A car filled with gang members surrounded an Amphitheater High School football player in the school’s parking lot a few minutes after practice in October 1992. Vern Friedli, the Panthers football coach, heard a commotion and rushed to the scene.
Friedli, who was probably 5 feet 9 inches and 150 pounds, broke up the confrontation and protected his player. Friedli ordered the visitors, who were not students at Amphi, to leave the premises. Gang members threatened to return and kill both Friedli and the player.
Once school officials reported the incident to the police, Friedli was encouraged to skip that week’s game against Buena.
"I’m coaching," he said.
The police and school officials successfully persuaded Friedli to wear a bulletproof vest to school and to the game, as well as to the following week's game against Canyon del Oro. About 20 undercover officers walked the sidelines and searched the bleachers. Four gang members were ultimately arrested.
The Panthers won both games.
It’s the same Vern Friedli who insisted that Amphi "play up," meaning he chose to be part of the state’s Class 5A classification, challenging the Phoenix super schools year after year in the state playoffs — even when Amphi had less than half the enrollment of opposing schools.
It’s the same Vern Friedli who set a state record by winning 331 football games (288 of them at Amphi) from 1968 to 2011, which led to his induction into the National High School Athletics Association Coaches Hall of Fame.
Friedli, No. 10 on our list of Tucson’s Top 100 Sports Figures of the last 100 years, did not fit the "tough guy" football mold of the day, a period when Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler and Bear Bryant ruled by intimidation and created scores of would-be Woody’s and Bo’s.
Coach Vern Friedli of Amphitheater congratulates players as the clock winds down against Mesa High to win the state championship in 1979.
Friedli didn’t rule as much as he led.
"If your son played for Vern, he was treated right," Friedli’s longtime defensive coordinator Ed Roman told me.
Vern Friedli is an American success story like few others in Tucson sports history.
He began college at Humboldt State, near his hometown of Arcata, California. The son of a lumber mill laborer, Friedli accepted a drama scholarship at Humboldt State but had to quit college to support himself. He wound up at Fort Huachuca, a radar jammer for the United States Army.
Along the way, he met his wife, Sharon, a professional dancer, and got married in 1957. They moved back to Arcata to work on being an actor and singer.
"He had a beautiful singing voice," Sharon says now. "He was a very talented actor. He sang the solo at his high school graduation."
Ever a leader, Friedli was also the student body president at his high school. He was a three-sport athlete who ultimately decided he could make a better living for his family as an educator than as a wannabe actor.
"We moved back to Tucson because he missed the sun," Sharon remembers. "His baseball team got rained out of eight straight games one year, so he enrolled at the UA and did his student teaching at Amphi."
Friedli began his coaching career at Sunnyside Junior High School, moved to Morenci High School for 10 years, and then spent one year each at Casa Grande High School and San Manuel High School.
In 1974, he went 1-9 at Casa Grande, a school stuck in the 5A classification against larger Phoenix schools like Mesa and Scottsdale Saguaro.
In 1975, a year after Amphi won the big-school’s state championship, Friedli was one of seven interviewed to replace coach Jerry Loper, who left to coach in Phoenix.
"I learned so much from Coach Friedli," former Amphi lineman and Ironwood Ridge state championship head coach Matt Johnson, now the head coach at Mountain View, told me. "He would always talk about the year he went 1-9 at Casa Grande and not about his championships. It was a much better learning tool."
In '79, Friedli coached Amphi to a 13-0 season, and the Panthers became the last Tucson school to win at the highest level of Arizona prep football. Had Friedli chosen to play at the Class 4A level, it’s not unrealistic to think Amphi might have won five or six more state titles. Instead, I thought Friedli’s career was defined by the 1997 5A state championship game against mega-power Mesa Mountain View, which won seven state titles from 1983 to 2002.
Amphi’s enrollment that season was 1,980; Mountain View’s was 3,968. Amphi dressed 43 players for the title game; Mountain View suited up 88.
Yet with 3:30 remaining — and facing fourth-and-1 at the Mountain View 39-yard line — Amphi led 24-21. A successful fourth-down conversion would surely win the game.
Friedli called timeout and walked to Amphi’s huddle. He asked his players what they’d like to do: punt or call a fourth-down play?
The players asked him to call "Smash 22," with 2,000-yard rusher Antrel Bates given an opportunity to get the first down.
The play failed, and Mountain View rallied to score in the final minute, winning 28-24.
Vern Friedli could have had his Panthers drop down a class or two, but he always wanted to try to battle the state's biggest programs.
After the game, I stood near Amphi’s huddle in the end zone. Most of the players had been crying, but Friedli was upbeat.
"They have so much courage," he said. "What a crew. They’re just a raggy-taggy bunch of kids. Nobody has tested Mountain View like we did. My admiration for the kids is immeasurable."
Amphi didn’t get the biggest trophy that night, but I left Sun Devil Stadium feeling as if Friedli’s Panthers were champions.
Head coach Vern Friedli directs his team during practice at Amphi in 2003.
Friedli coached until he was 75; he retired after a stroke had made it difficult for him to commit to the 24/7 schedule and year-round training he incorporated decades earlier. He died of stroke-related causes in the summer of 2017. He was 80.
Amphi held a celebration of Friedli’s life in the school gymnasium on a Saturday afternoon. About 300 of his former players returned for the ceremony.
“One thing Coach always stressed was ‘make your mother proud,'" 1997 star linebacker Justin Foss said that day, wiping away tears. "He was like a father to all of us."
