After a four year battle with melanoma, popular Casa Grande-Petaluma teacher and veteran boys basketball head coach James Forni passed away last Sunday, June 28 with his wife Mary by his side.
Forni was only 35-years old but even so he had been the varsity boys head coach since the 2004 season.
With his passing, the close-knit Petaluma community has lost a native son and Casa Grande alum that not only was admired by the boys he coached and mentored, but by everyone he touched as a coach, physical education teacher, colleague and member of the community.
Forni played football, basketball and volleyball for the Gauchos. He played tight end in football at the College of Marin, walked on at the University of Oregon, and concluded his college athletic career as a wide receiver at the University of Redlands.
Heather Campbell, a Casa Grande teacher and athletic trainer pretty much summed it up in a quote for a sad but beautiful obituary-type piece penned by veteran North Bay columnist Bob Padecky on Petaluma360.com.
“Our community is broken right now. There was no better friend, no better colleague, no better anything than James. He was the whole package. He was the one everyone would go to for anything. He was amazing.”
Look up James Forni in a search and you’ll find the students he taught gave him a 4.9 out of 5.0 rating as a teacher.
His basketball teams were always competitive, and extremely well coached and disciplined, and that is a testament to the relationship he had with the players.
To Forni it wasn’t basketball that was as important as helping teens navigate the road to adulthood by getting them to listen to him using love and respect as tools.
In every one of the local articles since his death the dozens of stories people tell about him are more about James Forni the human being that cared so much about others, a successful formula of family first, being an educator second, and then basketball.
Forni comprehended well that basketball is a game. The real game is life, something Forni understood even better, and something he had so cruelly taken from him at such a tender age.
I met James Forni in 2003 when he started his coaching career at Casa Grande as junior varsity basketball coach and assistant football coach for former Casa Grande football head coach and current athletic director Rick O’Brien.
When Forni was named the varsity boys head coach in 2004 at 24-years old there were whispers that maybe he was too young, and the chit-chat continued when they went 7-18 and 3-9 in the Sonoma County League his first season.
Even I asked O’Brien if maybe Forni might be too young. I remember O’Brien’s response and his patented grin that accompanied it. “No way!”
After that first year and getting over some of the initial rough spots Forni had the kind of career that made him one of the top boys basketball coaches in the Redwood Empire portion of the CIF North Coast Section – and he did it at a school really known more for football than basketball. From year two on his teams never had a losing record either overall or in league.
In his second year the team went 22-8 and 12-0 in the Sonoma County League, the first of two 12-0 SCL champions in his 11-year career. Forni’s best season was the second 12-0 team in the 2010-2011 campaign that also went 27-6 for his best-ever single season record. That team made it to the second round of the CIF Division II Northern Regionals before losing to eventual D2 state champion Archbishop Mitty-San Jose.
Forni’s overall coaching record ends at 174-129. His record in the Sonoma County League is 67-28. Since joining the tougher North Bay League three years ago his teams went 45-38 overall and 25-17 in league. Last season, coaching in pain and fatigue, Forni led his beloved Gauchos to a 17-11 record overall with an 11-3 second-place finish in league.
Forni also had a huge impact on current Casa Grande head football coach and former O’Brien assistant Trent Herzog.
“We came full circle. I coached him on his first high school team in 1994 and it was my first year coaching football. Then, we served as assistants together under Rick (O’Brien), and finally, he was on the hiring committee for me as head coach. I planned his bachelor party; we went on fishing trips together. He was a good friend and we were close. He was the real deal.”
A celebration of Forni’s life will be held on July 11 at 10 a.m. in the Casa Grande gymnasium.
