He coached an eventual Heisman Trophy winner. He won four section football titles. He stands 18th on the all-time San Diego Section victory list with 132 career wins.

1993 file photo / Union-Tribune Former Lincoln coach Vic Player, who died yesterday, was a teacher on the field and off.

Yet those who remembered Vic Player, 64, who died yesterday in his native Texarkana, Texas, after battling colon cancer since July, spoke of his high standards, his higher ideals and his lasting influence.

“Coach Player was one of the reasons I went into coaching,” said former Lincoln head coach Tony Jackson, who vividly recalled his first impression of Player.

“I was playing for Patrick Henry and I made a tackle right in front of him. He had this Afro as big as the world and was screaming and hollering that there was no way I should have been able to do that.”

Jackson couldn't miss the passion, the intensity or that Player's teams rarely lost.

Led by future Heisman Trophy recipient and Pro Football Hall of Famer Marcus Allen, Player captured his first section title in 1977.

His teams added back-to-back championships in 1979-80 before he stepped down in 1982. Encouraged to return in 1986, he won his fourth title that year with a 41-7 victory over Oceanside.

Lew Barnes was one of those players on the 1979-80 championship teams. Player made such an impression on Barnes that he continues to volunteer as an assistant at Lincoln.

“Coach Player believed that hard work, dedication and commitment could get me to where I wanted to be,” said Barnes, a standout at San Diego Mesa College and the University of Oregon before playing professionally with the Chicago Bears. “The core values he taught me I'm teaching the players today because they still work.”

Player's athletes learned to adjust, even the very good ones, like Terrell Davis, who earned Super Bowl MVP honors as a running back with Denver after playing defensive line and fullback for Lincoln.

“We had two good running backs, so I decided to play fullback, where I got some carries, and nose guard, where at 190 pounds I'd be past the center almost before he hiked the ball. Coach Player let me try it,” said Davis, who was particularly impressed with Player as a social studies and history teacher.

“I thought he was the smartest dude on the planet,” said Davis, who now works with NFL Films. “Everything was a history lesson and he made it interesting.”

Right up to his last day of teaching.

“Vic went to La Jolla his last year of teaching (2003-04),” his wife, Bobbie, said via phone yesterday from Texarkana. “After only three months there he was named Teacher of the Year.”

Player was a role model for all of the African-American coaches who would follow him. He is the only black coach in the section's 31-member 100-win club.

“This summer he told one of the local papers that he didn't look at himself as a black coach, but as a coach who was black,” Bobbie Player said.

There is a movement to get the stadium on Lincoln's new campus named after Player. Lincoln Principal Mel Collins said the proposal is being considered, along with other options.

“The community is in the process, through a series of community meetings, regarding the naming of the stadium,” said Collins. “When we finally decide, we then need to take it to the Board of Education for approval.”

Services will be held Saturday in Texarkana.