Blog Post: Despite Agoura's Football Struggles Lately, Coach Wegher Unlikely to Change the Way He Operates

Note: In the first part of this post it incorrectly stated that Casey Matthews was a sophomore at Agoura High School when his older brother, Clay, was a senior; in fact, Casey never attended Agoura. He went to the Oaks Christian School for all four years. Marshall Jones also opted to attend Oaks Christian as a freshman, so he, too, spent all four years as a Lion in Westlake Village. In this post, Part 2, Clay Matthews, the former NFL player who is now an assistant coach at Oaks Christian, will be referred to as Clay Matthews II, and his son, the star of the Green Bay Packers who played at Agoura High School, will be referred to as Clay Matthews III. With apologies to both as it will hopefully make it a little less confusing.

Part II of two posts:

In Part 1 of this post, several members of the Agoura football team that made the CIF semifinals in 2003 were quoted from a story at the end of that season. The story itself ends with the optimistic note that the Chargers not only made it that far, and went 11-2, but that the J.V. team was undefeated at 10-0 that year and therefore the future looked bright.

"We've got a lot of good football players coming back," Agoura head coach Charlie Wegher said at the time. "It's too early to start predicting anything, but I know we'll have a good group of kids again."

The Chargers, as noted in Part 1, returned to the CIF semifinals the next season. The team finished 9-4, but only lost by a point to Ventura in the semis. In the three subsequent years, Agoura lost four games each season, going 7-4, 6-4 and 6-4 from 2005-2007.

But as also noted in Part 1, the success in 2003 also marked a shift during which Agoura (as well as other schools, most notably Oak Park High) began to lose potential players to the Oaks Christian School.

Clay Matthews III graduated from Agoura in 2003, along with future NFL player Joey LaRocque and a great group of seniors. Clay Matthews II, the coach, who had played in the NFL for 19 seasons and may be a Hall of Famer someday (like his brother, Bruce) left Agoura High to become an Oaks Christian assistant coach. His son, Casey, had decided he would attend Oaks Christian. 

Marshall Jones, who along with Casey, had been a ball boy for the Agoura football team, also decided to go to Oaks Christian and his two brothers, Malcolm and Marcus Jones, also followed him to Oaks Christian in Westlake Village.

In an interview with Wegher – some of which was never published - before Clay Matthews III and the Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XLV on Feb. 6, 2011, Wegher talked about some of the events that transpired starting in 2003.

“Not really,” Wegher said when asked if there were any hard feelings about Clay Matthews II deciding to leave Agoura. "Clay's a class guy, and he told me that's what their plan was way ahead of time. And obviously, as a parent, they have the right to do whatever they think is best for their kids. And I continue to have a good relationship with Clay now.”

Matthews II would still come to Agoura to help with clinics and Wegher said he would still look forward to seeing and talking with him before Agoura/Oaks Christian football games. But Wegher said Matthews was as good a football coach as he’d ever been around, and therefore, his departure was certainly felt.

“I think him leaving changed the course of our program,” Wegher said. “Because when he left, obviously you’re losing a great coach, but (also) a lot of kids that he coached on the way up kind of followed him over there. Not that he recruited them, but when you’ve got a coach of his caliber, people know that they’re going to go where his is.

“If he’d have stayed here, I think we would have been very good for a number of years. His leaving was a big blow to our program. It’s been hard to replace a guy like that.”

About the fact that Marshall Jones and Casey Matthews were ball boys for the Agoura football team, Wegher noted how cautious he was not to break recruiting rules.

“Marshall and Casey both were ball boys for us when Clay (the coach) was here,” Wegher said. “I was nervous about even talking to them. At that point I was so naïve about what was going on with everybody else, I didn’t want to get accused of recruiting these kids.”

Wegher’s reference to ‘everybody else’ means that some people do, in fact, recruit or use "undue influence" to entice football players.

“They were on the [Agoura] sideline every night,” Wegher said of Jones and Casey Matthews. “I think I said ‘hi’ to them. That was it.”

Wegher was asked if he’d do things differently today. He sighs and doesn’t answer for about 10 seconds.

“That’s a tough call,” he says, finally. And he adds, with a laugh: “I might talk to them more. I don’t know.”

The idea that some talented kids who live in Agoura have decided to attend other schools doesn't sit well with the Chargers coach.

"It's discouraging when you have kids that are going to private schools or going to other schools in the area and not coming to your program when you know you run a good program," Wegher said. "We try to do things right, do them by the book and it seems like it's hurt us more than it's helped us.

“That’s the hard part – we’re not big into recruiting. And it seems if you don’t then you end up watching those big time guys go other places. That’s the hard part.”

But ultimately, as was the case in 2003 and 2004, when the Chargers reached the CIF semifinals and were a combined 20-6, or more recently - Agoura is 3-17 the past two seasons - Wegher remains consistent about one thing:

“The kids we’ve got are great,” he said. “I love our kids. They work hard.”

And with regards to that 10-second pause, a Marmonte League insider, who asked not to be named because he works at a different school, said don’t be fooled.

“There’s a reason Charlie never gets complaints from parents or from the administration over there,” he said. “It’s because he’s a straight-up guy who is never going to cheat.

"He may say he's thinking about it, but when push comes to shove, he's going to be able to look in the mirror in the morning and know he didn't take any shortcuts. I think people admire that about him."