’ Mt. SAC teams faced Orange

Coast in the Pirates’ first two years of football, 1948 and ’49. Mt. SAC

opened in 1946.

But Mattias, who played baseball in the summers, also competed in

basketball and track and field at Whittier High and Mt. SAC. When it was

time to attend UC Santa Barbara, in the days when the Gauchos had

football, Mattias added baseball to the spring list. “I thought, ‘What

the heck,’ track’s a lot more work than baseball,” said Mattias, an

infielder on the Gauchos’ 1952 conference championship team, and an

all-conference receiver in football.

When Uncle Sam called, Mattias was shipped off to the U.S. Army when

America was fighting in the Korean War. Mattias didn’t go overseas, but

he played service volleyball. Born in Long Beach, Mattias grew up playing

on the beaches of Southern California, and when the Army needed a setter

and hitter, he filled the role and helped the squad capture the National

Army Championship in 1954.

“That was good duty,” laughed Mattias, who was later approached by

Pickens to launch the Orange Coast club volleyball program.

“It really took off,” Mattias said. “Volleyball was starting to get

popular, and Pickens could see it coming.”

The club eventually dissolved, then Bob Wetzel took over the

officially sanctioned volleyball program and turned OCC into a state

power.

Mattias once turned down a tryout with the New York baseball Giants.

He was married and the team’s scout had mentioned something about sending

the young infielder to Oshkosh, Wis., with the pay as low as the infield

dirt.

“Let’s face it,” Mattias told the scout, “I don’t think I’m going to

make it to the big leagues, anyway.”

Mattias turned his attention to coaching after the service and became

head football coach at Santa Fe High, where a young Joe Gibbs was a star

before his career landed him in the Super Bowl as coach of the Washington

Redskins.

“(Gibbs) was the greatest player I ever coached,” said Mattias, Santa

Fe’s head man for seven years, before moving on to Brea Olinda for one

year, then to OCC.

“I owe my career at OCC to Dick Tucker,” Mattias said. “He’s really

the guy who saw something in me. Why he picked me, I’ll never know.”

Mattias, Tucker, Fred Owens and Dale Wanacott formed the entire

coaching staff in 1963, when the Pirates featured four JC All-Americans

and won the Junior Rose Bowl to clinch the national championship. “What a

year to come to Coast,” said Mattias.

Leading the way for the Pirates that year were quarterback Billy

White, Gary Carr, Mike Hunter, Gary Magner, Phil Spiller, Ron Paterno,

Greg Wojcik and Bob Haynes.

Considered a solid teacher of the game and its techniques, Mattias

always fine-tuned himself with the latest in football coaching methods

and treated everyone with respect and dignity.

Former USC center Brad Green (Estancia High), who played on OCC’s 1975

national championship team and earned team MVP honors the following

season, is one of numerous ex-linemen who place Mattias high on their

all-time list of best coaches.

“I never really learned how to pass block, or do anything like that,

until I got to Orange Coast,” Green said earlier this year. “George

Mattias was a great coach. He actually taught me the techniques of pass

blocking and that became one of the better things I did when I got to

USC. Those (USC) coaches taught me nothing new, nothing that I hadn’t

already learned from Coach Mattias.

“It was fun playing at USC, but the most fun I ever had was at Orange

Coast.”

Mattias, a 31-year football coaching veteran at OCC, helped Workman

adjust from high school to community college coaching in 1986, before

Mattias retired in 1993.

In January 1993, Mattias was named the winner of the Outstanding

Assistant Coach Award presented at the Stovall Clinic by the Orange

County Chapter of the National Football Foundation Hall of Famel.

One day, “out of the clear blue sky,” Mattias was asked to coach

tennis, when longtime OCC men’s coach Maurice Gerard retired. Mattias

played tennis and once filled in for Gerard when the latter took a

sabbatical, but Mattias was unsure at first if he could continue Gerard’s

winning tradition. Soon, players like Mike Fedderly (Corona del Mar) and

Jeff Tomei were showing up and the Pirates were on top.

“(Learning how to coach tennis) boiled down to one thing: Get good

players,” said Mattias, whose Pirates once captured the Southern

California regional title. Mattias was named the state’s Tennis Coach of

the Year in 1989, his final season.

Mattias, a Costa Mesa resident for 35 years, is a member of the Daily

Pilot Sports Hall of Fame, celebrating the millennium. He and his wife,

Barbara, have five sons and eight grandchildren.

“I’m into golf now,” said Mattias, who recently returned from Sun

Valley, Idaho, where he was visiting his oldest son, Mike.