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John Fontes has coaching experience at the professional level. Now he takes on a different challenge: coaching Alonso High School's team from day one.
By RICK GERSHMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 31, 2001
TOWN 'N COUNTRY -- It is overcast at Alonso High School. With the cloud cover, the heat is a brisk 97 degrees. The grass is sweating. The uprights are sweating. The scoreboard would be sweating, if one existed, but Alonso doesn't have a stadium yet.
More than 80 teens are here, all sweating, wearing football uniforms. A few look at home in them. Most do not. The uniforms wear them, as when little boys wear suits for formal occasions.
This is no knock on them. These raw recruits are mostly 14 or 15 years old. Alonso, a first-year school, has no senior class and few juniors. Three out of four Ravens never have played football. And yet they are preparing to make history tonight.
Alonso plays its first regular-season game at 7:30 p.m., facing Blake at Leto High. The Ravens will get their helmets handed to them, as all first-year teams do. At this point, that's okay.
In time, if John Fontes has anything to do with it, they will be winners, even champions. And Fontes, Alonso's inaugural head coach, has everything to do with it.
Fontes, brother of former Detroit Lions head coach Wayne Fontes, is 52. Lean and strong, he looks easily a decade younger, and he's in better shape than most of his players, despite a knee twice shredded in the line of duty. Two long scars running up outside his right knee serve as a reminder.
There are plenty of reminders here. Fontes' T-shirt reads Alonso, but the logo on his shorts is that of the Minnesota Vikings. Under the logo reads "2000 Training Camp."
Fontes holds a blue binder, plain except for some labeling tape. The front reads "Coach Fontes." The edge reads "1995 Detroit Mini Camp," the year appropriately faded.
There is no doubting this coach's credentials. He has taught some of the game's best players. He has worked with some of its best coaches. Heck, he's even the answer to a trivia question: What professional football coach has earned two world championships in the span of a year?
Fontes was defensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Storm when it won the Arena Football League championship, the ArenaBowl, in August 1991. He coached with the Sacramento Surge of the World League of American Football when the Surge won the World Bowl in June 1992.
Those were just two stops in Fontes' prolific career, which has included positions with the NFL's Lions and Vikings and top college programs including Miami and Northwestern.
The most recent was with the Vikings, where he coached outside linebackers until January. Following Minnesota's 41-0 loss in the NFC championship game, Coach Denny Green cleaned house, firing or reassigning all but one of his defensive assistants.
That's when Fontes decided to return to Tampa, where his wife, Therese, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleader, was born and raised. After moving around for years, it was time to settle down.
"My wife's been a trouper for 23 years with me. She's allowed me to go out and chase my dreams," Fontes said. "We've moved 10 times. Now that the kids are in school and the nest is empty, we have more time to do things together. She's waited a long time for me to do this."
They found a home in Town 'N Country. Fontes still puts in 14-hour days, arriving at school at 7 a.m. and returning home about 9 p.m. But now the season is only 10 weeks long; in the NFL it was double that. The Fonteses now are only four hours from their daughter, Ashley, 20, a junior on a full soccer scholarship at Florida State University. Their son, John II, 21, is in his senior year at Michigan State University.
Fontes made the move without a career plan in mind: "I was ready to drive a truck if I had to," he said.
He didn't have to. Fontes began discussions with Alonso athletic director Lou Diaz, who had known the family for 30 years. Diaz and Alonso principal Sandy Bunkin were looking for someone who would make a long-term commitment to the team, instead of using it as a stepping stone. Gaither, for example, is on its fourth coach in as many years, as Mike Hobbie and Howie DeCristofaro each jumped ship after one season for other opportunities.
"I knew I wouldn't have to worry about him going off somewhere," Diaz said of Fontes. "I knew he wanted to stay here."
He and Bunkin also wanted a coach with the patience required for a first-year team, the credibility to earn the respect of players, and the character to be a good role model.
"We felt he had the maturity and experience and ideology we needed," Diaz said. "I wanted someone who brought instant credibility . . . so students would think, "I can go play there, that guy knows what he's doing.' Because it's hard establishing a new program.
"John is a very impressive individual. I'd play for him, and to do that, I really need to believe in a person. The kids really do. They respect him and they like him. If we're going to be competitive, we have to have the credibility of the coach first and foremost. John Fontes brought us that."
Fontes' brief collegiate playing career was at Iowa; he arrived in 1968 as an outside linebacker and was moved to strong safety. He tore ligaments in his knee in 1969 and again in 1970, ending his career. To this day, he can't jog, but he works out on a stationary bike.
After graduating in 1973, Fontes came on as defensive coordinator at Long Beach Polytechnic High in California. Poly had gone 0-8 the previous year but went 26-4 while Fontes was on staff. He moved on to Oregon State University for three years, getting married in 1979 to Therese in Tampa, when Wayne Fontes was the defensive coordinator for the Buccaneers.
"I was 29 at the time, and my sister-in-law said, "I met a nice girl I want you to take out,' " Fontes recalled. "I called the number to set up a time to meet, and (as soon as) I looked at her, I fell in love.
"One thing led to another, and I went back to coach at Oregon State and then it's long-distance, phone bills and letters. I came back to Tampa and said the next time I leave, you're coming with me. Her father said she's not going anywhere without a ring. And the first time her father met me, he took me into his back room and showed me his gun collection. So we got married."
Fontes left Oregon State in 1980 and quit coaching for a while, working in sales for Levi Strauss & Co. He resumed coaching in 1985 at Northwestern, did a stint with coach Jimmy Johnson at the University of Miami in 1986, and then coached at Louisiana State University.
He and Therese returned to Tampa in 1991, and Fontes was offered the defensive coordinator position with the Storm, then owned by Bob Gries, who is now the new football coach at Gaither.
A family tragedy reunited Fontes with his brother Wayne, who had become the Detroit Lions' head coach in 1998. Their brother, Len, was coaching defensive backs for the Lions. In May 1992, Len died of a sudden heart attack. He was 54.
"He went to bed one night, had a heart attack and died," Fontes said. "His wife got up, called 911 and called Wayne, because they lived near each other. When they got there, he was gone."
When Len died, Fontes was with the Surge, preparing to play for world championship in Montreal. As he was getting ready to leave, Wayne called to say he might need Fontes there. After the Surge victory, Fontes flew to Michigan and accepted the position coaching defensive backs.
"It was very difficult to come in under the circumstances," he said. "But the opportunity was there, and we had success."
Over the next five years, Detroit reached the playoffs five times. But with a rotating door of journeyman quarterbacks, they never made it to the Super Bowl. That led to the ouster of the entire coaching staff in 1997.
"People just don't understand that we were never strong enough personnel-wise to go all the way," he said. "We did very well with the players we had."
Fontes left coaching again rather than move. After his children graduated, Fontes got a call from Denny Green, with whom he had played and coached. Fontes accepted the Vikings position, which he held until January.
With the Alonso group, he said, "it's like Football 101, you're starting from scratch."
First-year high school football teams always have a tough time of it. Fontes says they would be better off playing a junior varsity schedule. Instead, they will battle much bigger, much better athletes every Friday.
"The great thing, the upside is, they're giving me all they've got," Fontes said. "They're trying their hardest to do all the things they can. We started with 96 kids (including varsity and JV), and we've got 83 now. These 83 are going to stick."
Alonso played Tampa Bay Tech last Friday in a preseason game and lost 49-0, a score that isn't bad for the first game of a first-year team. Some have allowed more than 70 points the first time out.
"What I love about these kids is they were down 49 to nothing, and I still had kids wanting to go into the game," Fontes said. "No one said, "Take me out.' We had no quitters."
Fontes is realistic about what his team can accomplish this season.
"The plan I have is to continue to get better with the little things we do," he said. "We need to get better at the fundamentals, at blocking and tackling. They need to have the experience of playing on a weekly basis."
Practice is everything, he says, while "the frosting on the cake is to go out and play Friday night. I'm looking forward to it. You never know. Teams sometimes win who "shouldn't' win. Who's to say we can't go out and throw our hat in the ring and see what happens?"