Scott White happy to be home coaching San Diego State linebackers

Scott White has seen highs.

He won back-to-back CIF San Diego Section championships in 2000-01 at Mission Bay High School.

“You learn what it takes to be a champion,” said White, who was the section’s Defensive Player of the Year his senior year while also rushing for nearly 1,000 yards and 20 touchdowns.

White also has seen lows.

He played at the University of Washington from 2003-06, enduring one of the worst stretches —14-32 over four years — in the Huskies’ proud history.

“The program was historically strong, and that was a dark time,” White said. “I think they needed to go through it to get back on track.”

The ups and downs taught White perseverance that served him well when he moved into coaching.

“As you try to climb the ranks in the coaching world, there’s a lot of no’s, nah, next time,” White said. “So you just keep going. And that was my path as a coach. It wasn’t just, boom, right to where I’m at now.”

Where White is now is back in San Diego as the Aztecs’ linebackers coach. He was hired after SDSU defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Rob Aurich was lured away by Nebraska.

White has been coaching for the past two decades, spending most of his time at San Jose State and UCLA.

It seems everyone but White himself was certain he would turn to coaching after he was done playing.

“We had three different head coaches and coaching staffs when I was at Washington,” White said. “At that point, I was kind of ready to do something else. Like, I had been playing football my whole life, since I was 7 years old, and thought maybe it’s time to do something else.”

A girl he was dating at the time brought home a newspaper with an ad for assistant coach openings at Seattle Preparatory School, a prominent Washington school. White and two Huskies teammates were hired. He made $4,000 a year. But it wasn’t about the money.

“We were all out there the first day,” White said. “I was sparked. I said, ‘This is it. I found it.’ It’s funny how things work out. The playing didn’t go how it was supposed to go. This is really what you’re supposed to do. The playing, the experience and lessons you learn from there, and the coaches I crossed paths with, it was setting me up for this.”

If he had not gone into coaching, White said he probably would have become a teacher.

“The drawback with that was I didn’t want to spend my whole life in a classroom,” he said. “You go from kindergarten all through college, and where are you? You’re in a classroom. You get out of college, and what do you go back to? A classroom.”

Coaching is teaching outdoors, film study with the players aside.

White was UCLA’s associate head coach and inside linebackers coach last year when the staff was dismissed after the season.

“That was unfortunate,” he said, “but while that storm was brewing, the good man upstairs was cooking up something better on the other side of that.”

White came into a situation where one of his starting linebackers, Owen Chambliss, transferred to Nebraska, and the other one, Tano Letuli, is sidelined until the fall after reconstructive knee surgery. In addition, two top reserves were lost to graduation.

Senior transfer Sione Hala (Weber State) and junior transfer Cameron Cooper (Western Colorado) have stepped up during the spring, although Cooper has been sidelined with a finger injury in recent weeks.

“Both of those guys are really talented,” White said.

Sophomore Dean Harrington, who had three tackles last season, sophomore transfer Jeramiah Lewis (College of San Mateo), true freshman Javari Nash and sophomore walk-on Oberhiri Eyafe, a converted safety, also have impressed.

“Right now, we’re really trying to establish a style of play,” White said.

And that is?

“We say in our room, ‘Heart. Mind. Fist,’” said White, explaining, “Heart is how much you love to play the game, love the program and how connected we are. The mind is being smart, dependable, making great decisions on and off the field. The leadership and communication. And then fist is, obviously, go be violent, go be physical.

“When people see that on tape, they’re going to be like, ‘Damn, these guys play hard, they play smart and they play physically.’”

At this point, it’s still a work in progress, but White is encouraged by what he has seen.

“It is spring ball,” White said. “I always tell them this is the worst we’re going to be. Train ugly. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. If you make one, we’ll clean it up. … These guys have been great. They don’t always know what to do, but they’re trying to give me what I’m asking, and that’s part of this process.”