When a new basketball coach comes with a full Ironman triathlon and several half Ironmans under his belt, one wonders if his players will be able to make it through his practices.

They need not worry. Elite-level triathlons are only what Chuck Johnson does on his own time. He also competes at the national level in Ultimate, a sport similar to soccer that’s played with a flying disc.

In fact, the 42-year-old Johnson — who was hired last week as Napa High’s new varsity boys basketball head coach — said he’d probably have a hard time keeping up with his players in workouts.

“Conditioning for basketball is completely different (than triathlon training),” he said after one of the Indians’ summer practices on Tuesday night, when his hiring was approved by the Napa Valley Unified School District board. “If I start running with them, I’ll get out of breath pretty quickly because it’s more anaerobic. But I can go forever once I get warmed up.”

Napa High Principal Barb Franco said the school will do everything it can to help Johnson warm back up to being a varsity head coach — a role he hasn’t held since he was the varsity coach for two years at Division IV Templeton High, near Atascadero, in the late 1990s.

“The first year for any varsity head coach is a tough year. We’re committed to doing what we can do to have Chuck’s first year be a success,” Franco said.

“It’s a transition year and transition years are always difficult. I just want for our student-athletes, for our basketball boys, for them to be able to participate in the best program we can provide them, and I have complete confidence that Chuck will be able to do that for us.”

Johnson takes over for seven-year varsity head coach Mike Warrington, who is taking a one-year leave of absence from Napa High to pursue coaching opportunities at the college level.

Like at Napa High, Johnson coached the lower-level teams at Templeton before moving up to varsity coach.

“The hardest part of being a new coach is getting the respect of the kids, but I think they’ve seen me enough already so that won’t be a problem,” he said.

Johnson moved to the Bay Area and coached at a junior high school in Moraga before coming to Napa six years ago. He coached a group of seventh-graders who went on to become seniors on last year’s Napa High varsity team.

After coaching the Indians’ JV teams, he moved down to the freshman squad last year, he said, to allow new JV coach Paul Gassner to work with Warrington.

“Napa’s had like four (varsity boys head) coaches in the last 40 or 50 years, so I didn’t think an opening would come so soon; I thought Mike would be here another 20 or 30 years,” he said. “But I love teaching at Napa, and the teachers and administration have been very supportive. It’s a great school and I love living here.”

Franco said the school will try to help Johnson adjust to being in the limelight of Division I high school basketball.

“We have not seen Chuck in that kind of a high-profile athletic position, and he’s going to need some support. That’s what our goal will be,” she said. “I think he’s got the ‘X and O’ knowledge of basketball, but there’s a whole lot more to being a varsity coach than just running the plays on Friday night. There’s a lot for him to learn and I think that he is obviously willing to do that.”

Making hard work fun

Warrington’s last two teams had losing seasons after a 16-12 campaign in 2004-05.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s freshman team won only three of 25 games.

But he said the record didn’t tell the whole story.

“From a win standpoint, it was the worst season I’ve coached in 18 years of coaching, but it was in the top five of my favorite seasons,” Johnson said.

“They never got blown out, they were in every game, they improved different skills and they stayed energetic. It was amazing how much fun we had going 3-22.”

That said, Johnson said he’s glad to be back with some of the players he had as a JV coach. He said his goal is to get them to work hard on their shooting skills.

“The teams we’ve had at Napa are not athletic like the Fairfields and Rodriguezes. We don’t get a slew of athletes who can run up and down the floor and play full-court man presses and dunk,” he said. “But when we see breakdown in opponents’ defenses, when they leave one of our guys open, we need to take advantage.

“I’m concentrating on getting them to play defense in the halfcourt, holding teams to one shot per possession, and grinding it out on our possessions. If our possessions are better then your possessions, the law of averages says we’ll win. We want to try to make your offense uncomfortable. We need to play blue-collar basketball, not be flashy.”

Johnson said that kind of hard-working philosophy helped last year’s varsity football team win the school’s first section championship.

“They had no problem grinding it out,” he said of the football team. “If we play as a team, we can force (a more athletic opponent) to play as a team, not just walk down the floor and jam it. That’s what we’ve been working on this summer, playing defense as a team — and doing a lot of shooting drills and learning how to use the shot clock and work for good shots. It’s taking a lot of teaching to get there.”

Franco said Johnson should be ready for varsity coaching after working under Warrington since he came to Napa.

“I think that his work with Mike and the mentoring that he’s received from Mike and the other coaches in the program are certainly going to serve him well,” she said. “He understands our philosophy of athletics along with what our expectations are of our student-athletes because of his involvement in our basketball program here at Napa High. And we will do everything we can to support his success.”

Johnson said he isn’t throwing a lot of new wrinkles at his players.

“We’ll be running a lot of same stuff Mike put in, just maybe not press as much,” he said. “One of my beliefs is it doesn’t really matter if other teams know what you run; it’s how you run it.”

The Indians have already played six games in a Marin Catholic tournament and five games at a Dublin tournament. They are currently playing summer league games Monday and Wednesday nights at Napa Valley College, then will play in a tournament July 12-13 at El Camino-Sacramento.

“We’ve only had two seniors playing this summer; it’s mostly the JV team from last year,” Johnson said. “A lot of the Dublin teams won 20 games last year, so it’s been a really good learning experience for them.”

He practices what he preaches

Johnson said he’s currently training for the Aug. 2 Vineman triathlon in Guerneville — which includes a 2.4-mile swim in the Russian River, 112 miles of biking and a 26.2-mile marathon run. He said his last triathlon of the year will be the Sept. 7 Big Kahuna triathlon in Santa Cruz, which will be half as long as the Vineman. He’s done the Vineman before and has also done the Lake Berryessa half-Ironman races twice.

“This morning,” he said Tuesday, “I swam from 6:30 to 7:30, taught summer school until (mid-afternoon), ran basketball practice, then did an hour-long bike ride.”

Johnson said he was inspired to do his first triathlon — a full 140.6-miler last year in Louisville, Ky. — by his girlfriend, Angela Yee, who has been competing in them for about eight years.

Last year, he went to a national tournament in Sarasota, Fla., with his masters Ultimate team, and lost in the semifinals to the eventual champion.

Two weeks later, he flew back to Florida for the half-Ironman Championships in Clearwater.

Johnson participated in cross country, track, golf and basketball at Santa Barbara High School, then continued with track during his first year of college at UC Santa Barbara and his remaining year at Humboldt State.

He excelled in track at Humboldt in the 800 meters, spurred by some talented teammates in that event.

He also discovered Ultimate at Humboldt, and was a two-year captain of its club team.

His Humboldt Ultimate team came up one win short of qualifying for the national championships. After that, he played for the San Francisco Jam and traveled with the club to world championships in Scotland in 1999 and Hawaii in 2000.

As impressive as his triathlon and Ultimate accomplishments have been, Johnson said he was never a big scorer on the basketball court, even though he called it his favorite sport.

But he said being a “role player” led to his professional calling.

“I would tend to get ‘Most Improved’ awards,” he said. “I did not have a lot of athletic ability, but I was useful because I could play defense and shut people down. I wasn’t real skilled offensively, but I was really good in a system and knowing my role and carrying that out. Even when I played Ultimate, I’m more of a defensive player.”

At Humboldt, he said he was allowed on the team even though it meant longtime head coach Tom Wood would have to carry 13 players instead of the 12 he usually kept.

“I don’t know if he felt sorry for me or if he thought I’d be useful in practice, because I was a really good defender who ran hard and put in a lot of effort. I played all of five minutes that season,” he said.

“But those are the types of people who make good coaches, not the superstars who get everything handed to them. Being a point guard, I was pretty much an extension of the coach on the floor. The main reason I became a teacher is I like working with kids, and you can really have an effect on them as a coach.”

Executive Sports Editor Marty James contributed to this story.