A CAST OF CASTOFFS AT PIERCE : Former Drug User, 2 UCLA Tennis Team Rejects--and Even a Pierce Tennis Team Reject--Find a Home

An unusual cast of characters brought Pierce College its 10th consecutive Metropolitan Conference men’s tennis championship this season.

The odd mix of players that gave Coach Paul Xanthos his 17th conference title in 22 seasons includes a recovering drug addict, three foreigners and two full-time UCLA students.

Nelson Gary III, who said he is a recovering drug addict, was involved with LSD and other hallucinogens before going through a rehabilitation program last summer at Pasadena Community Hospital.

“He wasn’t into recreation,” his father, Nelson Gary II, said. “He was into space walking.”

Drug-free for the past 10 months, he nearly died in the hospital while having “serious convulsions,” his father said. As recently as five months ago, on an outing to Palm Springs with his father, the shaggy-haired freshman from Calabasas couldn’t hit more than two balls in a row over the net.

But Gary, whose father was an all-league selection as a one-armed right fielder at Van Nuys High in 1958, has been the Brahmas’ No. 1 player all season despite a Venice Beach mugging in February that left him with cuts from a broken bottle in his back, knee and instep--and despite a cavalier attitude toward the sport that borders on indifference.

Gary is described as “up and down mentally” by Xanthos, and Gary said there’s a reason for that.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I just don’t want to be out there. I enjoy the game, but I don’t love it. It’s just a hobby. I don’t really have any goals with it.”

In Venice, he said, he was mistaken for a rival gang member and jumped by eight men. His wounds were never treated, he said, because he doesn’t have any medical insurance.

As for his past involvement with drugs, Gary said: “I can’t say I don’t miss drugs and that I hate them. I feel learned a lot from hallucinogens. But I just couldn’t control it. I have an addictive personality.”

Pierce’s international delegation is headed by Steve Yu, a 23-year-old freshman from Kennedy High and Inchon, South Korea. The Brahmas’ roster also includes Nadir Fararji from Israel, and Alex Olaya from Mexico City.

“We’re talking United Nations on our court,” Yu said.

“And remember,” Xanthos said, “they’ve got a Greek coach.”

Yu didn’t start playing tennis until his junior year at Kennedy, worked and traveled in Europe for a couple of years after high school and wasn’t good enough to make the Pierce team three years ago. Now, he’s the Brahmas’ No. 2 player.

Doug Merrill and David Garelick form Pierce’s UCLA connection. Full-time students at UCLA, they also carry 12 units at Pierce to be eligible to play for the Brahmas.

Neither could make the team at UCLA.

Garelick, who played for Pierce two years ago and earned an Associate of Arts degree from the school last year, suggested that Merrill, a freshman from Rolling Hills, join him on the Pierce team.

They take morning classes at UCLA, then drive out to Pierce’s Woodland Hills campus to play tennis in the afternoon and attend classes at night.

“I wanted UCLA academics, but I still wanted to play,” Merrill said. “I’m not going to drop out of UCLA just to play tennis. If I get a scholarship, then I might transfer, but I’ll stay at UCLA until I get a better opportunity.

“This is a perfect system.”

And this, Xanthos said, is a fun team to coach.

“This is one of the most enjoyable teams I’ve ever had,” said Xanthos, whose record at Pierce is 386-80. “They have improved so much. They probably improved more than any team I’ve ever had, and they’re still improving.

“It’s been one of the easiest teams to work with because they work together as a team. They’re competitive, but they’re together.”

After his team’s 97-match conference winning streak was ended last April by Harbor in the last match of the season, Xanthos didn’t expect much this season.

“This is a brand-new team,” he told a friend last summer, “and from the looks of them, they should be, maybe second or probably third in the conference.”

For the first time, he incorporated aerobics and weight training into the Brahmas’ conditioning program. On Mondays and Wednesdays, the players go through an aerobics workout; on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they lift weights and run the par course at Pierce, which incorporates calisthenics into a 1.1-mile run.

The result, Xanthos said, is “probably the best-conditioned team I’ve ever had.”

Last Thursday, the Brahmas beat Harbor, 6-3, in a match that lasted 5 hours, 15 minutes.

“I lost the first set, 6-3, like nothing,” said Yu, one of the Pierce winners. “Then the second set went down to a tiebreaker and I could tell my opponent was getting tired. And I was still in good shape because of the aerobics and the par-course training.”

Pierce lost its opener to the UCLA junior varsity, but has since won its last 16 matches. A 9-0 victory Tuesday at Bakersfield gave the Brahmas a 12-0 conference record and improved their 10-year Metro record to 106-1.

“They think they’re great,” Xanthos said of his players, “and I’m not going to argue with them.”

Pierce’s reign of terror in the Metro came to an end Tuesday, though. The Brahmas, who will play in the Southern California regional tournament next month, will move next season to the Western State Conference. Pierce won 50 straight matches in the WSC after Xanthos was hired in 1965.

Xanthos expects more of the same next season, no matter the cast. “They’re not going to touch us,” he said.