At age 60, most coaches are about ready to retire, but not football coach John Featherstone. He’s looking forward to coaching at EC until he’s 70 years old.
“I love teaching and coaching. My job never gets old. I’m a blessed and lucky man,” Featherstone said. “If you don’t love what you’re doing, then it affects you mentally and physically and then you take that negativity back to the home, and I don’t want to do that,” he said.
Featherstone, 25-year EC football coach and physical education professor, clearly loves his job. He is celebrating a milestone as his 25th year as head coach for the Warriors and currently has the highest winning percentage of any active coach in Southern California.
He is a slight man with blonde hair, bright blue eyes and a great smile, who is characterized by his enthusiasm for teaching and coaching.
“There’s never a dull moment with him. He’s always uplifting and has an upbeat attitude that makes you want to be around him and give all you’ve got on and off the field,” Roosevelt Lucas, former EC defensive lineman, said.
Long before building his legacy at EC, Featherstone worked his way up the ranks as a quarterback, running back and wide receiver at Mira Costa High School after having started playing Pop Warner football at the age of 11.
“It runs in the family. My family is my inspiration. My oldest and youngest brothers played football and let me tag along. My father played football and earned a full scholarship to play at USC, but when the Great Depression hit he had to work for his father,” Featherstone said. “And I played two years of football at EC.”
After his two years of playing at EC, he received a scholarship offer to play for football coach Don Coryell at San Diego State University in ’69-’70, where he led the Aztecs to a win in the 1969 Pasadena Bowl, with the Aztecs having an unblemished 11-0 record that season.
“I received my bachelor’s degree from SDSU in 1970, majoring in journalism with a minor in physical education, and in 1973 I received my master’s degree in physical education,” Featherstone said.
Featherstone took his first coaching position at SDSU in 1971 and he has been coaching football ever since.
“When I was done playing I was sad because I wanted to be involved in football in some way,” Featherstone said. “So coach Coryell asked me if I wanted to consider coaching and I said yes, and I was flattered he asked me to do that.”
Since then, he has coached for Grossmont College helping the Griffins win a state title in 1974 and at San Diego Mesa College working as the team’s offensive coordinator from 1979-1980, where he led the team to back-to-back conference titles. In addition, he took up many coaching opportunities at other colleges.
When Featherstone first arrived at EC as the head coach in 1985, he knew he wanted to keep the winning tradition alive.
“My fondest memory has got to be our 1987 national championship season where we were 11-0. I was getting some criticism because in ’85, we were 5-5, but we thought we would be better then 5-5 in ’87,” Featherstone said.
The Warriors won four straight conference championships from ’88-’91. Now, the Warriors have won five straight championships in ’05, ’06,’07’ and ’08, four of those conference championships, and the ’06 being a state championship.
“We’re hoping to win in ’09 to make it our 6th straight championship. So far, we’ve only had 3 losing season in the 25 years,” Featherstone said.
“Gene Engle (quarterback coach), my other full-time guy who just turned 50 last year asked me, ‘Feather, how much longer do you want to go?’ and I said, ‘how much longer do you want to go?’ He said, ‘I want to go another 8 years until I’m 60.’ And I said, ‘I’ll go another 8 years until I’m 70. But hey I may go longer then 70 if my health is good’,” Featherstone said.
“I’m 60, but I still feel 20. I work out every day and I have a lot of energy, I love my job. I may coach until I’m 80. That is what I try to implant in all my students and players to take care of themselves,” Featherstone said.
Featherstone just wants to contribute to running a first-class professional program where the kids to go on and graduate and transfer with a Division 1 scholarship as those have done in the past.
“I can just say up to this point in my rather short life that it has been a beautiful life. I’ve had so much happiness and very little sadness, and I’m a lucky guy to have great friends, fellow coaches and family,” Featherstone said. “I’ve been proud to represent EC in a professional matter because I went to school and played sports here, so I have a strong attachment to EC.”
