sutton dies

SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Paul Sutton, Providence HS Coach
& AD, Dead At 41--(Aug. 21, 1999)

We just learned that Paul Sutton, the boys' basketball coach and athletic director of Burbank's Providence High School died this past week of colon cancer. He was 41. He is survived by his wife Dana and the couple's two young children, Alison 9, and Nate, 7.

Funeral services will be held Monday at 1 p.m. at St. Finbar Catholic Church, 2010 W. Olive Avenue in Burbank. To get there, you can take the Olive Ave. exit off the 5 Freeway and head west; alternatively, take the Buena Vista off ramp on the 134 (Ventura) Fwy, and head north to Olive. Following the services, there will be a reception at the Providence HS gym, which is located at 511 S. Buena Vista St. (just south of Providence-St. Joseph's hospital, across the street from the Disney Studios lot.

In lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations be made to an educational trust for Sutton's children and the possible construction of the Paul Sutton Activities Center at Providence.

Sutton died on Thursday at his home in Simi Valley with his family surrounding him. Sutton was originally diagnosed with cancer in February 1998 during the CIF playoffs, and it was ironic that he was unable to coach his Providence team in a quarterfinal Division IV playoff game against cross-town school Bell-Jeff that year due to his treatment for chemotherapy since it was the first time in many years that the two Catholic high schools, located only a few miles apart, had played in more than 10 years. Sutton returned to coaching though after surgery to remove part of his colon, and his condition seemed to improve dramatically and he coached the Providence team for most of the entire season in 1998-99, leading them to a Liberty League championship and a playoff spot. However in May of this year, his doctors discovered that the disease had spread, and he missed the entire summer season. The Providence team was instead coached by Robert Mena and another former player, Paolo Velesco, who will continue on as co-coaches at the school.

Over the past few years, we had gotten to know Paul fairly well (not nearly as well as we would have liked) and he was among the nicest, least pretentious, and most sincere coaches we've had the pleasure of knowing. He was born born April 1, 1958, in Santa Monica, attended John Burroughs HS in Burbank where he played basketball, and was a graduate of Cal State Lutheran. He coached boys' basketball, track and field and cross-country at Providence for the last 14 years, and was it's athletic director for at least the last 10. Four of Sutton's former players are now coaches at Providence, and two of them, as noted above, Robert Mena and Paolo Velesco, will be the new co-coaches. Sutton also coached (in basketball as an all-CIF player) Milwaukee Brewers' All-Star third baseman Jeff Cirillo.

Mena told the LA Times that Sutton was his role model: "He is the reason why I came back to Providence. And he is the reason why I got into coaching," Mena said. "I learned more about life from him than I ever learned about basketball. "This is just so hard to take. We still can't believe he's gone " Sutton, who also coached cross-country and track and field during his tenure at Providence, guided the boys' basketball team for 14 years. His teams went 166-151 with three league titles.

Dan Haasch, the head boys' basketball coach at Buckley, coached for several years with Sutton at Providence before coming to Buckley, and has agreed to act as the trustee for the educational trust to be established for Sutton's children. Haasch, whom we spoke with this morning, said Sutton will be greatly missed. "He touched a lot of lives. There were a lot of area players and coaches for whom he was a role model and a friend."

Contributions to the Sutton childrens' educational trust fund should be sent and made out to Providence High School.

The LA Times' Mike Bresnahan also wrote a very nice feature tribute to Sutton in Saturday's edition. Here it is:

A good man has died, surrounded by friends and family and the fortune of having lived a full life. Paul Sutton did not see the month of September because of the effects of malignant colon cancer, but in between his birth in Los Angeles and his death Thursday in the Simi Valley home he shared with his wife, Dana, his 9-year-old daughter, Alison, and 7-year-old son, Nate, he touched many.

Wins and losses were irrelevant to Sutton, who was more than just an athletic director and boys' basketball coach at Providence High, a small private school in Burbank. His teams won 166 games and three league titles, but what happened off the court was infinitely more important to Sutton, who was 41. When Ernie Godinez died in a car accident in 1996, Sutton organized a tribute night for the former Providence student, moving the girls' and boys' basketball games to a larger gym at nearby Bell-Jeff High and packing it with 800 students, nearly twice the number of students enrolled at Providence. When the father of Andrew Bencze, one of his former players, died in 1995, Sutton was at the funeral, in the last pew of the church, wearing a neatly-tailored suit and sunglasses, going beyond the X's and O's, passing the point at which many coaches stop. "He was telling me, 'I'm here for you,' " Bencze said.

When Sutton was diagnosed with cancer in February of 1998, he underwent rigorous chemotherapy, beating the cancer for a while before suffering a relapse earlier this year. He ran out of sick days, but Providence teachers and coaches practically lined up outside the principal's door, offering to donate their sick days--in effect, part of their paychecks--to Sutton. "People who know him know how much mentoring he has done," Dana Sutton said. "He became like a surrogate father to so many people there."

After his condition worsened, Sutton could have opted to undergo chemotherapy again, but "he made a very hard choice to finally go his own way and be at home with his family," Dana said. "It's hard to imagine what he's been through--tests, procedures, everything. He just wanted to be with his family and be comfortable."

Bencze, who entered ninth grade in 1985, the same year Sutton started at Providence, will, perhaps fittingly, take over as athletic director. Bencze played on a Providence basketball team that won six games his senior year. But Sutton "made us feel like that was the greatest season," Bencze said. While some private schools turned to recruiting, Sutton always kept the hand he was dealt. "You never saw a big name going to Providence," said Buckley Coach Dan Haasch, who was an assistant at Providence in 1990. "He just won with the talent he had. He did it the way it was supposed to be done--the right way, for the right reasons. He didn't do it for the headlines. He did it for the players."

Sutton's lessons weren't lost on Jeff Cirillo, a third baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers. Cirillo graduated from Providence in 1987 and, while playing baseball at USC, returned to Providence in 1991 to become an assistant basketball coach under Sutton. The friendship lasted, with Sutton rarely missing the chance to see Cirillo play in person. When the Brewers were in town, Sutton was at the ballpark. If Cirillo was mired in a slump, he'd hear about it from Sutton. "He'd say, 'Jeff, you ever going to get another hit?' " Cirillo said. "He always joked around."

Even Sutton's rivals could not find fault with him. "He was a masterful coach," said Eric Walter, who will begin his 16th year as Oakwood's athletic director. "He was good to the young coaches, giving them advice after they'd all go to him and pick his brain. Veteran coaches were inspired by the fact that they had to do everything they could to beat him. He was so innovative, we all used him as a resource. And there really wasn't an ego."

Since his diagnosis, Sutton lost nearly 100 pounds, and weighed around 95 pounds when he died. But he remained strong mentally, often saying to his wife, "What am I going to do, sit around and cry about it?"