Bob Johnson: 300 wins for now

In the last two weeks, two new football coaches joined the all-time state list of those with 200 varsity career wins. We’re sure as well that Mission Viejo’s Bob Johnson has become just the fifth to reach 300, but more details need to be researched to see if he actually has more.

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It’s too bad we couldn’t dig into the card files of legendary high school football historian Bruce McIntosh on Thursday even though he paid us a visit to our Stockton office.

Bruce’s files happen to be in storage these days back down in Southern California but he’d have the definitive answer as to whether Mission Viejo head coach Bob Johnson actually has more than 300 career wins.
Record Book
When reached Thursday in his coaching office at Mission Viejo with his sons – Bret and Rob – nearby, Johnson (as almost every coach like him) didn’t know his coaching record.

“The (Orange County) Register has me down for 300 and that’s okay by me,” he said. “I haven’t paid attention to those kinds of things.”

According to our own state coaching records, Johnson’s 300th win came last Friday when the Diablos beat La Habra with his grandson, Brock Johnson (Bret’s son), starting at quarterback.

The Register’s Steve Fryer also tweeted it out last Friday that it’s reported total for the Mission Viejo head coach was the same.

Still, in looking over all of the material in our files, there could be some varsity wins that Johnson posted during his first coaching stint at Los Amigos of Fountain Valley that are not included. Since the coach himself doesn’t know for sure, the best way to find out will be to look up Los Amigos info for the years in question on newspaper microfilm or in Bruce McIntosh’s card files, which contain the all-time scores of every California high school football team.

Johnson was more interested on Thursday, of course, to talk about the progress this year’s Mission Viejo team, which started out with losses to Liberty of Bakersfield and Oceanside before the win against the Highlanders.

“It’s coming along,” he said. “Yes, we’re young. We only have two guys on offense who started last year and only three on defense. But experience wise, we are 50-50 with juniors and seniors. It’s just been too many mistakes.”

200 CLUB ADDS TWO

It may not be too many years before there are 100 football coaches on the state’s all-time list of those with 200 varsity wins.

The 84th to join the milestone club was Jim Hartigan from JSerra of San Juan Capistrano. He won No. 200 two weekends ago when the Lions defeated Chino Hills 45-21. Hartigan began his career at nearby Santa Margarita from 1989-2002 where his teams won CIF Southern Section titles (96, 97) and he coached QB Carson Palmer. He then left to coach for several years at Clovis West of Fresno (2003-06) before returning to South Orange County to start the program at JSerra.

Last weekend, Hartigan was followed by Terry Logue from Bear River of Lake of the Pines. Logue’s team belted Amador of Sutter Creek 35-7 to improve to 2-1 on the season. He ended the 2013 season at 198-89-3 including 1981-82 at Paradise, 1987-2001 at Bear River and again at Bear River 2004 to current.

Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports


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One Comment

  1. Michael Ray
    Posted September 24, 2014 at 11:34 am | Permalink

    Mark – just for record, Logue’s 200th win was over Argonaut of Jackson, thanks Mike Ray

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