Amphitheater High School football coach Vern Friedli, left, congratulates his players as the clock winds down against Mesa High School to win the 1979 Arizona state football championship on Dec. 6, 1979. Photo by Joe Vitti / Arizona Daily Star
Dec. 6, 1979: Amphitheater becomes last Tucson football team to win state championship in largest classification
Nine buses each carrying 52 students and teachers left Amphitheater High School in mid-afternoon. It was a Thursday, an odd day to stage a state championship football game.
The Amphi football team had left school about an hour earlier; coach Vern Friedli scheduled a pregame workout at McClintock High School, a short drive from Sun Devil Stadium.
About an hour before kickoff, the Panthers got back on the bus. It wouldn’t start.
“Are you kidding me?” Friedli said to no one in particular.
Nothing had stopped his 12-0 Panthers all season; they rolled past 12 opponents by a combined score of 287-74. The only close game had been the state semifinal, a 7-0 victory over Apollo High, a game in which Friedli’s defense staged a goal-line-stand-for-the-ages in the final two minutes.
All the players got off the bus and began to push, hoping they could roll-start the engine.
As with everything connected to Amphi’s 1979 football season, it was a success.
Over the next few hours, the Panthers routed Mesa High 27-0. It was Friedli’s fourth year at Amphi. It would be the last state championship by a Tucson football team in the highest classification of Arizona prep football.
Amphi and Friedli might have won four or five more had they chosen to move down to a lower classification more reflective of the smaller student body. But over the next two decades, Friedli chose to play against the mega-sized schools from Phoenix. Best against the best.
Yet somehow, when he announced his retirement on Feb. 28, 2012, Friedli had completed his Amphi coaching career with a state-record 331 victories. The facility at Amphi had been named “Friedli Field” in 2001.
“You never expect anything like this. It’s hard to put into words, really,” Friedli said. “I’ve been blessed. That’s about the best way I can describe it. All these good things shouldn’t happen to one person.”
The most tangible evidence of Friedli’s “good things” was the ’79 state title game.
The Panthers had just one first-team All-State player that season, running back Arlen Bethay. Yet they knocked off Tucson’s top challengers, Salpointe Catholic 18-7 and Sunnyside 15-0 with a stubborn defense that was full of clutch players like Ron Conway, Kim Hewson, Randy German and Rob Liuerance.
“We just play good ol’ Amphi football,” said quarterback Sam Molina.
Friedli’s offense of choice was for decades the Wishbone or triple option. Old school stuff, running behind linemen like Craig Geyer and Neil Hamilton.
In the championship game, Amphi was so dominant that Mesa ran just 11 plays in the second half and gained 110 yards in the entire game. A 56-yard touchdown pass to Sky Moore and a 26-yard run by Bethay put the game away.
“We didn’t have any hot dogs on our team,” said Bethay, who gained 1,063 yards rushing.
Friedli had a difficult act to follow at Amphi; the Panthers won the 1975 state championship, and coach Jerry Loper accepted a job in Phoenix.
Friedli, who had been 4-6 at San Manuel High and 1-9 at Casa Grande High in the previous two seasons, seemed like an out-of-left-field hire.
The would-be thespian from Humboldt, California, had relocated to Fort Huachuca in 1956 as part of his military service. He met and married an Amphi grad, found work as a coach at Sunnyside Junior High and got his first head coaching job at Morenci High School in 1965.
How did Amphi pick Friedli from the long list of coaching applicants?
Athletic director Cliff Haugh, a Marine from the Korean war, was looking for much more than a man who coached football.
“I taught math and physics,” Haugh told me in 2001. “I wasn’t impressed by wins and losses. We were looking for a man of character. We were looking for someone who would put the welfare of the kids first. We were looking for a man of even temperament. I was quite impressed by Vern Friedli.”
Where are they now? Friedli, who retired in 2011 and turned 80 in September of 2016, suffered two strokes, the second of which he suffered in the spring of 2015. He died July 21, 2017. Molina, the 1979 quarterback, a retired police officer, is a safety supervisor for Tucson Electric Power.
How they did it: Amphi was undefeated at home from 1972 to 1981. Friedli attended a 1970s coaching seminar by Ohio State’s Woody Hayes, who, Friedli said, spoke for 2½ hours but never mentioned winning. “It was all about care, share, be there and be disciplined.”
Photo: Amphitheater High School football coach Vern Friedli, left, congratulates his players as the clock winds down against Mesa High School to win the 1979 Arizona state football championship on Dec. 6, 1979. Photo by Joe Vitti / Arizona Daily Star
