The Power Of Positive Coaching -- Happy Happy, Joy Joy, Hut Hut

LET ME TAKE YOU to my world. The locker room after a college football game.

First to Tallahassee, Fla., in early November of 1991. A contest modestly called "The Game of the Century." No. 1 Florida State versus No. 2 Miami.

Apparently, they don't get any bigger than this.

Miami has won the game because Florida State missed a last-second field goal. The Hurricanes are celebrating.

I'm standing in ankle-deep rubble trying to talk to Miami Coach Dennis Erickson. His players have torn the ceiling out of their locker room, even though it belongs to them for just this day. It's difficult trying to determine whether they're more proud of the destruction, or the victory.

The Big Time.

Now on to Portland, to old Civic Stadium, where last December the players of Pacific Lutheran University had just laid waste to Westminster College of Pennsylvania 50-20 to complete an undefeated season and win a national small-college championship. Quietly, they picked up adhesive tape off the floor and straightened chairs.

There had been no fingers stuck in the sky proclaiming them No. 1, even though they unquestionably were.

For Ted Riddall, an All-American linebacker from Yelm, there was as much sadness about the season's final game as there was joy in winning a championship. He cried in the locker room.

"I just knew how much I was going to miss these guys," he said softly. "For many of us, it was the last time we were going to be together."

Letters and phone calls of congratulation on winning the title poured in to PLU and its venerable coach, Forrest "Frosty" Westering. In his 22 years at the Tacoma school, Westering's teams had never had a losing season while winning three national championships and playing for three others.

"The note that meant the most to him," said Scott Westering, his son and offensive coordinator at PLU, "came from the janitor at Civic Stadium, who said in all his years there he'd never had any team leave a locker room in such good condition."

The Little Time.

PLU is a very different kind of college football team. Nice guys who finish first. Indeed, guys who finish first because they are nice.

I'VE REPORTED ON college football for more than 30 years and have never seen anything as consistently unorthodox and successful as PLU.

They practice less, hit less, groan less and even care less than any team in the land. But win more. Even though their 15-game win streak ended in the middle of this season with a last-second loss to Willamette, they have won 80 percent of their games over the past 20 years.

En route to the NAIA Division II title last season, the Lutes averaged 7.2 yards per play. Senior quarterback Marc Weekly, who played less than 70 percent of the time, threw 46 touchdown passes. His quarterback rating was twice that of Joe Montana's.

Although almost always smaller than the teams they play, the Lutes win because they have no fear of losing. They play with an abandon seldom seen in college football.

"It is the most amazing thing I've been around," said Jake Kupp, a great player for Jim Owens at the University of Washington in the early 1960s who then played for years in the NFL. His son, Craig, was a quarterback for PLU. "The players have an inner strength. They play for each other. The coaches don't motivate through fear."

In the maddening moments last month after they lost their first game in nearly two years, a time when most coaches cry and throw clipboards and yell at officials, the 66-year-old Coach Westering strode across the field with a warm smile on this face, congratulating the winners, telling them it was a privilege to have played against them.

And he meant it. PLU football is a mouthful of slogans and cliches. Westering's inch-thick playbook has no plays in it, just self-improvement tips: "When in doubt, do the friendly thing." "Doing the best is more important than being the best."

In today's finger-pointing, foul-mouthed society, they sound corny and out of date.

But they work at PLU in the '90s because of how hard Westering works. He lives, breathes and sweats every slogan. There is humility, not hypocrisy. Mostly, there is sincerity.

FORREST WESTERING, A big, broad, open-faced man, is a product of Midwest values. He coached high-school and college football in Iowa before getting a doctorate in education at the University of Northern Colorado. He is also a product of the Marine Corps and, most important, the Lutheran Church.

"The experience those kids have at PLU is truly unique," said Jim Lambright, the coach at the UW. "The program is nothing more than an extension of the man, Frosty Westering. And that is why it is successful."

Westering is possessed by his work at PLU. He has no hobbies, no other interests. When he isn't coaching PLU football, he is speaking about it. Not only his life but that of his family has been poured into the PLU experience. His focus on the development of the individual never seems to blur. His energy level for any age is astounding.

As for his days as a player in Iowa, Westering said, "I played on a lot of good teams, but it was all kick-in-the-butt coaching. Go out and win.

"I thought at the time, I'm going to coach the way I'd like to be coached, but never was. I just believe there is another way. You can care and have fun and still work hard. Look at our models today. They tell us, `You play, and then it's Miller time.' You have your fun when it's all over. Why not make it fun regardless?"

In a high-scoring game two years, he walked along the sidelines and said to a referee, "Boy, this is a just a great game."

The official said, "But Frosty, you're behind."

The coach said later, "You know, he just didn't understand. Both teams were playing well. You wanted to win, but it didn't matter if you gave it your best shot."

Westering has written about his coaching philosophy in "Make the Big Time Where You Are." The book seems to answer the question of why he hasn't chosen to coach at a higher level.

But his son, Scott, was at a higher level. Recruited out of high school in the mid-1970s by Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Washington, the big, 6-foot-4, 220-pound outside linebacker chose instead to go to UCLA. In his freshman class were Kenny Easley and Freeman McNeil.

"As it was for most kids in the 1970s, going to UCLA seemed like some kind of childhood dream," he said.

And Scott Westering lived the dream. He played as a freshman. He played against USC in the Coliseum with the Rose Bowl on the line. He was on track to be a starter the next season.

"I remember sitting in front of my locker after the USC game, and thinking, `Is this all there is to playing football at this level?' I knew right then that I needed more, that I needed to play with people who cared about each other."

A month later, he left UCLA and enrolled at PLU to play for his father. His first game for the Lutes was at Western Washington. The team stopped at a small church champ near Bellingham to have its pre-game meal.

"I was sitting in the bus with my game-face on," he said. "Guys were throwing rocks in the lake, somebody tipped over a canoe. I'm thinking, `These guys don't know what they're doing. They've got to focus. Get ready.' I mean, they're smiling, and at UCLA we never smiled before a game. I remember a coach saying, `We're going to war, and you don't take a smile to war.' "

His father smiled.

The Lutes then climbed all over Western, playing better than they ought to, better than his son could have imagined given their casual approach to preparation.

These days, Scott Westering still has the wild-eyed look of a competitor. Nobody plays harder on the golf course to win a bet. He wants to win. But then so does his father; they just don't see having fun and winning as mutually exclusive. Indeed, they see them as inseparable.

"You can cut my dad open," said his son "and he'll bleed the stuff he preaches. It's him. It's why it works."

THE FIRST DAY of football practice for most schools starts the same. Pads, helmets and jerseys are issued as players begin practicing what make them winners: blocking, tackling, passing, catching and running.

PLU starts practice on a beach on the Oregon Coast, holding hands, hugging, playing softball, building human pyramids in the ocean, bonding instead of belting. The things PLU believes makes it a winner.

Every coach I've been around would be worried what the other schools were doing. If UCLA had six practices in three days, Washington would. If Ohio State did, Michigan would. But the paranoia is missing as the PLU players step from their vans at Breakaway camp in Gearhart, Ore. They're a strikingly homogeneous group, all in good shape, athletic looking, but not of the size and diversity of the Husky players. They're not 6-foot-5 inches, or weigh 270 pounds. All but two are white.

"Most teams practice too much anyway," says Westering. "Most players dread two-a-day practices. For them it's just work, work, work, run, run, run. Being together here for three days, having fun and fellowship, helps our guys work hard when practice does start, because they want to work hard."

At Breakaway camp, the players are divided into eight teams of 10 each. The teams are mixed, players from every class. This is as much about getting to know each other as it is about competing, and yet they compete in everything they do.

And Westering keeps score.

But he seems more interested in how they're doing than who they're beating.

In a beach game of softball, Mario Brown, a sophomore from Sedro Woolley, takes a tremendous cut at the soft, floating pitch and misses. Brown is a good athlete. He has pride.

But he is still able to smile as he walks from the plate. He doesn't pound his bat in the sand. No hooting, no laughing, no finger pointing.

Instead of being filled with embarrassment and frustration, he is filled with an eagerness to try again. The Lutes believe he'll feel the same when they're behind Central in the fourth quarter.

Back at PLU, actual football practice begins at 3 o'clock. Or is it 3:15 or 3:30? The players call it doing things on "Frosty Time." Nearby, the coaches are having cookies and milk and talking over what's going to be done. Sometimes they ask the players.

Westering isn't in a tower above the players as Don James was at Washington. There is no air horn to break the tranquility and set the players scurrying to their next drill. There is a calm in the midst of chaos.

The PLU coaches call it "relationship coaching," being involved with players on the level of friend and father, caring about them more as people than players, more concerned about their future than their present.

The PLU players lift weights and run to get in shape. They watch video of the other teams. But they are asked to do it on their own. Without supervision. During a practice, they're often asked to stop what they are doing to look at Mount Rainier looming above the campus field, or to walk to another field and cheer on the women's soccer team, or to just suck on a Popsicle and sing happy birthday to someone.

To get what they need accomplished in less practice time, the PLU coaches keep their football terminology simple even though their schemes are complicated, and they don't do many of the individual-improvement drills that dominate most practices. They practice what they'll do in a game. They visualize.

The PLU players seldom know if they're favorites or underdogs in a game. Consequently, they don't play up or down to their opponents. In 22 years, Westering has lost only a couple of games he was supposed to win.

As the Lutes prepare for their first game, there is no talk about winning. There never is. But there is talk about hitting people.

The Lutes aren't timid.

"Remember," says Westering, "hit or be hit."

Star linebacker Riddall, who had transferred from the University of Montana, tried to distill PLU football.

"Because we have no fear of losing, we are able to give a total release," he said. "We play hard and try to give absolutely our best. We're in sync. Sooner or later, everyone in the program locks on to Frosty's idea of being a servant warrior."

FRIDAY BEFORE A GAME, when the tension is palpable for the Huskies, the Lutes are relaxing. Before the championship game last December against Westminster of Pennsylvania, they were on the field in gym-rat attire playing hacky sack and kicking field goals. Only the field goals being kicked were by linemen and other players who would never do so in a game.

"People think we're either cocky or crazy," said Scott Westering.

Still, there is a different level of seriousness on game day. Everything is on time. Coaches scan the players carefully to make sure they aren't wearing anything that would draw attention to the individual. No white tape on the shoes, no towels hanging from the waist, no bandanas under the helmets.

The Lutes don't even have their names on the back of their jerseys. Instead they all have the name "Lutes."

"Somebody said to me, `Frosty, you sure have a big family,' and darn, he was right," said the coach.

As they head on to the field prior to kickoff, each player is hugged by the coach. He tells them, "they (the opposition) come to BEAT us; we come to BE us."

On the sidelines, there is no slapping each other upside the head or on the shoulder pads by the Lutes. There is no grunting or groaning. Instead, the offense gathers on the field in a circle and plays "paper, rock and scissors" to relax. They break the huddle chanting, "happy, happy, joy, joy, break."

At Washington and UCLA and Purdue, when the game is over on Saturday afternoon and the locker room cleared, the players go off on their own. To celebrate or to commiserate. At PLU, they open up the locker room to parents and friends for an "Afterglow." Win or lose. Sometimes with great emotion, they share their feelings for one another. They don't talk as much about winning or losing as about being together. Last season, in fact, the goal of winning each week in the playoffs seemed to have more to do with keeping the season going than it did winning a championship.

There's a bit of the B-movie plot in PLU football. The week after losing to Willamette, Westering gathered his team after practice to watch the conclusion of the "Rocky" movie and its get-off-the-canvas message. Through injuries the Lutes had lost their best defensive lineman, Jason Thiel; their top tight end, Gavin Stanley; and Riddall, the All-American linebacker.

They were down.

At Ellensburg, against Central Washington - a bigger, stronger team - they trailed 20-3 in the fourth quarter. They were still down. Then, strangely, serendipitously, with 12 minutes remaining in the game, the Central band offered its rendition of the theme from "Rocky."

"They're playing our song," said player Jason Distefano. Westering put freshman Dak Jordan into the game at quarterback. He threw a 28-yard touchdown pass.

"Something is happening here, something is going on!" screamed Westering. The Lutes scored twice more to win the game.

Then the coach gathered his players.

"No celebrating," he said. "Don't embarrass Central. They're in shock."

It was early in that game, however, when the Lutes were behind, that the essence of the program was revealed.

A PLU player fumbled to set up a Central touchdown.

Westering grabbed one of his assistants, Scott Kessler, and told him to get to the player who had fumbled.

"He needs a hug," the coach said.

Blaine Newnham is a Seattle Times sports columnist and associate editor. Harley Soltes is Pacific's staff photographer.