At Loyola and Westlake, volleyball is a family enterprise

It was the Sunday morning after Loyola High’s volleyball team lost to Mira Costa in a Southern Section championship match. Coach Michael Boehle was asleep with his wife, Lisa. There was a knock on the bedroom door.

Their oldest son, Parker, a top player on the team, wanted to talk.

“I’m sorry,” he told his father. “I let you down.”

Michael Boehle still gets emotional remembering the moment four years later.

“That’s when I had to be Dad,” he said, his voice cracking. “It showed me how much he cared and how much he loved playing for me as Dad and coach.”

Doug Magorien, the volleyball coach at Westlake Village Westlake, had his own emotional moment this season watching his youngest son, Troy, in a match against Newbury Park. The Panthers kept serving the ball to Troy, thinking he was the weak link for Westlake. And Troy kept making passes that led to a victory.

At the end, Magorien said, “I had a tear running down, not because we had beaten Newbury Park but because he had reached another plateau in his career.”

For all the horror stories associated with fathers coaching their sons — shouting matches, excessive pressure, unrealistic expectations — there are also good times.

For Boehle and Magorien, it’s the end of an era. The two longtime coaches have seen their boys grow up before their eyes. Boehle has coached for 18 years at Loyola and won five Southern Section titles. Magorien coached for 18 years at Woodland Hills Taft, winning four City titles. He’s been at Westlake for 15 years.

Parker, 21; Hayden, 20; and Davis, 18, played for their father at Loyola. Davis is a senior on a team seeded No. 2 in the Southern Section Division 1 playoffs.

Travis, 22; Colby, 20; and Troy, 17, have played for their father at Westlake. The oldest brother, Taylor, 25, is playing professionally after graduating from Agoura. Troy is a junior for a team that won the Marmonte League title but lost in the Division 1 playoffs Thursday.

Each coach and father deployed rules to make sure their sons understood that on the court it was a player-coach relationship.

“I told them when we’re on the court, I’m your coach,” Boehle said. “When we’re home, I’m Dad. They understood there was a line to be drawn.”

Every year a Magorien son showed up at Westlake, they had to learn a lesson.

“They would think they could question me as Dad,” Magorien said. “I’d say,

‘The whole team is on the line.’”

Stuck in the middle have been the moms and wives, both named Lisa.

“She is the backbone behind my success,” Boehle said of his wife. “She never involves herself in the volleyball aspect of our kids’ lives. She allowed me to do what I had to do as coach. We disciplined together. We loved together.”

Lisa Magorien, an assistant principal at Chaminade and a former athlete, is a little more involved on the volleyball side.

Her sons joke, “OK, Coach Lisa.”

“They like to dismiss me when I inject my opinion,” she said. “If we lose, sometimes I don’t like to go home. There’s drama.”

But Troy said, “She tries to stay neutral and tries to find the best solution,” although, he added, there have been some “mishaps.”

“He knows when to pull the trigger,” he said of his father. “If I talk back during a game, I’m pulled out. Then he’s, ‘Are you ready to go back in?’ It’s gotten me to not talk back. ‘Yes, Coach.’”

The youngest sons have thrived in their roles as the final ones playing for their father.

“I always loved seeing my brothers play,” Troy said. “They were like my heroes.”

Said Davis: “It’s definitely been fun.”

And Parker, now at UC Santa Barbara, says of his father, “He’s the best coach I ever had and I know my brothers feel the same way.”

There are no more Boehle boys, but there is a 15-year-old daughter, Ella, who plays volleyball for Notre Dame Academy. If only Boehle

can get Loyola, an all-boys school, to change its no-girls policy.

“We’re working on it,” he said.

Follow Eric Sondheimer on Twitter: @LATSondheimer