‘I’m just a guy who likes basketball and coaching, and happens to be in a wheelchair.’ : He’s the Wheelchairman of the Boards : Granada Hills Has a Coach With Heart

Louis Cicciari of Granada Hills is not unlike a lot of other high school basketball coaches.

He espouses a love for the game, and still plays during his spare time. He cares deeply about his players, enough so that their games used to give him headaches. He moves up and down the sidelines, baiting the referees. And he dreams of coaching a college basketball team someday.

But Cicciari, 25, is different than other coaches. He has no legs.

They were amputated 18 years ago after Cicciari contracted purpura thrombosis, a disease that progressively destroyed the blood vessels in his legs. Before the life-threatening disease could spread to his internal organs, his legs were removed.

So Cicciari works from his wheelchair, coaching the junior varsity team at Granada Hills High and assisting coach Bob Johnson on the varsity level.

But don’t call him a pioneer.

“I’m just a guy who likes basketball and coaching and happens to be in a wheelchair,” he says.

Fair enough.

Cicciari, who was the student manager at Granada Hills for three seasons under former coach Barry Bass, knows the game. He has been playing in a wheelchair league for 12 years, and this season is averaging 24 points a game. His record in 3 1/2 seasons as the JV coach is 33-22.

Johnson calls him “an outstanding coach. He has good knowledge. He gets along with the kids very well. They respect him.”

Said Cicciari: “I think I’m a good coach. I’m not a great coach. I’m not a bad coach. I’m learning the game. I learn something new every game.”

The only problem with being a coach in a wheelchair, he said, is not being able to demonstrate what he’s trying to teach his players.

“But I’ve learned to talk my way through it,” he said, “and the players are smart enough to know exactly what I mean.”

He uses a chalkboard, he said, and in the future, he plans to use photographs in his coaching.

“I do get my point across,” he said. “The players understand and there really are no problems.”

Cicciari describes himself as a “fair” and “honest” coach.

“I coach from the heart,” he said. “I don’t lie to my players. I tell them how it is. . “I’ll never visibly embarrass my players. I’ll never pull them out of the game and visibly yell at them with their friends watching. You save that for halftime.”

Johnson said Cicciari is “very consistent with what he does.”

Cicciari was an active child.

“I was playing ball and riding a bike just like any other normal 7-year-old kid,” he said. “And then one day I stayed home from school because I was sick.”

Within three months, his legs had been amputated.

“The disease was progressing up from my toes,” Cicciari said. “The doctors decided they’d better amputate before it got up into my internal organs and killed me off. It was just kind of a freak thing. . . .

“My spleen was enlarged. My body wasn’t putting off enough antibodies.”

He was in the second grade. “Fortunately,” he said, “it happened when I was younger so I could adjust.”

Cicciari went to schools for the physically handicapped through the ninth grade. In the 10th grade, he transferred to Granada Hills High through the Los Angeles Unified School District’s mainstream program, which places handicapped students into a more normal environment. He became involved with the basketball program, and was on the bench when the Highlanders won the City 3-A championship in 1976.

After graduating in 1977, he went through a couple of jobs before enrolling at Pierce College. When he wasn’t in class, he hung around the gym at Granada Hills. One day, he asked Johnson if he could sit with him on the bench.

Eventually, he was helping Johnson at the games and in practice, too. Johnson asked him to take over the junior varsity.

“He would sit with me on the bench and we’d talk and he’d help me make some decisions,” Cicciari said. “One day he said, ‘OK, I’ll see you later,’ and he left me there to do it myself.”

The Highlanders, who were 0-4 in league play at the time, won five of their last six games. Cicciari, who said he “paces” the sideline like any other coach, had headaches after every game, he said, “mainly because I had to concentrate on the game a lot more than I thought I would have to.”

Granada Hills was 9-8 in Cicciari’s first full season in 1982-83, and last year they were 13-6 overall, 8-2 in the Valley 3-A League and the only team to beat league champion Reseda. Going into their 2:30 p.m. game against Canoga Park today at Granada Hills, the Highlanders are 6-7 overall and 2-4 in the league.

And Cicciari, who does not hold a teaching credential and gets paid less than $500 for the season as a coach, is having a great time.

“I love it,” he said. “Coaching is a lot of fun and I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. Not because we win or lose, but because the kids are good kids and it’s a lot of fun being with them. They look up to you somewhat, and it’s a responsibility.

“I enjoy practices and I enjoy the games. There’s only two weeks left in the season and the time just went by really fast.”

After the season, Cicciari plans to send out resumes to other high schools. He’ll transfer to Cal State Northridge to study sports medicine or business next fall, and next season he hopes to be coaching on the varsity level. Eventually, he’d like to try college basketball.

He lives with his parents, but describes himself as “pretty independent.” He drives a special van that has hand controls.

He said he wants to keep coaching “as long as I possibly can.”

Johnson said he wouldn’t hesitate to recommend him.

“He does everything that could be expected of a coach,” Johnson said. “And the kids think he’s great. That’s the biggest factor. And that’s not because he’s being nice to them. He’s coaching them, and they respect him. . . .

“He’s just gotten better and better at what he’s doing.”