Sports

Published: Saturday, Jun. 13, 2009

Mott will be new boys basketball coach at St. Joseph

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After three years on the outside, Tom Mott is getting a second chance in high school sports.

The former Mission Prep athletic director and boys basketball coach began work as the new boys basketball coach at St. Joseph High this week and will assume the athletic director duties at the Santa Maria school in August.

It’s another step toward redemption for Mott, who has recently received notoriety for taking local student-athletes on cultural exchange tours to Africa, for organizing a new local high school basketball all-star game and for founding a non-profit organization aimed at advancing educational opportunity for foreign students.

All of this comes after Mott left Mission Prep embroiled in controversy and charges of improper recruiting in 2006.

Mott, 35, has moved on from an internal investigation that forced his resignation from Mission Prep and resulted in the Royals athletic department’s forfeiture of two CIF-Central Section Division V titles and placement on probation.

After a stint with a professional basketball organization in Miami and a season as the interim athletic director at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, this will be his first job back at a high school.

“I think you do miss it to an extent,” said Mott, the grandson of former Cal Poly coach and athletic department head Robert Mott and son of San Luis Obispo attorney Hank Mott. “There’s plusses and minuses to every job, and definitely one of the plusses was the interaction with the students and the ability to make a difference in their lives.”

St. Joseph’s arrangement to bring in Mott was a swift response to the controversial decision not to renew the contract of championship-winning girls basketball coach Ron Barba last month.

The school was originally looking to fill that position, but when boys basketball coach Ed Torres volunteered to retake the girls program, which he led to a state title in 1991, St. Joseph athletic director John Osborne reached out to see if he could persuade Mott to take over the boys team.

Osborne, who was planning to retire after the 2010 school year, was so excited about Mott, he even offered to step down a year early if Mott would come aboard.

“I’ve known him a long time, known his dad a long time, and my wife is full-time involved at Hancock,” said Osborne, who spent 34 years of his own as an educator at Hancock. “I think we’re really fortunate to get someone of his caliber in both of those areas.”

Before he was a coach, Mott was a successful two-sport standout student-athlete at Mission Prep. He went on to college and minor league careers as a baseball pitcher before returning to his alma mater in 1999.

Mott became a rising star in the coaching ranks while the Royals rattled off three straight section titles and extended state playoff runs. He was named CalHiSports.com’s small school coach of the year in 2005 and coach of the year in the Central Section Sequoia/Sierra Division in 2006.

It all halted when a Mission Prep investigation into Mott’s e-mail revealed improper contact with Adrian Hernandez — a player who helped lead the Royals to section titles in 2005 and 2006 and just finished his junior year at Tulsa — before Hernandez transferred to Mission Prep from Puerto Rico.

The Royals had no fewer than seven transfer students from outside the country during Mott’s tenure, and his experience with them made starting the 1Dream Foundation an easy transition.

Founded in 2007, the foundation aims at bringing disadvantaged student athletes from around the world to schools in the United States.

“I think it’s an admirable thing that he’s doing,” St. Joseph principal Joseph Myers said, “but it also presents us with some potential problems. So we’ve told him that he’s got to keep that separate from his work at St. Joseph. The kids that he’s bringing in, he needs to do that at other places.”

CIF rules prohibit contact between coaches or other agents of a school and potential transfer students. Although he’ll maintain his role with the foundation in the offseason, Mott said that will not be an issue at St. Joseph. 1Dream athletes are typically placed in schools outside of California.

Osborne said Mott’s past transgressions were a non-issue for St. Joseph, overwritten by the other jobs he’s done since leaving Mission Prep.

“Obviously, mistakes were made, and we realize that,” Myers said, “and I think we have assurances that those same kind of mistakes are not going to be made again in the future.”

Others are excited to see Mott receive another chance.

Current Mission Prep boys basketball coach Terrance Harris coached under Mott at his alma mater since graduating in 1999 and was promoted to replace Mott in 2006 after the school flirted with former Cal Poly Hall of Famer Sean Chambers.

Harris said the St. Joseph-Mission Prep rivalry between the two Catholic schools on the Central Coast will be a lot of fun with Mott in place.

“Kids respond to Tom,” Harris said, “because they know that they have a coach who cares about them as a person, not just as an athlete, and that’s an important aspect to coaching.”

For at least one more season, St. Joseph will compete in the Los Padres League, which includes San Luis Obispo County schools Morro Bay and Templeton.

Templeton coach Fred Price faced off against Mott’s teams when the Eagles and Royals were both in the Coast Sierra League.

“I believe people deserve second chances,” Price said. “They should learn from it. Everybody — everybody — makes mistakes, and things go on. I believe that in everything.”

Osborne called Mott a long-term solution at both the athletic director and basketball positions. That confidence gives Mott plenty of support, but Mott acknowledged he’ll still have many eyes on him in the years to come.

“Obviously some people could consider this a controversial hire or whatever you want to call it,” Mott said. “I truly know the microscope will be on me, and that’s perfectly fine. We’re not living in the past but living in the day-to-day and trying to do the best job we can.”