Fighting for Coach Manny: A South L.A. basketball team rallies for its mentor

The paramedics got here inside a minute, Marcus Droz remembers.

He’d known as 911 when his father, Manuel Droz, head coach of the women’ basketball group at Santee Training Complicated, struggled to maintain his stability throughout a recreation. Manuel was seated however felt like he would topple.

Santee was down 47-41 towards John Burroughs Excessive with 4 minutes left when 64-year-old Manuel slumped ahead, catching himself on Marcus’ arm.

“Marc, I’m actually dizzy,” Manuel informed his son. “I can’t get up.”

Referees and gamers stopped to stare on the sidelines, the place Manuel began dry-heaving right into a trash can as Marcus, his dad’s assistant coach, dialed for an ambulance. Senior captain Marlisa Pacheco and the opposite women gathered round, shocked and fearful, as their coach was rushed to the hospital.

The Santee gamers had skilled a lifetime’s price of ache and challenges earlier than they have been sufficiently old to vote. Basketball had been an escape, the white Falcons uniform a go well with of armor for a group shaping as much as have its greatest season ever.

However on this present day, the ache had pierced via. Manuel had suffered a stroke and within the weeks following, the women got here to combat collectively — to combat for Coach Manny.

“He wasn’t right here with us, however we needed to do it for him,” Pacheco stated.

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Their favourite reminiscences of the season are the bus rides.

Many of the gamers’ mother and father work lengthy hours, usually two shifts a day, to scrape collectively cash for hire. The varsity district offered buses just for league play, so attending to nonleague video games was a problem. The ladies would squeeze three or 4 deep into carpools normally headed by Manuel and Marcus.

So the buses have been particular. When the journey again to campus neared its finish, the 14 women would break into track, the identical each time:

“We thank the bus driver, the driving force, the driving force, we thank the bus driver for taking us residence.”

Marcus cherished it. “Regardless of how critical the bus driver is,” he stated, “they’ll all the time crack a smile.”

Dwelling for many of the gamers is within the neighborhoods surrounding Santee, south of downtown Los Angeles. It’s a harmful space, Marcus stated, one which carries the homelessness of downtown and gangs of South L.A.

But it surely was residence, particularly to Manuel. He grew up down the road from Santee and purchased a home throughout the road from the place he was raised.

When he began 5 years in the past at Santee as a volunteer assistant coach, this system was mired in an countless shedding droop. In 2019, the Falcons, went 11-4, their first successful season since 2007. Manuel hoped to proceed the successful methods when he was employed as head coach in 2020.

“My dad has a lot love for the group — half of what he talks about is the group,” Marcus stated.

On Dec. 28, with the group sitting at 4-1, Manuel and Marcus had struggled to seek out rides to Burroughs, a nonleague opponent in Burbank. Manuel had been confused. His blood strain, lengthy an issue, in accordance with Marcus, spiked and he began feeling nauseated. At halftime, Manuel gave his son the reins, telling him he didn’t really feel nicely. Even earlier than then, Pacheco had observed one thing amiss.

“Earlier than I went into the sport, I had requested him if he was OK, and he was like, ‘No,’” she stated.

Pacheco had met Manuel when she was simply 8 years outdated, enjoying on the Trinity Recreation Heart in South Los Angeles, the place Manuel held basketball clinics. Now, the eyes that had watched her dribble across the park lolled to the left or proper, unfocused.

And when it got here time for the tipoff, the group performed on.

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Junior Jasmine Burghardt’s first-period class was music. Santee’s assistant athletic director, Ruben Martinez, would see her studying to play guitar, fingers inching alongside the strings like nothing was the matter.

No one on the group knew Jasmine’s father had died of most cancers over Thanksgiving break. However Pacheco sensed one thing was unsuitable.

“I observed her not being herself,” Pacheco stated. “I requested her, ‘Are you good?’ She’d inform me, ‘Yeah.’ I knew she was mendacity to me.”

Burghardt lastly opened as much as her teammates on Dec. 28, earlier than the Burroughs recreation.

Three months later, she sat in a Santee classroom subsequent to Pacheco and Martinez, struggling to seek out the phrases for that day. “My dad handed away, in order that threw me off just a little bit,” Burghardt stated. “The identical day I informed them that, Manny had a stroke, after which …”

Burghardt bowed her head, sobbing silently. Pacheco’s arm crept round her teammate’s shoulder, the captain’s personal eyes rimmed with purple, the 2 drawing in shaky breath after breath collectively.

It appears each Santee lady has a narrative. Mary Jane Valles, a senior and the tallest participant on the group at 6 ft, has been homeless for a lot of her life and not too long ago taken in by her girlfriend’s household.

One other participant began enjoying basketball at a younger age to flee a home with a meth-addicted brother. One other informed Marcus that when she and her sister have been youthful, they have been sexually abused by their mom’s ex-boyfriend.

“I don’t even ask,” Marcus stated. “It simply kinda comes out.”

Over the season, they turned like a “household,” Pacheco stated, with basketball their shared haven. The ladies get pleasure from one another’s firm, goofing off and joking round at apply.

Marcus lets that go. Inside Santee’s gymnasium, every part outdoors the white partitions can fade away.

“After every part that we’d been via, basketball was capable of be someplace protected — our protected place,” Pacheco stated.

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Santee women’ basketball coach Marcus Droz speaks to Marlissa Pecheco and different gamers throughout a latest recreation.

(Luca Evans / For The Instances)

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Santee misplaced the Burroughs recreation by default, play having stopped after Manuel fell ailing. That night time, medical doctors couldn’t give his household a transparent prognosis.

“We had no concept,” Marcus stated. “He may have been virtually brain-dead.”

The group had a recreation the subsequent day. After coming residence, Marcus known as his mother, nonetheless in Manuel’s hospital room, to say he wasn’t positive if he ought to coach the group.

Over the static of the telephone, Marcus heard a faint yell within the background from Manuel, barely hanging onto consciousness.

“Sure!”

The subsequent morning, Marcus gathered the women and gave it to them straight: coach’s prospects have been unsure. The group ought to give attention to the sport forward, he stated, and management what they might management.

Their recreation was towards Hart, a group in Division 3AA, a step up from Santee’s common Division 4 opponents. In California highschool basketball, groups are separated by area into divisions that try to stage the enjoying subject for packages of various strengths.

Santee misplaced 68-14.

“It was robust regrouping,” Marcus stated.

However the subsequent day, medical doctors informed Manuel’s household that he wouldn’t want surgical procedure and will count on to make a full restoration. However as his dad laid within the hospital for weeks, the 25-year-old Marcus had bother incomes the group’s respect.

“I used to be sort of fed up with them, to be sincere,” Marcus stated, “as a result of they weren’t listening to what I used to be saying.”

After the Hart loss, Marcus arrange a gaggle chat over textual content with the women that they named “Queen Falcons.” In his first textual content, he informed them to name him “little coach” and his dad “massive coach.”

After the vacation break, the Falcons’ subsequent opponent was Diego Rivera Training Complicated. Marcus remembers the women blowing off his recreation plan, selecting to run a handoff play that he knew wouldn’t work towards a zone protection. He tossed his arms within the air and informed them to run what they needed.

Ultimately, the women realized the handoffs didn’t work and turned to Marcus, who began drawing up a play to run towards a zone.

Santee gained 52-26.

“Since that time on, they’ve had much more religion in me,” Marcus stated.

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Manuel had returned residence shortly earlier than the Rivera recreation after a three-week hospital stint that included a optimistic COVID-19 take a look at. The night time of the win, sitting on the dinner desk, Marcus excitedly informed his dad how the women lastly listened to him.

Each night time, Marcus took his dad out to their yard to proceed bodily remedy workout routines, slowly weaning him off a walker Manuel had affectionately nicknamed “Paul.”

Together with Manuel, the Falcons additionally discovered their legs. They carried a three-game win streak into an early February showdown with rival Thomas Jefferson Excessive.

Nicely, rival was a robust phrase. The group hadn’t crushed Jefferson in 9 years, Martinez stated.

Down by 13 within the fourth quarter, Marcus known as a timeout after a turnover by Valles. The ladies trudged over, heads tilted to their sneakers, shoulders caved. Valles, one of many group’s prime gamers, seemed defeated.

Earlier that day, whereas watching the JV women play, Valles had informed Pacheco her story for the primary time. How she had had a tough residence life, spending a while in foster care. How she had bounced between members of the family, staying with whoever would take her in. How, in accordance with vice principal Kymbereley Garrett, she would stroll out of the gymnasium after apply and never know the place her head would hit the pillow that night time.

“After I see her, it’s that self-motivation that she has,” Garrett stated. “Like, ‘I’m not going to let all these things that occurred to me decide my future.’”

Through the timeout within the Jefferson recreation, Pacheco tried to rekindle that motivation in her good friend.

“Maintain your head up, MJ,” Martinez remembers Pacheco telling Valles. “Don’t stop such as you haven’t stop in your life. We’re going to return again.”

Santee outscored Jefferson 16-1 within the fourth quarter and gained by three. Three days later, the Falcons performed Jefferson once more and beat them once more, this time by 30.

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Manuel nonetheless has weak point in his left leg and arm, and struggles at occasions with depth notion. However Marcus stated he’s capable of stroll on his personal now, and has no drawback consuming.

Manuel can discuss simply wonderful, too, and he talked to Marcus loads together with his son after each recreation, all the time curious how the group did and who performed nicely.

The group, in reality, was doing fairly nicely and had steamrolled via the playoffs. Earlier than a semifinal conflict towards Sherman Oaks CES, Manuel warned his son the profitable press protection Marcus had instituted for the playoffs would not work. Sherman Oaks was an awesome passing group, Manuel stated, and would break the protection simply.

Marcus Droz, proper, and his father, Manuel.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Instances)

Heeding his father, Marcus went again to a man-on-man look. Santee gained by 32.

The Falcons stored successful and on Feb. 26, confronted Panorama for the Division IV Metropolis championship.

The Falcons took the lead, although at halftime they have been disenchanted they have been “solely” forward by 12. They went on to clinch the title with a 62-38 win, and Pacheco led the group in an exuberant chant: “Coach Manny on me! Coach Manny on three! One, two, three, Coach Manny!”

Wanting again, Burghardt and Pacheco nonetheless haven’t processed all of it: the sensation of getting their names known as as they ran as much as obtain their medals; the Santee stands chanting every lady’s identify with South Los Angeles love; the tears of happiness rolling down their faces.

“The place we come from, we don’t get lots of wins,” Marcus stated.

Tears of unhappiness adopted days later, as the women misplaced a hard-fought bout within the first spherical of the state playoffs to Laguna Seaside Excessive. Valles watched from the sidelines after turning her ankle within the first half, and Burghardt and Pacheco shared a dejected embrace strolling off the ground.

Pacheco, a senior, stated she will’t bear the considered leaving her teammates after the college yr finishes. However she and Burghardt are wanting ahead to coming again to the Santee gymnasium when they’re older and to search for on the banner that can learn “Metropolis Champions.”

“For us right here at Santee, they symbolize us,” Garrett stated of the group. “We’re not some massive, fancy faculty. We’re right here within the coronary heart of South L.A. However our youngsters, they’ve such dedication and objectives.”

On the night time Santee gained the town championship, little coach got here residence with a medal round his neck and one other for giant coach tucked in his pocket. However when he got here in, Marcus bowed his head to take away his prize and drape the ribbon round his father’s neck, the medal resting simply inches above his coronary heart.

Manuel started to cry, Marcus remembers.

“We did it,” Manuel informed him, as a result of there have been no extra phrases left to say. “We did it.”