SGV/Whittier Prep Sports Zone: Sundays with Escarcega - The Rise and Fall of Matt Bechtel.
We take a deep dive into why Matt Bechtel is one of the more polarizing figures in the SGV and IE.
Coach Matt Bechtel celebrates Damien’s win over Mira Costa in 2023. (Escarcega)
LA VERNE – Matt Bechtel was never a person who was going to conform to the philosophy of “going with the flow.” He was the San Gabriel Valley’s version of Elon Musk – brash, opinionated, and very smart. Which made Friday’s shocking announcement that he was resigning as the football coach at Damien that much more shocking.
Friday’s announcement brought to an end (temporarily) one of the most interesting coaching careers the valley ever experienced. You can say that the late Greg Gano was also brash, and outgoing and was going to do whatever it took to produce a winner on the field.
Bechtel was different.
He was in your face.
He was going to make you feel uncomfortable.
He didn’t care what you thought because, in his mind, he believed what he was doing was the correct path.
Whether it was his theory about COVID-19, to having a love-hate relationship with anyone on social media, it was clear that Bechtel marched to the beat of his drum.
I had a conversation as recently as two weeks ago with Bechtel and it was always one that I enjoyed having. We may disagree on a few things, but I understood his point of view – and it was respected on both sides of the phone. He talked about looking forward to his final season coaching his son Elijah. He loved the schedule and strongly felt that his team was going to make a run at the playoffs.
And they can very well do that – just without him. Which makes this ending of the Bechtel story that much more disappointing.
To know Bechtel was to know him 20 years ago when he was the brash offensive coordinator at Los Osos High School. My first interactions with him were interesting, but one thing came through, he knew his Xs and Os. He came into the spotlight with his development of Richard Brehaut – who would sign with UCLA in 2009.
He was quickly making a name for himself first at Cajon HS in San Bernardino and now he was doing the same at Los Osos. At the time though, he always felt that he could be a head coach. His comments to me were “I know that I can do the job.”
He got his first chance in 2010 when he was hired as the football coach at Colony HS. Ironically enough, it was through the interview process that everyone knew that Bechtel was ready. “It was an easy decision for me,” Colony athletic director Jaime Sandoval said to Clay Fowler of the Daily Bulletin at the time. “I felt, and I think everybody else in the room felt like he is ready.”
And this is what Bechtel said about leaving Los Osos (who many felt was next in line to become the school’s next football coach to replace Tom Martinez). “It was a tough decision – I’ve had other opportunities since I’ve been at Los Osos – but I felt like this was the perfect fit with my philosophy. Tom (Martinez) is a young man. He’s got plenty of years left and I didn’t want to be the one to push him out.”
It was a brief two-year run in which he posted a winning record (18-7) and had his team advance to the semifinals of the CIF-SS Central Division playoffs.
In a sign of what was to become for the next decade and a half, Bechtel resigned in May of 2012. “I need to do what’s best for my family and what’s best for me at this point in my life,” Bechtel said to Fowler. “I’ve been fortunate enough to have some opportunities presented to me virtually every season and there’s some things that have struck my attention. I don’t have anything for sure in the works, but I have a good feeling that things are going to develop.”
What developed was a relationship with then-head coach Derek Bub at Chino Hills HS and shortly after he left Colony, he was back in a football huddle as the offensive coordinator at Chino Hills HS. It seemed like the perfect fit. Bub was considered one of the top defensive minds in the area and Bechtel was still regarded highly for his offensive creativity.
It worked perfectly for one year and then Bechtel got his second chance as coach when he was elevated to the head coaching spot in January of 2013 when Bub stepped down to pursue a career in school administration.
“This is a prestigious job,” Coach Bechtel said to Champion Newspapers the day he got hired. “My feet have been off the ground for a few days after learning I got the position.”
For many in the area, they felt that this was the job he wanted, and it seemed like the perfect fit. Bechtel always said that he wanted to get some of the top players “in the I-15 corridor” to come to a school like Chino Hills and this was the perfect chance.
Bechtel has an in-your-face mentality when it comes to competing. There is no grey area. Oh sure, he would say that he respected most coaches – but not all of them. If you were in his line of fire, he wanted not just to beat you, but to pummel you into submission. He had the mentality of an MMA fighter. The only way to win was not just beating you but making you “tap out.”
And that rubbed people the wrong way and that reputation started when he was at Chino Hills. He knew that the Baseline League was the perfect platform for his brash personality. He would get players to transfer to the school and, most importantly, he was winning.
In the three years that he was at Chino Hills, he produced a 25-10 record, and in his third year with the program, they advanced to the semifinals of the Division 2 playoffs. Everything seems to be going swimmingly for the young coach.
And then, in another sign of what was to come, he was gone.
He stepped down as coach in December of 2015 and in an email to Michelle Gardner of the Daily Bulletin, he said, “At this time it is in the best interest of my family and I that I step away from my coaching duties at Chino Hills. I am uncertain of what my next steps will be, but using the game of football to mentor young men is a major part of who I am. I wish Chino Hills Football much success and I have faith in whatever the future holds for me.”
As you will see, it is the family component that he has used whenever it came to change. It didn’t take long until he was back on the sideline as the head coach at South Hills HS. He took over a program that had fallen on hard times. It was a program that was a shadow of what it was in the 2000s under the guidance of Steve Bogan.
In his first remarks as the South Hills coach, he publicly understood the history of the program and what it would take to bring the program back to prominence.
“I feel excited and blessed at the opportunity to lead the football program at South Hills,” Bechtel said to Fred Robledo of the Southern California Newspaper Group. “The confidence and the support that I felt through this interview process along with the vision that this administration team has for the football program but also for the school as a whole is the best I’ve seen in my 20-year career. I am fully aware of the rich and successful history that South Hills has had, and my staff and I are going to work as hard as we can to bring that back.”
And he did – with the flare and brashness that you would expect from Bechtel. In 2018, it reached its zenith as he finally won a sectional title with a 23-14 win over Oxnard, who was coached by Ventura County coaching legend Jon Mack. In one of the more indelible moments that I will never forget, Bechtel found his quarterback Khalil Ali after the championship presentation and gave him one of the more emotional hugs that you ever saw from Bechtel. It was an embrace of two competitors who worked extraordinarily hard on the practice field and the meeting rooms.
Beneath the surface though, there were cracks in the armor. A year before, South Hills lost to Burbank as the top seed in the quarterfinals and there was a post-game encounter that saw players from both teams get into an altercation. That certainly didn’t help Bechtel's reputation as a “rebel.”
Then there was the 2017 game between South Hills and Charter Oak, a game that was much-hyped in the area, in which Charter Oak won 37-14. And while Bechtel would say all the right things immediately following the game, he still couldn’t wrap his arms around the loss. “I know we are better than those guys,” he said to me 30 minutes after the game. “We made some mistakes on the special teams end, and I didn’t do a great job preparing a good game plan. This one is on me because the score doesn’t reflect how good we are.”
In his book “Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot,” Golf psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella says, “Take the negative emotions out of your mistakes and bad shots and just accept them… Worrying is the same as physically practicing wrong – if you do it a lot.”
For Bechtel worrying was the weakest part of the game off the field. He worried about what other people said – especially on social media. He would get into a “Twitter” fight with certain members of the media and then would call someone else just to say “Can you believe what (fill in the blank) said on Twitter?”
The sectional title he won in 2018, however, raised his stock in the coaching circle once again. In 2019, he was given the chance he always wanted – to be the head coach at Damien HS. The reason was simple.
It was his alma mater.
As would be the case, he would take subtle shots at the previous head coach (Mark Paredes, a coaching legend in the SGV) and say it was “time for me to do it the right way.”
In the mind of Bechtel, it didn’t matter that winning at Damien was a tough nut to crack. Respected coaches like Paredes, Gano, and others just couldn’t find the right combination. He was so confident in his coaching ability that he felt that he was the right one to bring Damien back to football prominence.
What followed was five of the most interesting years that anyone could remember at Damien. For all the gravitas that Bechtel has, if you were to say that his tenure at Damien was an underwhelming one, you have a lot of evidence on your side.
If you don’t count the COVID season of 2020 (early 2021), Bechtel had only one winning season at Damien, and it was this past season. But that didn’t stop him from doing things that he felt would bring a winner to the school. He renovated the weight room, changed the colors of the stripes on the helmet, and developed the mantra “With or without our sword.”
Damien celebrates their win 2022 win over Loyola. (Escarcega)
After a slow start to the 2022 season, I decided to attend their game at Loyola. I wrote about it for a Sunday column. It was a win that the program desperately needed. It wasn’t the result that raised eyebrows more than what he said afterward that showed that even though he claimed he wasn’t on social media, he was aware of what was being said on it.
“All the nonsense being (said) about Damien on social media… it’s terrible. What I’m trying to get my kids to understand is that if we block out all the noise, let the Twitter cowboys be Twitter cowboys and hide behind their keyboards and we’re just going to keep working.”
It would be that quote that would give everyone an insight into his mind. Even though he claimed that he was not listening – he was and was going to call people out. That brashness would end up being one of the main factors why he was a polarizing figure in the valley.
Then came the two encounters against Bishop Amat. The first was in 2021 and, much like the South Hills vs Charter Oak game in 2017, the game had a pre-game sizzle, but not a lot of bite. Bishop Amat toyed with Damien and easily won, 53-28. Afterward, if you closed your eyes, you would have felt that you were at Charter Oak in 2017.
My assignment for the SGV Tribune that night was to cover the Damien sideline. When the game was over and I had done my online video interview with Bechtel, we walked the sideline together and he was still in denial about the loss. “I’m at a loss for words personally,” Bechtel said. “I know that we are just as good as they are. I don’t understand it, but we’ll get better from it.”
It was also the beginning of what would become a clash of egos between him and Bishop Amat coach Steve Hagerty. At the end of the game, Hagerty claimed that Bechtel didn’t shake his hand in the postgame handshake line. Hagerty didn’t say anything publicly about it, but he was rubbed the wrong way about it.
So, when both teams played again in 2022, and Bishop Amat once again prevailed 35-7, both coaches wouldn’t shake hands and a fight developed that was so heated that one of the parents on the Amat squad, Jesse Ramos (the father of star running back Aiden Ramos) filed a police report alleging that his son was assaulted by two Damien coaches.
The punishment for Bechtel was a tough one as he was not allowed to coach on the sideline for the rest of the year with James Stewart stepping in as the interim coach. And for a moment it appeared as if Bechtel might be gone as coach.
However, he was back in 2023 and through it all, he remained as brash a figure as you will find in the area. The story of the revival of Damien football in 2023 was one of the reasons why I decided to go to their game against Mira Costa. Before the game, Bechtel was still the same, but there appeared to be a true focus on his team. He made the big change of dialing down the program’s presence on Twitter and allowing the action on the field to be heard.
And it was.
“I said this a couple of weeks ago, I’m not on social media, and I’m purposely not on social media because most of what is being reported in the high school football world is negative,” Bechtel said after their 56-24 win. “It is what I consider poison. But what I will tell you is that when I hear about it, it 100 percent motivates me personally to be better. I don’t want to prove the naysayers wrong; I believe in proving the people who love us to prove them right.”
It was all the proof that one person needed to predict that the Spartans were going to be competitive in the Baseline League and make the playoffs in Division 2. And that’s exactly what happened. It didn’t matter to many of us that the Spartans lost to Murrieta Valley in the first round, the message was clear – Damien was back.
And then it happened again.
Another issue that would forever scar the tenure of Bechtel at Damien and his coaching career. This past July, after losing to Upland in a passing league tournament game at Mission Viejo HS, both teams got into a scuffle with the video showing that it was a Damien player that started the altercation.
If you needed more evidence that Damien hadn’t turned the corner, this was it.
Which led to Friday’s stunning news that Bechtel had decided to step down as coach. The statement was curious in that it said that Bechtel “can focus on the health and strength of his family.”
Interpret it anywhere you want, but it is clear that it is time for Bechtel to get his house in order. The final nail in the coffin was the news that Elijah Bechtel (who is committed to playing football at the Army) will be playing football this fall at San Marcos HS in San Diego.
There are a few things that need to be said and young coaches to understand. First, say what you want about Bechtel, when it comes to the game of football, the valley is worse for not having Bechtel on the sideline. He is one of the more intellectual coaches you will find and one of the top motivators in the game. Bechtel made Friday nights more interesting.
However, he couldn’t see beneath his own shadow. The source of his motivation is a lesson for young coaches. Don’t do it just to show everyone on Twitter that you can coach. Be that coach who is a leader of men (or women). Do it for the love of the game. Do it for the surge of adrenaline that you get with it’s the fourth quarter of a tight game and you need to score to make the playoffs.
Let me offer one more piece of advice for young coaches – stay away from Twitter Spaces on Friday night. Your job is tough enough that you don’t need more stress in your life. The temptation is there to listen after your game is done. You want to listen for the gossip and innuendo. Let me make this clear – being on “Spaces” is the last thing you need. Here is a better thing to do, have a postgame dinner with the coaches on your staff. Talk to another coaching colleague of yours about each other’s game.
How about listening to a podcast about learning the mental part of the game (here’s an idea – The Finding Mastery Podcast with Dr. Michael Gervais is a great place to start). Spaces are for fans – not for coaches! It’s time to reclaim the physical and mental part of your life and being on “Spaces” should not be on your listening list.
There is no doubt in my mind that Bechtel will be back as a coach sometime soon.
As the saying goes “there is too much meat on the bone.”
This is why Bechtel’s story is one that many can learn from. If you focus on your job and follow the rules, you will be successful. If Steve Bogan and Mike Maggiore can do it – so can you.
Let’s get to work!