South San Francisco football challenge accepted

“My daughter said, ‘We have something for you. We want you to do something selfish. You do a lot of things for people and do it for free. This year, we want you to do something selfish,’” said Evans, the athletic director at Madison Park Academy in east Oakland. “The thing I wanted to do the most, if I had to drop everything, it would be to coach football.

“So I gave myself the opportunity to look into it.”

Evans has spent the last 30 years involved in youth/high school sports, particularly football. Even as he was forced to shutter the Madison Park Academy football program after declining interest from a 400 student-body population, Evans continued to help kids learn the game of football by mentoring coaches in the Oakland youth leagues.

But he was champing at the bit to get back to the Xs and Os himself.

So how does a coach from Oakland end up in South City? When Evans started searching for a program, there were certain criteria he had. First, and most important, it could not be a coaching job in Oakland. He did not want the awkwardness of coaching against kids who may also be his students. Second, he wanted a program that had fallen on hard times because Evans wanted a chance to build something with a blueprint he believes can be successful.

“I purposely looked for a football program that had a history of fielding football teams, but not a history of (recent) winning. In my research I found South San Francisco,” said Evans, who is the Warriors’ fifth coach in six years. “I scoured videos, scoured all of their scores from the past season — it was the worst season in school history.”

South City did not win a game in 2019 and is mired in a 20-game losing streak after going winless in 2018 as well.

“Even a field goal a game gives you 30 points (for a season). They only had 20 points (scored in 2019),” Evans said.

After scouring head football coach jobs in the Bay Area, was South City the worst Evans could find, given his criteria?

“Absolutely,” he said. “(But) these were the kids I wanted to coach.”

Evans has shown a knack for turning around languishing programs. He took over the Oakland High head coaching job in 1999, a program that had won one game in each of the previous four seasons. Through the first three games of the 1999 season, the Wildcats outscored their opponents 100-0. He moved on to McClymonds, where he worked with the junior varsity squad just as the Warriors were turning into a regional power. When he took over as athletic director at Madison Park Academy, he took over the football program before adding basketball, volleyball and track and field to his coaching resume.

“What I was doing was taking my football expertise and using it in different sports,” Evans said. “I lent my skills to other sports and in every other sport, we’ve gone to the playoffs in year 2.”

South City was not always a doormat. The Warriors football program was a powerhouse in the 1980s, bracketing the decade with a pair of Central Coast Section titles in 1980 and 1989 with Mike Tenerowicz guiding the program.

But consistent success has been harder to find since. From 2001 to 2010, the Warriors were 28-36 in Peninsula Athletic League play and 53-47 overall with three playoff appearances.

From 2011 to 2019, however, South City has an overall record of 33-55 and just 17-37 against PAL opponents, with the program’s last CCS appearance coming in 2012.

But as he watched film of the 2019 South City team, Evans said did see some positives moving forward. He noticed that even eliminating the seniors on the 2019 roster, there were still 40 players who were eligible to return for 2020. He also noted that despite their record, the talent was not horrible.

“What I saw watching film, some kids were fast, but had average speed. I saw kids who were big, but average big,” Evans said, more than enough talent to compete in the PAL’s Lake Division. “They just didn’t have the fundamentals of the game.”

With research in hand, he went before the interview committee, laid out his plan and eventually got the phone call that he had been hired. Evans immediately went about laying the foundation for the 2020 season. He got as many face-to-face meetings beginning in February and since the pandemic-induced shutdown, Evans has continued twice-a-week virtual meetings. He’s also revived the team’s Twitter page, where the last post came during the 2018 season. Evans has also been aggressive in recruiting team support staff, as well.

But his biggest challenge was keeping the local kids local.

“When I first got there, [administrators] gave me a list of 15 freshmen who wanted to play football. I set up recruiting meetings. I treated it like college recruiting,” Evans said. “After that recruiting process, all 15 freshmen parents said, ‘Our kids are in your hands.’”

With his recruitment efforts, Evans currently has 30 on the varsity roster and 40 on the junior varsity roster — which will be an all-freshman team.

“My goal is to take all the players who know about the losing (at South City) and put them all on varsity,” Evans said. “And take all the kids who know nothing about losing and put them on the JV team.”

Despite his enthusiasm, don’t think Evans is some pie-in-the-sky, everything-is-great kind of coach. He has no problem telling his players know where they stand and won’t sugarcoat the bad nor overreact to the good.

“There are three types of coaches,” Evans said. “Bad coaches, who only tell you what you’re doing wrong; good coaches, who only tell you what you’re doing well. Great coaches are the ones who tell you the truth. … I’m going to tell you the truth.”

And as much as Evans will demand of his players, he will demand of it himself as well. In anticipation of taking on head coaching duties, he convinced the principal of Madison Park Academy to hire an assistant athletic director to give the department a presence on campus. Evans, meanwhile, checks out at 1 p.m. and makes the drive over the Bay Bridge to South City for practices and games.

And instead of bemoaning the commute, which he says currently takes about 35 minutes, he has embraced it.

“I love the drive. It’s a great time for me to listen to books in the car, or to pray,” Evans said. “Just to think about other things in life other than sports. … I knew this assignment would bring about these decisions. … I’m very well settled in my decision because there is a lot of purpose (to the decision).

“I can’t say we can make the playoffs (this season), but what I can say is we will not get blown out, we will compete and in the fourth quarter, we will be there (in a position to try to win the game).”