Ickes Keeps Success in Proper Perspective

SANTA ANA —  There’s an impression, fair or unfair, that Mater Dei’s athletic programs are the height of arrogance and aloofness. The Monarchs who would be kings. That they are so good they can’t wait to rub their opponents’ faces in it.

Well, Bob Ickes’ baseball program doesn’t fit that impression.

Oh, the program is good enough to finish the regular season as the county’s top-ranked team, with a 21-3 record. And good enough to have won its fourth consecutive South Coast League title. Good enough to be the seeded No. 2 in the Southern Section Division I playoffs, which begin this week.

Ickes strives to keep the Monarchs from lording their fortunes over others. He won’t stand for his players showing up opponents, or otherwise acting in an uncivilized fashion.

Ickes has never been thrown him out of a game in his 22 seasons as Mater Dei coach. He insists that his players display nothing but natural exuberance.

“I expect my players and our program to always show class,” Ickes said. “I won’t say winning isn’t important, but it’s not the most important thing. I expect my kids to play at a certain level, win or lose.”

Ickes, who will be 48 late this month, is known for being a rock-ribbed competitor as well as for developing fundamentally sound players.

What’s not as well known is his altruistic side.

Ickes and his fellow coaches at Mater Dei make it a practice to pass on used and extra athletic equipment to schools in need.

He has given protective field tarps to Cal State Fullerton and San Clemente High. Mission Viejo has received helmets and catching gear. And he has provided other things to other schools.

“One time he called us and said he had some extra baseball pants,” La Quinta Coach Dave Demarest said. “I thought it was 10-12 pairs. It was 10-12 cartons, both home whites and road grays. We couldn’t take enough, so he gave some to others.”

Irvine baseball Coach Bob Flint recalled the time when someone broke into his team’s equipment shed and ransacked it. “I could have done a quick fund-raiser. But [Ickes] said, ‘Here, take a bucket of balls.’ Then he calls with extra baseball pants and said what we don’t use to pass on to someone else. That’s his nature.”

Flint also remembered a more dramatic gesture.

“I had a heart attack four years ago,” Flint said. “It was during a summer league game we had against Mater Dei. I was getting the field ready before the game when it happened.

“Before the game started, when he was told why I wasn’t there, he immediately told an assistant to run the game for him and he came to the hospital. When I woke up, the first face I saw that I knew was Bob Ickes’. He got there before my wife and helped explain things to her when she arrived.

“I’ll never forget that.”

Ickes is finishing up his 25th year of teaching at Mater Dei, and even he is surprised to have been at one place for so long.

His father was a career Marine, and it was not unusual for the family to move every few years. By the time Ickes, who was born in Philadelphia, was ready for high school, the family had arrived in Santa Ana. He played baseball and graduated from Santa Ana High.

“At that time kids from Santa Ana and Mater Dei didn’t like driving down the same streets,” Ickes said.

Ickes continued playing baseball at Santa Ana College and Cal State Fullerton. He knew he had no future in the pros, so he began coaching the Titans’ freshman team his senior season.

Mater Dei offered him a teaching position in September, 1972, and Ickes has been there ever since.

Ickes’ teams have won 11 league titles (Angelus and South Coast) and one section championship, in 1980. That title-winning team finished third in the Angelus League, but defeated top-seeded Santa Fe Springs St. Paul and second-seeded El Segundo en route to the 4-A crown.

This isn’t to say Ickes’ success has gone unchallenged.

“I did get a Southern Section call about four years ago, of some parent accusing him of recruiting a player,” Principal Pat Murphy said. “We checked it out and learned the player had not made the freshman team here, went on to a public school and said he was recruited.

“But Bob is pretty much respected throughout the league and community. I’ve never heard any negativity except for silly innuendoes.”

Ickes will neither predict another section title this season--”In this type of [one-game elimination] tournament, No. 32 can beat No. 1 on any given day,” he said--nor compare his 1996 team to his 1985 squad that finished 24-2, except when it comes to team unity.

“They definitely compare to 1985, and the 1988 and 1989 teams in that they have real friendship,” Ickes said. “No small cliques, but together. They do what the coaches ask and like being with each other.”

He said this year’s team developed and progressed farther than he imagined it would.

“They seem to be a team that is able to focus on what they need to do,” Ickes said.

“[The staff] didn’t think in the fall they would be as good as they’ve shown. We thought the physical talent was there, but we weren’t sure if emotionally they could play at the level we need to play at for the level of competition we face.

“Sometime during the summer and fall leagues, the kids realized that if they didn’t pick it up mentally, they would not be good. We don’t set any seasonal goals; it’s game by game. And this team has exceeded what we expected from them.”

No matter the outcome of the playoffs, Ickes isn’t ready to retire, as he nearly did four years ago.

“This team of seniors would not have been my team,” Ickes said. “I had picked Tim O’Donoghue [Tustin’s coach] to be the successor. But word of it got out, and my wife said she didn’t want me at home yet.

“I will continue to coach as long as the amount of time I put in is fun for me to put in. I don’t want a timetable. I think the school is happy with what I do.”

Ickes said the only other place he would consider coaching would be Loyola Marymount, “but I don’t think they’d give a high school guy the chance,” he said.