By Kyle JorreyThirty years removed from sharing a room inside Mt. Clef Hall, the three friends can still conjure up the name of an obscure Texas Rangers third baseman who, for most casual baseball fans, has been lost to the sands of time: Doug Strange.
It was 1993, and in between classes, practices and workouts, Russell White ’94, Erik Scherer ’95 and Brian McCoy ’95, filled their free time with Statis Pro Baseball, a board game that allowed players to simulate the real thing using a set of dice and cards corresponding to actual major leaguers.
White and Scherer approached Statis Pro with an almost Tommy Lasorda-like intensity, while McCoy was more of a casual participant, selecting players not for their hitting or pitching prowess but for less statistically significant reasons … like having an unusual name.
Enter Doug Strange.
“Every time I would roll the dice I would yell, ‘Strange for another home run!’ and it would just drive them crazy,” McCoy said.
A recent Zoom call found the three pals reminiscing about Statis Pro and their early years at Cal Lutheran. Even within a close-knit university renowned for its generational connections, the trio’s journey from high school teammates to college roommates and now coaching colleagues at their alma mater stands apart.
White is head coach of the Kingsmen basketball team, Scherer is head coach for the Kingsmen baseball squad and McCoy is an assistant coach for the men’s and women’s golf programs.
Military brats
The threesome met at tiny Desert High School on Edwards Air Force Base. The sons of servicemembers, they struck up a kinship while playing on the varsity basketball team.
“We weren’t exactly a powerhouse,” Scherer laughed.
A year ahead of his two friends, White was the first to leave the Antelope Valley for greener pastures. A gifted center, he was recruited by then-Kingsmen coach Mike Dunlap in 1990. During a weekend trip to see the campus, White didn’t even get the chance to play in the university’s gymnasium, which at the time doubled as the concert home of the Conejo Symphony Orchestra.
“There was no Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, so the symphony played in the old Cal Lu gym,” he said.
As a freshman, White competed on both the basketball and golf teams. McCoy and Scherer followed a year later, drawn to the opportunity to play collegiate sports and reunite with a familiar face.
“It was absolutely a safety net knowing someone at Cal Lu, and knowing it was Russ,” McCoy said.
The group would spend the next two years living together while pursuing separate interests: White basketball, McCoy golf and Scherer baseball. McCoy’s academic focus was advertising and marketing, White and Scherer both majored in history.
McCoy described his friends “hyper-intelligent,” with the ability to recall obscure stats, numbers and dates.
“I can remember times just sitting and listening to them and thinking, ‘How the heck do you know all this stuff?’” he said. “I think for both of them, their brains ― and their competitive nature ― is what drove them to coaching. I happened to fall into coaching.”
Journeys, similar but different
Both Scherer and White had to wait for their shots to lead their respective programs.
Scherer was the first of the roommates to become a Cal Lutheran coach, hired as an assistant under Kingsmen legend Marty Slimak in 2000. Slimak, the winningest coach in Cal Lu history, retired 23 years later, opening the door for Scherer to take over the head baseball coaching position. Meanwhile, White spent two decades as a successful high school basketball coach before landing his dream job as the head coach for Cal Lutheran’s program in 2019.
Last season, White guided the Kingsmen to a 23-5 record and their second consecutive trip to the NCAA DIII tournament.
“Russell and I used to talk all the time about him getting the job and I knew he could come here and do great things if given the opportunity,” Scherer said. “To his credit, it did take a while for that to line up, but then once he got it, he definitely ran with it, and you see the results of that.”
The respect is mutual.
“Erik always wanted to be the head coach at Cal Lu,” White said of his friend. “He passed up many opportunities elsewhere waiting for that one day when hopefully he would get the call . . . and when it came, he clearly crushed it.”
In his first season as skipper in spring 2023, Scherer led the Kingsmen to a 29-17 record and a SCIAC tournament championship. The team finished one game shy of playing for a regional NCAA title.
As for McCoy, he pursued a career in business and spent two terms on the Cal Lutheran alumni board before joining the golf staff in 2017 under his former coach, Jeff Lindgren, after the program’s two assistants retired.
“The last six, almost seven years, the relationships I’ve formed with the students have been incredible,” McCoy said. “I know why these two coach. I know why they’ve coached their entire lives. It’s just a different experience.”
Still close
Nearly 35 years since they first met, the three maintain a never-ending group chat and a long-running fantasy football league. Their parents know each other, as do their wives and kids. Given that they both have offices at Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center, White and Scherer cross paths most frequently, but McCoy is never too far from mind. At university events, they tend to gravitate together ― whether they mean to or not.
When time allows, they do their best to watch each other’s respective teams, even if it’s only for an inning here, a half there.
“The amount of times I’ve been to all 9 innings of a baseball game, probably none,” White said. “The number of times I’ve gone, stood right next to the dugout, got eye contact with Scherer and dabbed him up … it’s probably in the 100s. You just get it done and show your support.”
Asked what it is about Cal Lutheran that has made their connection to the institution so strong, Scherer suggested it may have something to do with their upbringing.
“Being the children of military parents, we don’t really have a hometown,” he said. “When you grow up on a base, you don’t have that tie to that area. And I think over time, Cal Lutheran, that’s become my hometown. These are my closest friends. … It just became my home, that’s the best way to put it.”
Even if they do go periods without speaking or texting, when they do spark up a conversation, it’s as if they never left Mt. Clef — as if they were still drawing cards from the Statis Pro deck, rolling dice and recording the outcome, and Doug Strange is still coming up to the plate.
“They’re the type of friends you cherish the most because you don’t have to talk to them for six months and then you catch up and you’re like, ‘Wow, I’m really glad we caught up,’” McCoy said.
“The support is enduring,” White said. “You just know it’s there. … If I text them, I know I’m going to get a text back. That’s really what it’s all about.”
