Rev. Edward Reese Remembers Larry Rogers, California’s greatest high school swim and water polo coach

Now the president of St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, for 15 years (1978–1993) the Rev. Edward A. Reese, S.J. was at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose—where he hired Larry Rogers to teach history as well as lead the school’s swim and water polo teams. In a recent interview Father Reese shared his experience with arguably the most successful aquatics coach in California high school athletics history.

- Bellarmine’s mission is to develop men for and with others. How did Coach Rodger’s approach to swimming and water polo reflect the values of a Jesuit education?

Another way of saying “with and for others,” [is] St. Ignatius, who founded the Jesuits, [said] his insight is that God can be found in all things. In secondary education, we translate that to: If you’re going to do something, do it well. And, God’s in it.

This is not [just] the theology classes or a retreat or even the liturgies in a school. It’s true those are the key elements in a Jesuit [education]. But you can find God in a math class, on the football field or in the chapel just as well—if that’s where God wants you.

If it was as a swim coach or a water polo coach, Larry wanted it to be done well. He wanted kids to reach their full potential. In a team sport like water polo that gets translated into giving for each other. It was men for each other, as it was an all-boys’ school at the time.

He expected them to work their hardest as a team—and he did too. I used to go and watch practices a bunch just to get out of my office. I’d get over there in the late afternoon and there would be Larry cleaning up: getting the lane lines up out of the pool or getting the nets out.

He did what he preached. He was in it whole-heartedly. He wasn’t just a standby coach.

He was very demanding, and it always took the kids a while to get used to him barking at them. But they stayed with him—and loved Larry.

As an example, I went back when Larry retired [in 2017]. The irony is, I had hired a bunch of those guys, including Larry. They were retiring but I was still working—you should ask them about that!

There were probably five or six teachers who were at this dinner and by far—in terms of graduates from the school, double the people who there were Larry’s past swimming and water polo players. And one thing about Larry: if you were gonna be a swimmer, you were gonna play water polo. And vice versa.

I thought that was the way it is until I was in another school [and learned] that sometimes you did only one.

For Larry, you did both and that was part of the program. You bought into it and that’s what you got.

- He treated his players like his children—they were all his sons. But, based upon what I’ve been told, he didn’t patronize them. There was a mutual respect between the coach and the players who he demanded so much from but cared about so deeply.

He also taught history; it sounds like his athletes avoided yet another hour of the day with Coach Rogers!

Some of them didn’t have any choice. They had him all that time and they would have him for history class… the poor kids. Bellarmine was a boarding school for a good part of the time, and the swimmers and the water polo players would come in and eat in with the boarders after practice in the morning.

I’d often have coffee with them. It was the quietest group of boys you’d ever seen in your life. All they did was eat and sleep.

He was very demanding. But there wasn’t anything he asked of them that as a coach he wouldn’t do himself. And, it was proven; they just loved him.

It took a while; there were kids with tears in their eyes at first, but they found out he cared for them. And they did well. Any kid that wanted to do something in a pool… his record speaks for itself.

- That success is hard to take in; a combined 59 state titles, 25 CCS [Central Coast Section] water polo titles, 31 straight swim titles—an accomplishment likely never to be repeated.

There’s something that gets left out or forgotten. Now [Bellarmine has] a lovely [aquatics] facility—which we didn’t have when I was there. Larry did this with a pool that was built in the 40s. It was shallow at one end and not built for water polo. In the early stages when they won so much, he did [it] in a pool [not] meant for water polo.

The discipline… those kids were up at the crack of dawn. I used to laugh with parents: if you had a kid swimming or playing water polo for Larry, you always knew where they were. They were either doing their homework, in a pool or sleeping. They didn’t have time for anything else.

They took care of each other—that was the team aspect of it. I don’t think Larry anticipated a whole bunch of his kids going on to play collegiate water polo. The discipline that they learned [from him] was part of it.

He was a good teacher in the classroom. And his swimming—that was a different Larry Rodgers on the pool deck because so much of it is an individual thing. Half the team could miss a swim meet and we would still win because of the depth and how hard those kids worked.

Pablo Morales is one of Larry’s first swimmers and water polo players.

- He’s now the head women’s swim coach at Nebraska…

I’ve tried to hire him a couple of times and it never worked. [Laughed]

You know, it wasn’t unusual for young guys in college or early in their careers to work it out so they could come and help him coach. More often than not, his JV or freshman coaches were former players.

- I spoke with Jerry Mix, who played for Coach Rodgers at Monte Vista High School. For almost a decade <when> he was an assistant water polo coach at Bellarmine.

Louie Nicolao mentioned “JUGs”–Justice Under God—which is where Coach Roger’s athletes had to clean the grounds and such when they didn’t stick with the program. How might this approach play in today’s “millennial marketplace” where parents want their kids to be constantly stroked—and never criticized?

I’m not sure I would agree. Where I am right now in St. Ignatius, San Francisco <check> and 20 years in Arizona [at Brophy College Preparatory], I think the outcomes, and his approach…. Education has changed, period. It’s much more… trying to explain to an adolescent, which is of course a challenge, to deal with them as to why you’re doing something a bit more than just telling them to go do it.

If Larry were here today and exactly like he was 40 years ago, they’d get used to him. These kids are pretty smart. The old, tough guy [pose]—they’d see he has a heart bigger than the outdoors.

A coach like that just isn’t the style anymore. When I was at Berkeley, the water polo coach for years there… I forget his name…

- Do you mean Pete Cutino?

Yes! I used to swim in one end of the pool and watch [Cutino’s] practices. The same approach. [Larry’s] coaching style was no different than the thing they used to tell us as young teachers: Don’t smile ‘till Christmas.

It’s a different approach; the reason for doing it’s the same.