After a summer practice, first-year Newport Harbor High football coach Peter Lofthouse spoke passionately to a member of the team at Davidson Field about college recruiting, and strongly emphasized the importance of players participating in other sports.
“Listen, these four-year college coaches and recruiters want more than a football player, more than guys just sitting around playing football year-round. They want guys who have played basketball or baseball or track and field, in addition to football,” Lofthouse said to the sophomore student-athlete who approached him about playing at the proverbial next level, and what the path might entail.
On the recruiting subject, Lofthouse is an expert with a long background at the collegiate level. Lofthouse was honest and forthright, and spoke about high school players’ abilities, physical size and how participation in collegiate camps and showcases, as well as sending videos to coaches, can help increase a high school player’s exposure to colleges. “They want guys who are 6-foot-2 or bigger,” Lofthouse said to the student, who was about 5-8 with shoes on.
The new leader at the helm of Tar Ball represents change, and while there will be adjustments along the way for both the school and coach, the players are responding to Lofthouse’s words of wisdom and rallying together on the Long Grey Line. Brian Bailey, a Newport Harbor senior and returning team captain and middle linebacker, is a likely future Ivy Leaguer who volunteered to be on the hiring committee to gain the business experience of an interview process.
“Coach Lofthouse is a heck of a coach, and I love how he has people in the community asking, ‘What is going on over there?’” Bailey said. “Coach Lofthouse is big on execution on the field and believes the only things you can control are effort, attitude and being on time.”
The Sailors missed the CIF-Southern Section playoffs the past three years, and Newport Harbor Principal Dr. Sean Boulton, who has the greatest of “respect” for former coach Jeff Brinkley, said the school’s hiring committee had a choice to hire an in-house coaching candidate or go outside the friendly confines of Tar Ball.
“We decided to go with an outside guy,” said Boulton, who also added that he’s confident the Sailors “will get back there” to the CIF playoffs.
Lofthouse, an outsider and walk-on coach, has surrounded himself with an excellent and experienced coaching staff that includes Kevin Emerson, the Orange Coast College head coach from 2014 through 2017, and former OCC assistant coaches Chris Cox and Frank Albers, both veterans.
While replacing legendary 32-year Newport Harbor Coach Brinkley will not be easy, the book on Lofthouse is that he’s calm, smooth and relates well to today’s youth. A primary focus of the program will be a reliance on coaching staff members.
“I’m OK with guys who are smarter than me on Xs and Os,” said Lofthouse, a former football and baseball player at El Toro High (Class of 2000), where he said he was probably better in baseball.
Lofthouse, who has family in Lake Forest, said applying for the vacant Newport Harbor position represented an important chance to elevate his career as a football coach, even though he had just completed three years as head coach at San Diego Mesa College and guided the Olympians to their first bowl game, and victory, in about 30 years with a 37-34 win over Santa Ana in the Southern California Bowl.
“When I was trying to make a decision,” Lofthouse said, “I had to ask myself, ‘When is another coaching opportunity like this going to come around?’ Maybe you’ll find other opportunities, but there are only so many great football programs out there. When I was at El Toro, you would always hear about Newport Harbor. So this interested me a lot.”
Upon graduating from Arizona State with a business administration degree, Lofthouse worked for two years in finance, but realized coaching was in his heart, and he selected pursuing football over baseball because of his “love for the pageantry and traditions of football.”
Lofthouse started from the ground floor at the collegiate ranks, serving as a graduate assistant coach at Baylor for two years, then five years at Citrus College in Glendora before heading to San Diego Mesa. Lofthouse, who said he will run a spread-option offense at Newport Harbor, was the offensive coordinator for two years at Citrus College, before taking over as head coach at San Diego Mesa in 2015. He worked with the offense at Baylor in 2006 and 2007 and earned his master’s degree in kinesiology, then coached one year at Texas Lutheran, a Division III school, before arriving at Citrus.
As an athlete at El Toro under highly successful and respected coaches Mike Milner (football) and Tom McCaffrey (baseball), Lofthouse wasn’t necessarily the most talented player, but was always paying attention.
“I was always the guy people asked what was going on, because I loved learning the game, and learning the game was something I was passionate about, because I was never the greatest athlete or best player,” Lofthouse said. “But I always understood the game. I understood what the coaches were trying to do, what we were trying to take ad-vantage of. So, it’s kind of like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and every piece to a puzzle can fit in a different way. It’s fun to find out what pieces of the puzzle to give a kid to be successful, and that’s part of my job, to teach kids different ways to be successful, because what is traditionally done is always the right way for some kids. Trying to figure out the best way to communicate to kids is part of being successful, and I love that challenge, I love working with the diverse players and finding different ways to motivate them.”
For the first time since 1985, Brinkley will not be the Sailors’ football coach, retiring earlier this year and replaced by Lofthouse, who was 5 years old when Brinkley took over as coach. Lofthouse was hired in March.
“I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like without football,” said Lofthouse, who plans to finish his teaching credential in December and is hopeful of being hired as a full-time teacher and coach at Newport Harbor. Lofthouse lives in Lake Forest with his wife, Katie, and their 2-year-old son, Zachary.