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Lyon Shared His Labor of Love
by Bob Keisser, Long Beach Press-Telegram
October 17, 2006
There's no need to call any forensics experts in this quite special
case. Howard Lyon's fingerprints are all over Long Beach sports.
Some sportsmen take their talents and spread them to different parts of
the world or country. Others stay close to home, touch as many lives as
possible and put together a totally successful career. Howard Lyon is
the epitome of the latter.
The late basketball coach and sports administrator will be inducted into
the Long Beach State sports Hall of Fame on Thursday night, and while
his contributions to the school were notable, he served the community
on a much larger scale.
As a 49er, Lyon was the leading scorer (12.5 points a game) on the first
Long Beach State basketball team in the 1950-51 season, a squad that in
the school's second year of existence went 3-14 with an assortment of
transfer students.
A year later, he was the team captain and one of just three lettermen
on the team that improved to 10-13, winning its first four games, going
7-4 at home and over .500 into its last few games.
Those were just two integral seasons in a career of coaching and service
in the community that included a pair of stints serving the Long Beach
Unified School District.
"The best thing about Howard is that he was a real gentleman,"
said Sam Breuklander, the longtime Long Beach State booster and a member
of the Hall of Fame committee. "As tough as the coaching world is,
it was remarkable that someone so cordial accomplish all that he did."
The diminutive Lyon, who was 5-7, was born in Long Beach and graduated
from Poly, where he was named `B' basketball city MVP by the Press-Telegram.
He began his teaching and coaching career at Washington Junior High, briefly
moved to Avalon High School in Catalina, and then returned home to the
mainland at his alma mater.
He served as head varsity basketball coach for three years (1957-59),
going 52-26.
He then left Poly to become the head coach at Millikan, where he excelled
in 12 seasons, never having a losing season while going 234-97 and leading
Millikan to the postseason seven times and the 1970 CIF title.
That 1970 team held Monrovia to 11 points in the first half of the 68-37
title game trouncing and produced three All-CIF players in Richard Plante,
Dan Peters and Dave Frost, who would go on to star in basketball and baseball,
at Long Beach City College, Stanford and with the Angels.
He left Millikan the following year for a better career opportunity, becoming
head coach at Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles) in La Mirada. "Leaving
Millikan is a lot harder than people think," Lyon said at the time.
"Whatever success a coach has is due to the people he works with.
This is just a good long-term opportunity for me."
He succeeded immediately at the NAIA school that had been playing collegiate
basketball for a decade with little proficiency. In 17 seasons from 1971
to 1988, he went 401-143 (.737), won 20 games or more 13 times, won his
conference or district title 11 times, and advanced to the NAIA playoffs
15 times.
His best year was 1982, when Biola won its first 39 games, a collegiate
record on any level, before losing the NAIA title game to South Carolina-Spartanburg.
His 1984 team won the NCCAA championship (Christian college) tournament.
He actually shared the job for a majority of his Biola career with Dave
Holmquist, the two splitting the duties. Lyon coached the offense and
did the administrative work while Holmquist handled the defense and recruiting.
Lyon, who was a three-time NAIA district coach of the year, was very self-effacing.
Asked about his coaching ability, he usually shrugged off any accolades.
"It's hard to evaluate oneself," he told the Press-Telegram
in the mid-80s. "All I can say is that I love the games and I love
to work with the students."
Lyon retired after the 1987 season but was talked back into coaching one
last season (1989) when Biola found itself without a head coach. He then
segued into the second part of his career, back with Long Beach Unified.
He became the district's middle school sports director and the Moore League
secretary. He more than doubled the size of the middle school program
and became the Moore League's unofficial historian while keeping track
of its schedules and competition.
"He was a tireless worker and such a champion of sports for the youth
in this town," said Jim Lineberger, the current district sports director
whose late father, a local icon in his own right, was Lyon's friend and
colleague. "He was quite a guy. He always had the league and the
kid's best interests in heart."
Lineberger said there were maybe a dozen schools involved in the middle
school sports program when Lyon took it over in the early `90s. By the
time Lyon passed in 2002, it had grown to 23 schools offering programs
in eight sports (four boys, four girls).
"I was a student at Poly when he was the coach but didn't really
get to know him until he went to work for the district," Breuklander
said. "He's responsible that the program even exists, because at
the time he came on there was talk of closing it because funds were running
out. He convinced the powers that it was something the district needed."
"He wanted to make it available to as many kids as he could,"
Lineberger said. "He grew up in the era where you went from football
to basketball to track each year, and he encouraged kids to play as many
sports as they could.
"He always thought the middle schools were the last chance for kids
to have real simple fun in sports." Lyon clearly had fun, and success,
in his athletic life.
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