Black’s New Career Rolls With River Rats : Roller hockey: After giving up job as lawyer, he’s with Sacramento, his third RHI team in three seasons.

SACRAMENTO — Coach John Black, a former six-figure man, will take his place behind the bench for the Sacramento River Rats tonight, adjust his suit coat, straighten his stylish tie and prepare to squash the Anaheim Bullfrogs at the Arco Arena.

Three years ago the lawyer with boyish good looks and a smooth tongue went before the bench as a litigator for a large Southern California insurance firm.

“I’d go into court, and if somebody claimed they had been injured and wanted a big settlement, it was my job to see that they didn’t get it,” Black said. “I won a lot.”

Not much has changed. In 1994, Black led the now-defunct Portland Rage, a heavy underdog, to the Roller Hockey International championship series. A year before he took the Blades to the league semifinals. This season the River Rats and their Russian-born front line are in a tight fight for first place with three other teams in the Northwest Division, and Black has been chosen to coach the Western Division team at the RHI all-star game Saturday in St. Louis.

Three teams in three years. About the only thing Black can’t do is keep a job. But his decision--at less than half the salary--to kiss off an L.A. law lifestyle, learn Russian and teach a bunch of minor league ice hockey players how to turn on in-line skates was not surprising.

Confounding to some, yes, but not surprising.

“John has got all the virtues,” said Paul Chapey, a leader in the growth of West Coast roller hockey and a longtime business associate of Black. “He’s honest as hell, intelligent, educated and extremely dedicated. He’s not doing this because he has no alternatives. He’s doing this because he wants to be a roller hockey coach.”

Mary, Black’s wife, wasn’t too thrilled the day John walked into their house in Orange, just a couple of blocks up the road from The Pond, with what he thought was grand news.

“I said, ‘Hey, honey, I’m going to quit my job,’ ” Black said. Mary tensed. John winced.

“I’ve still got the dent from the frying pan on my head,” he said.

Black is known as a savvy businessman; he sees investment opportunities as roller hockey grows in popularity. His skating roots run as deep as the grooves in the wooden floor at the roller rink his parents operated when he was growing up in Pomona. Young John ate, slept, worked and did his homework there. There was also plenty of time to skate.

“Since I can remember, I’ve been on skates,” said Black, 38.

Back then the wheels were made of steel and the boots were the over-the-counter brand found at the local TG&Y.; Nevertheless, Black became an accomplished skater, competing in artistic and speed competitions. The finesse and control he learned in competitions later became the centerpiece of his coaching style.

“John is better from the waist down. He’s a smart skater,” said Chapey, who played with and against Black in amateur leagues in their earlier years. “He believes in finesse. He is a puck-control freak.”

Black graduated from Pomona High School in 1974 and enrolled at Orange Coast College. Southern California, with its balmy temperatures and sun-kissed beaches, wasn’t the hotbed of roller hockey it is today. There were only a handful of ice rinks where hockey was played, and if you weren’t transplanted from Canada or the East, you probably couldn’t find them. European field hockey programs were nonexistent, except for high school girls. Only a handful of places were available for floor hockey.

“I don’t think anyone really cared about roller hockey back then,” Chapey said. “It was like surfing in the 1960s. Who knew what surfing was about or whether it was respected or not. Certainly the guys in it didn’t care.”

His memory blurs, but at Orange Coast, Black remembers meeting some guys from the East Coast one day. They told him how they played hockey on roller skates during the summer. Black was intrigued.

“I had the skating part down,” he said. “I had to figure out what this hockey game was all about.”

That led to a stellar amateur career. Black played and coached in numerous tournaments, many in Las Vegas, which was the battleground for roller hockey teams from all over the country. Players congregated for a good time, to swap trade secrets, gamble a little, and most importantly, test skills against each other on roller skates.

Black eventually earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Barbara and a law degree from Willamette University in Salem, Ore. In 1977, while in college, he competed in his first national amateur roller hockey championship and later, with partner Chapey, took controlling interest in the California Cup amateur youth tournament.

Most experts agree the introduction of in-line skates, consisting of a single chassis of four wheels in a row down the center of the skating boot, revolutionized roller hockey, giving it legitimacy among street skaters and hockey players.

It also propelled the KOHO Cup into a six-figure venture for the six-figure attorney and his partner. Black had become a prominent figure in the sport.

In 1992, Black was chosen to coach a team of Americans against a team from Canada. The seven-game series, played in five cities in the western United States and Canada, was a promotional event staged to see if there was enough interest in a professional roller hockey league. Black led Team USA to a 4-3 series victory. The result landed him the head coaching job with the Blades in the inaugural season of Roller Hockey International.

At the Forum, where the glitz of Showtime has smitten and bitten coaches, Black struggled. When the archrival Bullfrogs won the initial RHI title in 1993 with a roster of ice hockey players, Blade owner Jeanie Buss saw the writing on the wall. Black got the blade.

“John did a good job for us,” said Tim Harris, Blade vice present and general manager. “Letting John go wasn’t reflective on John as a coach or human being. What we chose to do was find someone who could help us as a coach and a spokesperson. [Current Coach] Bobby Hull Jr. has the name and that’s why we went in that direction.”

Black had an interest in landing the Bullfrog job when Coach Chris McSorley was hired away by Buffalo. But Anaheim assistant coach Grant Sonier was quickly promoted. Black wound up in Portland, where the team began slowly.

“He believes in the extra pass,” Chapey said. “So, his teams are usually slow out of the gate. With professional roller hockey being a four-on-four game, the floor is bigger. John believes that it is closer to the European style of play.”

Style, skating, grace, wide passes--that’s the way the game is taught in Europe and it has become Black’s signature in RHI. The other form of hockey widely used today is called the Canadian style, brash and brawn with a lot of hard-checking. In the second--and final--game of the 1994 RHI best-of-three championship game, McSorley’s Canadian-skating Buffalo team edged Black’s smooth-skating Portland squad by a goal.

When the Rage folded, Black had offers from Phoenix and San Diego, but opted for Sacramento, where he got a three-year contract. He attended UC Irvine in the off-season to learn to speak Russian, and he has signed players he believes can skate his way. True to form, though the River Rats started slowly this season, they are beginning to jell. In their first encounter with Anaheim, June 18 at The Pond, the Bullfrogs won, 13-6.

“Judge us by the way we skate at the end of the season,” Black said afterward.

There’s a sense Black will one day practice law again. From behind the bench, he’ll return to his old life in front of one, where, in a different arena, he will again have the opportunity to squash opponents.