Room for Improvement : Despite Training Four Years in Cramped Quarters, Saddleback Wrestlers Have Gone From 2-8 Record to 15-1 Mark, and Won Sea View League Title

SANTA ANA — The wrestling team at Saddleback High School may not be the best in the Southern Section, or even Orange County. The team will not debate that fact. But the Roadrunners could be the best team to workout inside the cramped quarters of its locker room.

Hey, a budding dynasty has to start some place, doesn’t it?

When Paul La Blanc became coach four seasons ago, he led Saddleback to a 2-8 record.

“Way to go,” people around campus told him.

“The program had atrophied a little,” La Blanc said. “Two and eight was a big improvement and everyone was pretty happy with that.”

Four years later, 2-8 would be considered a disaster, and folks would have wondered how the program could have fallen on such hard times.

Not to worry. With La Blanc, a former league champion at Fountain Valley in 1971, leading the way, the Roadrunners have kept marching onward and upward. Two weeks ago, they won the Sea View League championship with a 5-0 dual-meet record. They finished the regular season 15-1 and ranked ninth in the Orange County Coaches’ Assn. poll. Friday, they finished second to University at the league finals meet, earning a share of the title for the first time since winning the Freeway League championship in 1980.

Saddleback advanced to the Southern Section dual meet preliminaries, which begin Wednesday. Six wrestlers also qualified for the Section 2-A individual tournament, to be held Friday and Saturday at Canyon Springs High in Moreno Valley.

The launching pad for all of this success has been the boys’ locker room, or more accurately, the varsity “team room,” as it’s known. Actually, the room isn’t as small as it sounds--perhaps 15 feet wide by 30 feet long. Or roughly the size of a classroom.

There are rows of lockers along two walls, a chalkboard is at one end of the room and the wrestling mats fit snugly over the indoor-outdoor carpet on the floor.

Things can get a little crowded when La Blanc has all 50 wrestlers in the program on hand for a workout. Then, he dispatches some of the younger wrestlers and an assistant coach to a nearby classroom.

At first, La Blanc worried about increasing the number of wrestlers in the program. He started with 30, but desperately wanted more. Now enough is enough. Space restrictions keep the squad to no more than 50, unless, of course, an eager, talented wrestler comes marching through the door. And that’s why La Blanc keeps the door open at all times. Plus, you never know when a baseball player will need to come in to change into his uniform.

“We have to be creative with our space here,” La Blanc said. “It would be nice to have our own wrestling room, but this works fine. I always tell the kids I’d wrestle in a phone booth.

“Sometimes we go to a school for a meet and they’ve got a nice room with padding all over the place. The kids say, ‘Oh coach, can’t we get something like this?’ And we wind up beating them anyway.”

La Blanc likes the irony.

In addition to making do with what’s available, La Blanc has tried to walk a fine line between intensity and lightheartedness. Motivation by intimidation is definitely not his style.

“I’m not a win-at-all-costs coach,” he said. “The most important thing is having fun. I tell the kids, ‘If you can do this you can do anything.’ ”

The way La Blanc has it figured, if enough time is spent on preparation--mental and physical--then winning should come as a natural result. It’s worked so far.

Saddleback improved to 8-6 in his second season and was 15-4 last season. The Roadrunners’ only loss this season was to Rosemead in a nonleague meet in December.

The truest testimony to the Roadrunners’ improvement has been in the team room, however.

“If I walked out of here, they’d go at it just as hard as if I were here,” La Blanc said. “Some days I have to tell them to go home. Enough. Save it for the meet.”

That’s where a wrestler like Shane Holloway comes in. A senior who has been there every step of the way, Holloway won his second consecutive league championship at 135 pounds Friday. Last season, he was fourth in the 2-A meet.

La Blanc said the team’s league co-championship felt good, but he was happiest for Holloway.

“He’s been the backbone, the most consistent wrestler I’ve had here,” La Blanc said. “As a coach, it’s nice to see it all come together, (but) it’s nice to see it all pay off for the kids.”

Without question, they have become the toughest guys in the locker room.