When Marino Angulo coached the boys basketball team at Montebello High for 11 years, he lived in Whittier on the border of Montebello, no more than a 10-minute drive to the school. That changed about a year ago when Angulo purchased a home deeper into Whittier, closer to La Serna High.
Angulo said it suddenly took him about 30 minutes to get to work. For a family man, he wasn’t crazy about that, so when the job as La Serna’s head basketball coach became open and it was offered to him, he jumped at the chance.
“I thought it was the best thing for my family,” said Angulo, who this week accepted the position at La Serna, where he succeeds Josh Beaty.
Angulo, who taught at Montebello for 16 years and will teach at La Serna, is back to the shorter drive he likes. But he said Wednesday he leaves Montebello with some sadness.
“I’m actually a little down,” Angulo said. “You have people where you have been, you have friends you are used to seeing for the past 16 years, that’s going to take a little getting used to. Any time you make a change like that, it’s going to be tough.”
Angulo led the Oilers to four league championships and to two trips to the quarterfinals of the Division I-AA playoffs; that is the toughest division in the Southern Section. One of those quarterfinals appearances came in the 2010-11 season, when Montebello lost to eventual champoin Long Beach Poly 74-65.
Angulo’s best record at Montebello came in 2009-10, when the Oilers went 28-2.
Angulo takes over a La Serna team that last season went 11-15 and missed the playoffs after finishing fourth in the Del Rio League.