Div. I title coaches are rivals, friends
Afew years ago, before they really got to know each other, Chandler Hamilton coach Steve Belles and Phoenix Mountain Pointe coach Norris Vaughan had a spat.
It was during a seven-on-seven passing league, and Belles thought Vaughan’s Mountain Pointe team was being a bit too physical.
“I said, ‘You want to do this, you want to get this physical, we’ll do it in the regular season,’ ” Belles recalled. “I just thought the passing league wasn’t the place to get physical. We got into it a little bit.”
Said Vaughan: “Yeah, we kind of had a disagreement. We’re not one to hide our feelings too much. It was a little quarrel.”
Saturday, the two coaches and their teams will meet for the second straight year in the Division I state championship game. Hamilton-Mountain Pointe has grown into a full-fledged rivalry that inflames fans and message boards, but Vaughan and Belles have risen above the rancor and built a genuine friendship.
At any public event, whether it’s National Letter of Intent Day or a media gathering, the two men can often be found sharing the same table, engaged in a lengthy conversation.
“We kind of have become pretty good friends over the years,” Vaughan said.
The relationship was first built on respect. Belles admired the way Vaughan rebuilt the Mountain Pointe program, using many of the same principles he believes in at Hamilton.
“I can remember a few years before he got there we played Mountain Pointe at our place and led something like 42-0 at halftime,” Belles said. “The program was in disarray. It’s not like they didn’t have good kids, but they didn’t have a direction.
“When he came in he really turned everything around there. Not everybody agreed with what he did — change is hard for some people — but he did it for the bet- terment of the kids. You have to respect that and from an outside perspective I really did.”
As Mountain Pointe grew into a powerhouse, Vaughan and Belles found common ground in dealing with the expectations and pressure — “I think he sees what I go through, and I see what he goes through,” Belles said — of coaching an elite program.
Eventually, they moved away from the football field. They’ll talk about family and, interestingly, their feelings about the Arizona Interscholastic Association. Both Vaughan and Belles believe coaches should have a greater say in policies that affect their sport, and they’re not shy about expressing their opinion.
“I don’t see a whole lot of bull crap in him, and that’s pretty much where I am,” Vaughan said.
Vaughan can’t understand why his friendship with Belles might surprise some people. When he coached in Georgia, he said, the coach of his cross-town rival was one of his best friends and his golfing partner during the summer.
“When you play a game with your brothers and friends, that’s when it’s time to compete,” he said.
“When it’s over you stop competing. That’s the way it should be and that’s the kind of feeling I have with him (Belles).”
Belles does have one small issue with Vaughan: All those references to his Georgia coaching days. But even then, the disagreement is more humorous than rancorous.
“I tell him, ‘You have to quit bringing up Georgia football,’ ” Belles said. “You’re in Arizona. We play good football here. If you don’t like it you can always go back to Georgia.”
The two have enough respect for one another that their relation- ship wasn’t strained when Belles stood on the Mountain Pointe sideline during the Pride’s game in the Barry Sollenberger Classic in August and eventually had to be asked to leave that side of the field.
“He can get in my huddle if he wants to. I don’t care,” Vaughan said. “We play each other all the time. We know what each other is doing.”
Sometime before Saturday’s game, the two men will meet near midfield, shake hands and talk for a few minutes. When the game begins, they’ll be rivals. When it ends, they’ll be friends.
“Some people are in attack mode all the time out here,” Vaughan said. “But we just like each other.”