The Knight Preeminent : Kids Keep Danley Coaching at Katella After All These Years, and 496 Victories

ANAHEIM — Tom Danley burns. The hair may be gray. The voice a little more hoarse. The waist line, well, a tad more extended. Yet, those steel-blue eyes still burn.

Pick a subject, any subject, and Danley burns. It’s not so much a conversation as a lecture. Tom talks. You listen.

It has been that way for 27 years, ever since Katella High School opened its doors. Danley has been the Knights’ only boys’ varsity basketball coach, creating a program that for many years was second to none in Orange County.

He has branched out as athletic director, fund-raiser and community linchpin--all of which he will gladly talk about, at length. Yet, basketball, that which brought him to Katella, will be his legacy.

“I went to a Katella game the other night and there he was, just like always,” said former Knight Ray Donnelly, who graduated in 1978. “He had the same red blazer, the same slicked-back hair and the same cliches. He just had a few more pounds. It was like walking into the Twilight Zone.”

And there is a sign post up ahead, a milestone really. With four more victories Danley will have 500. A tribute not only to his abilities, but his staying power.

How long will he continue? Not even he knows. But at 56, he’s still going strong.

“What keeps me going is the concern and the caring and the excitement,” Danley said. “People ask me, ‘When will you retire?’ I don’t know. It depends on how I feel and, of course, my health. The bottom line is it has to be fun. This is my golf game. My way to relax.”

“He’s been using that same analogy since I was coaching for him,” said Marina Coach Greg Hoffman, who spent two years as an assistant at Katella. “He’s worn it out.”

Times have changed. Danley has not.

His “golf game” is a little better these days.

Katella last won a league championship in 1987, when it went 23-3 and 14-0 in the Empire League. It was Danley’s 18th league title. Then the bottom fell out. He is just 43-70 in the last five seasons.

But the Knights are 14-5 this season and have been ranked as high as eighth in the county. It has put Danley on the verge of a career marker.

Danley’s teams are 496-199. With five games left in the regular season, plus a certain playoff berth, he could reach 500 this season.

“That’s insignificant,” Danley said. “That’s no big thing. What is much more important is for the kids to play well. I want it to be a meaningful season.”

But those who know Danley, the ones who worked for him and played for him, are almost beaming with pride and a sense of vindication.

“The thing I admire about Tom is that he did not run out on Katella when Katella ran out of talent,” Hoffman said. “He stuck it out when he had every right to say enough is enough.”

But enough has never been enough for Danley.

“I never had a coach like him,” Donnelly said. “He’s a tough guy. A real tough guy. But he taught me to respect the game.”

“He’s a disciplinarian,” said Randy Whieldon, who graduated in 1978. “He made me more disciplined, not just in basketball, but in life.”

With Danley, it has always been the big picture.

Danley was born in New Jersey and moved to California with his family when he was 8. He attended Lynwood High School, Compton College and Cal State Long Beach.

It seems a typical education trail. But Danley went through Long Beach with a double major, social studies and physical eduction.

Said Danley: “You see, if I was interviewing for a job and they needed a physical education teacher, then I was a P.E. major. If they needed a classroom teacher, I was a social studies major. You have to build a big foundation.”

That’s Danley, always thinking ahead.

He was the first to lure corporate sponsorship for high school athletics and that was more than 15 years ago. He was the first to openly talk about creating a CIF-Orange County Section and that was nearly 20 years ago. He was the first to raffle off a car to raise money for his program and that was in 1969.

Danley was also the driving force behind the Orange County and California Athletic Directors’ Assn.

“Tom is the mover and shaker in our organization,” La Quinta Athletic Director Jim Perry said. “When other athletic directors find out I’m from this area, they almost always ask if I know Tom. I’ve had that happen in Hyannis Port, Mass., and Bettendorf, Iowa. They all know Tom. He’s like the Hollywood sign.”

But with all the hats Danley wears, the one that wears best is that of a high school basketball coach.

Danley has had offers in the past. Offers to coach college teams and offers to raise funds at higher levels of education, even offers to work for corporations. He has turned them all down.

“They just haven’t been right,” Danley said. “Really, I outgrew this job years ago. But there’s work that needs to be done. I still have a mission. It’s very simple, when you’re younger, you go to the refrigerator to take something out. As you get older, you go to the same refrigerator and put something back. We’re in the putting back stage.”

He has been stocking it for years.

Danley coached lower level teams at Lynwood and Anaheim before being hired as the varsity coach at Katella. He quickly built the Knights into a power.

The school opened in 1966 and the Knights were in the Southern Section 4-A final by 1969. Danley took three teams to championship games but never won. Three of his teams have reached the semifinals.

Katella became the powerhouse of Orange County in the 1970s.

“Growing up, all you dreamed about was playing Katella basketball,” Whieldon said. “It had an aura about.”

“They were relentless,” said Perry, who played at Pacifica. “They would always push you to the limit.”

Which is where Katella players are nudged by their coach.

“If a kid’s getting Cs and I think a kid has the ability to get A’s, then I’m not going to accept anything less than an A,” Danley said.

The Knights didn’t always have the best talent, but they almost always played harder then their opponent. Their coach accepts nothing less.

“He’d start yelling at us and that vein would pop out on his head and you would think he was going to explode,” Patrick said. “He’s the greatest salesman I ever met.”

Said Donnelly: “As a sophomore, I was called up to the varsity for the playoffs. We did this tip drill during warm-ups and my biggest fear was messing up the tip drill. If I did nothing else that night, I was going make sure I tipped the ball right to the next guy.”

Danley’s tirades were legendary and almost everyone who played for him can imitate the voice, the mannerisms and the cliches. But they have been laughing with Danley, not at him.

“He makes you appreciate things,” Donnelly said. “I look back at those days and realize how much he taught me. He’s still doing it his way. The only thing he’s done is relaxed his rules on haircuts.”

The Knights still wear blazers and ties to away games. If a kid can’t afford to buy the proper slacks, Danley takes care of it.

“I get mad at people who don’t understand him,” Hoffman said. “Everyone thinks the bottom line with him is winning.

“We were playing Los Alamitos one time and I noticed that they had filled out the scorebook with the wrong numbers, which at that time would have meant five technical fouls. I waited until just before tip-off and told Coach Danley the good news, feeling like I was going to get patted on the head. He gets up and goes to the other coach and tells him about it. When he came back he told me, ‘If you can’t win the right way, there’s no use in winning.’ He has high ethics.”

Little has changed.

Danley still stays up until 2 a.m. almost every night, planning the next day’s schedule. He still looks at his basketball team as being half full. He still burns when he talks.

“The fun thing is, there is never a dull moment,” Danley said. “It’s not winning, it’s getting the kids to be the best they can be. That’s all I’m doing. I just work for this dinky high school in East Anaheim. That’s all.”