Kids tend to believe their sports coaches know everything. Even if the coach is just someone’s mom or dad.

Kids particularly believe in their coaches at the high-school level. Most of them, anyway.

The coaches are adults. They have perhaps played, at the college level, the sport they are coaching.

High school kids are 15, 16, 17, 18 and rarely think in terms of the strategic approaches to the game; they usually don’t spend much time thinking about anything beyond their own performance.

That changes, of course. Parents become “experts” and begin second-guessing the high school coach. (Or even the youth-soccer coach.) Some parents also become sports writers, and come to believe they know something about tactics and strategy themselves.

Which is preamble to this: As I think back about our athletic history in high school … it strikes me, four decades after the fact, that our coaches could have done a better job.

I went to L.A. Lutheran High School, which had about 500 kids. We played in the the second-lowest enrollment category of the California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section. So this is not big-time prep sports. It is competitive, but the division’s best teams would have trouble staying with the schools of 3,000 kids.

Also, I should make clear I liked my high-school coaches. All of them. They were good men, most of them extremely patient, and competent to coach a team, in the early 1970s.

And there is this: We “know” far more about most sports now than we did four decades ago, thanks to advanced statistical analysis. Lots and lots of teams back then probably were doing things in a way that was less than efficient, when examined with hindsight.

Which brings me to my senior year in high school.

I played varsity football and varsity baseball. Each team was coached by the same man, a friendly and upbeat big guy who was maybe 24 years old. He also was the athletic director. I believe he played those sports in college, at the small Lutheran teachers’ college he attended.

Looking back, as I often do on every May 11, the last day of my competitive sports career, I wonder about how our coaches approached those two teams, each of which was mostly successful but might have been more so.

And, thinking back, they could have made one improvement by not allowing me onto the field in either sport.

First football.

The varsity had been 1-8 the year before, the first season for the new coach. The one victory came on a field goal (the first in school history) to win 3-0 over Perris in the opener. After that …

Anyone with any vague ability to identify talent would have quickly spotted three outstanding players on our team: Quarterback Dennis Doescher and receivers Al Watson and Terry Lane. Doescher was accurate and had a strong arm, and Watson and Lane could run and had good hands. (On defense, Doescher played safety and Lane and Watson were the cornerbacks.)

We did not have a standout running back. The offensive line was smallish, even for that era, and had one above-average blocker, the left tackle, Mark Miller. The tight end, a kid named Bob Kohlmann, was probably a better receiver than blocker.

Thus, this was a team that should have been throwing the ball from the first game of the season, away to Perris. Short passes, if necessary, because the line was weak, with the tight end integrated into the passing game to further stress the opposition’s secondary.

Instead, we ran split backs, or a fullback and tailback, and ran first and passed second.

Remember, this was the early 1970s, and that’s what everyone tried to do back then. Run first, pass second. Even if you were a bad running team.

Within a few decades, the realization would dawn that it didn’t have to be so. However, expecting a small-school coach of that time to make the intellectual leap to the spread offenses that would be common 15 or 20 years later … well that’s not quite fair. But our team would have been markedly better by throwing. A lot.

We figured this out in the final game of the season, when I was knocked out while fielding an onside kick on the opening play and spent the game on the bench waiting for my head to clear. (It would be a few weeks.)

Two things happened. First, I was replaced by a brawny junior, name of Dan North, at the right tackle spot, which I had manned since the third game of the season, and not exactly covered myself with glory. In part, because I was not a fierce child, in part because I had horrible technique. I had never played for an organized tackle-football team until pretty much my last chance — my senior year.

I got into the lineup for a silly reason. The big kid who was going both ways at tackle missed a practice to go to a taping session for a TV show, as part of the school choir. Miss a practice, you don’t start, and I went in at right tackle after playing sparingly in the first two games, both losses.

We immediately won a game, and maybe the coaches thought the change at RT was one of the reasons.

Back to Week 9, our last game. I’m knocked out. The junior is sent in to play right tackle.

We knew it was going to be a difficult game in the trenches because our opponent, Pater Noster, had two defensive tackles who weighed 250 pounds, which was monstrous, in the small-school football of the early 1970s. We were going to have to move those guys around, or keep them off the quarterback.

I give our coaches credit for this: They seem to have realized they had to throw the ball against Pater Noster. And guess what: It worked. I believe all four of our touchdowns came on passes and we won 26-20, as I recall, to finish in a three-way tie for second in the Olympic League with Harvard and Pater Noster, at 5-2, behind champions St. Genevieve.

The main question is … why did we not turn loose Doescher and Lane and Watson and the passing game from the first day of the season? A fine quarterback and two receivers who were nearly un-coverable. We should have dazzled opponents with the pass from Game 1. We would not have beaten Genevieve (who handled us 24-0), but we might have won both our non-league games, a 20-8 loss at Perris and a 14-12 loss at Lennox, and maybe avoided the 48-6 defeat to Harvard (a year after Mark Harmon had been their quarterback).

And about that Harvard game …

I still remember the team being prepped, the week before the game, on how to attack a 4-4 stack defense. It meant different assignments for us in the line. And then we got to the game and Harvard was running a completely different formation (a 6-2, maybe) and our blocking assignments fell to pieces and the offense stalled. We tried to tell the coaches on the sideline that Harvard was not lining up in the front we talked about, but they thought we were just making excuses and we never really got it straightened out, and never had the ball, and were trashed 48-6 — and after the game, the defensive coordinator who had prepared us so badly, said the team was “an embarrassment to the school”.

At the time, I thought he was right, if a bit harsh. Because the coaches couldn’t have been wrong about strategy.

But the season had a happy ending. We won our final four games to finish 5-4 overall, which represented a big improvement over the previous year. But could it have been 7-2, even 8-1?

The following May, the 11th, actually, we got to the end of the baseball season with a chance to tie for the league championship in a home game against Pater Noster, one game ahead of us and in first place. If we won, it would have meant both schools went into the CIF playoffs, which would have been a big deal for us and the school, back when only league champions made the playoffs.

The game hinged, as I recalled at length a year ago, on a botched squeeze play as we trailed 3-2 in the fourth (I believe it was) inning. I was on third base (a double, and some event that moved me over 90 feet) and our No. 8 hitter, Rex Briggs, was up, with one out.

Our coach flashed the sign for a squeeze play. Briggs saw it, I saw it. This was going to be a key play, and I think all of us knew it at the time. I headed for home as the ball was released by the pitcher.

Briggs popped up the bunt, the catcher caught it as I was halfway home, and I was doubled off third. End of inning. Instead of being tied a 3-3, with the chance our ace lefty would hold the visitors there … the inning was over and it was still 3-2. It ended 6-2.

Two things about that game:

1. I’m not sure we had practiced the squeeze play. I’m not sure Rex Briggs, a catcher who had not started much that season, had demonstrated any particular aptitude at bunting. When we got our 20 pitches, or whatever it was, at batting practice, my recollection is that we started by trying to bunt left, then right, but it wasn’t like we bunted a lot. And we may not have tried a squeeze all season. It was a bold move, and we can make a case for it: Briggs was not a regular, and Pater Noster’s pitcher was tough, and Briggs was batting just ahead of our pitcher, Bob Goodyear, in the 9 hole (this was pre-DH), who couldn’t hit a lick. But, too, we had not tried the squeeze all year, and our practices had not stressed it, and then our coach decided to try it with the season on the line.

And another thing about both those teams.

I should not have been starting.

As noted, above, my accession to the right-tackle spot, in football, was fluke-ish. The two-way tackle went to a TV taping and missed practice. I took over, with almost no experience, and spent most of the season diving at the feet of defenders to try to trip them, which got them on the ground for only a second or two and led to Doescher running around a lot. The kid who replaced me, when I was knocked out, was bigger than me and had some history playing tackle football. He should have started.

In baseball, I had played the previous season for the JVs and had been a very good third baseman — despite never before playing organized baseball. I made one error in a 20-0 season. I had become adept at fielding from playing hundreds of hours of the baseball-lite game known as over-the-line, using a regulation-size baseball (not a softball) and I could catch and throw. My specialty was charging the bunt/dribbler and throwing on a cross-body motion while on the run. (I had seen Brooks Robinson do that, and he was my hero; he is why I wore No. 5.)

However, in my senior season, I hurt my arm early in the season, overextending too early, and I was never right. I suddenly couldn’t make the throw to first base that had been routine the year before. I had no idea where it was going and even now I can see first baseman Frank Estes’s wide eyes as he steeled himself for a ball over his head, or bouncing at his feet, or left or right of where it should be.

Our coach should have sat me.

I do not recall who my backup was. It might have been Rex Briggs. But pretty much anyone would have been a better fielder than I was that season, given my arm issues.

The father of our pitcher certainly would have agreed. I could hear him sighing heavily whenever I didn’t make a play behind his son, and I didn’t make plays that arguably cost us two of the three games we lost in an 11-3 league season. In one of those defeats, the opposing coach audibly said to his batter: “Hit it to the third baseman.” Who was me.

So, yes, I believe we could have been better in both sports, and part of it would have involved benching me.

This is the veteran sports writer talking, of course. Who spent three-plus decades looking at baseball and football teams and picking out weak spots. I was a rookie offensive tackle who knew the plays but had been taught no technique after (somewhat boldly) showing up to play 11-man tackle football for the first time in my life. And then I was a sore-armed third baseman who hit a little, but not enough to make up for an error every second game of a 13-6-1 season.

I think the head coach made two more mistakes: He played me because he liked me.

In football, he knew I was not a terrible athlete because I had played for that 20-0 JV team the previous school year, and he had seen some of that, including our victory over the varsity in a practice game. He tried me at tight end, but I couldn’t catch the ball that Doescher threw (plenty hard and heavy), and after a week or so I was moved to the interior of the line.

In baseball, I became a sort of strange presence that our coach apparently appreciated for more than athletic reasons.

I would always call out to my teammates what each batter had done in his previous appearances. “Hit it to you last time, Vernon; be ready.” … “Two fly balls to right, Danny.” Et cetera. On my high school team, this was considered impressive, almost a form of sorcery.

Also, I always did the team prayer before the game. At first, it was rotated through the squad, but I was better at a public prayer than the rest, and the coach recognized it. I did all the prayers the second half of the season. I never prayed for victory; I prayed for a good game and no injuries. At the end of the season, the coach gave me the “captain” trophy.

In the end, I am thanking that the coach did me (but not those two teams) a huge favor by playing me, and giving me lots of memories of being in action — when a cold, rational man would not have.

The 17-year-old me had been a quiet and shy kid, worried about joining new groups, afraid of girls, known for being good at standardized tests and annoyingly competitive in classrooms.

The confidence I gained playing sports presaged an active college experience few would have predicted, from the first 18 years of my life. I am grateful for that, to this day.

It was not until decades later that the professional sports journalist reconsidered events of 45 years ago and recognized … that I should not have been playing.

Did the coach fail to recognize that? Or did he just think it might do a lot for that odd kid to leave him on the field?

I am beginning to think it was the latter.