[Vision2020] The Comeback of All Comebacks

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (March 31, 2006) "Life of Reilly" (By Rick Reilly) column of
the Sports Illustrated.

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The Comeback of All Comebacks
By Rick Reilly

The point guard nearly drowned in his own house. 

The coach lost his home. 

The shooting guard spent five weeks in a cramped hotel room with no power or
water. 

Their leaky gym had no heat. 

And they almost killed each other. 

So you tell me: How in the world did Ehret High win the Louisiana state
basketball championship? 

"When you think about where we started," says Ehret's coach, Allen Collins,
"it's nothing short of incredible." 

Where they started was in Marrero, La., 10 minutes from New Orleans, on Aug.
28, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina turned the whole area into a watery
hell. "I was afraid for my life," says Ehret guard Gary Davis, who was
trapped for days on the second floor of his house in New Orleans. "Choppers
saw us and kept going past. I just kept thinking about hoops. It was the
only thing that made me happy." 

Hoops? The gym at Ehret High was a wreck. There would be no time for
conditioning or weightlifting. But Collins wanted to try to play anyway. "I
made a commitment to coach 'em, and I was gonna coach 'em," he says. Problem
was, only four of 'em were left. The rest of his team was scattered as far
away as Atlanta. 

He found a couple of transfers and got the roster to six, but nearly every
game was on the road. The team didn't have a single home game until January.
And since there was no money in Ehret's budget for athletics, Collins
couldn't even buy his kids aftergame pizza. They made do with Salvation Army
meals and cold MREs donated by military personnel stationed at the school.
"It's not like I could take 'em to McDonald's. All the McDonald's were
closed," he says. Ehret even had to withdraw from a Thanksgiving tournament.
Couldn't afford a bus driver. 

Remarkably, things got worse. Most players had no transportation. For a
while, only senior guard Randy Verdin had a reliable car, and if he couldn't
round everybody up, there'd be no practice. Players were living from one
friend's couch to another. Transfers came in but would have to leave again
with their unsettled families. 

Hundreds of phone calls later, Collins finally quilted together a patchwork
team -- 10 kids from five schools, including a cocky inner-city transfer
named Brian Randolph whom nobody on the team liked. The feeling was mutual. 

"He just had an attitude all the time," says Ehret's star forward, Christian
Wall, who still lives in a trailer on his front lawn. The Ehret kids
bickered almost daily with Randolph and the non-Ehret kids. It was like West
Side Story in Reeboks. 

They lost early and they lost often, then started 1-2 in the district. "We
were at a point of no return," Collins said. So before a must-win game, he
threw them all into a room and told them, Work it out, or the season is
lost. 

And lo and behold, they did. Almost to a man, the players say it hit them,
in that room, that they could lose clothes and homes and trophies to
Katrina, but they just couldn't bear losing hoops. 

Randolph backed down and became a passer and a screener and a rebounder.
Transfer Nicholas Washington, who'd been a star at Cohen High, swallowed
hard and let Wall become the go-to guy. Everyone else chipped in as best he
could. And they won 10 of their next 11. 

"Other coaches would ask me, 'How are you doing this?'" Collins recalled.
"I'd say, 'It's not me, it's them.' All I did was try not to let them get
too low. No yelling. They've had enough negative stuff." 

Next thing you know, Ehret was in the state 5A championship game, playing
Woodlawn of Baton Rouge, a school whose biggest distraction all year was
cheerleader practice. And while Woodlawn and the other semifinalists were
happily snuggled in their hotel rooms near the Cajundome in Lafayette, Ehret
commuted 21Ú2 hours each way back to their couches. They couldn't afford
rooms. 

Yet somehow, against all logic, Ehret beat Woodlawn, the most powerful team
in the state -- with the clinching dunk coming from none other than Brian
Randolph. It was hard to decide who was crying harder, the players or their
emotionally spent parents. "A mismatched bunch of riffraff won it all,"
Collins beams. "It's like Hoosiers!" 

Actually, it's bigger than that. Ehret's Katrina Comeback has been a little
patch of blue sky for a ravaged city, a symbol of how things can be rebuilt
when you don't care who gets the credit. 

"We showed New Orleans that different parts of the city can come together
and do something great," Randolph says. "I mean, I know Katrina might be
horrible for some people, but it was a blessing for us."

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In spite of how some things are "progressing", it makes me feel alot better
knowing that there are people like Allen Collins and his patchwork
basketball team in this world.

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.

- Author Unknown
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