Wheeled Victory : Former Gahr Star Uses Coaching to Tackle Traumas

It has been a long, painful while since he shined so brightly at Gahr High School in Cerritos. Back in those disco days when the parties never seemed to end, he was “Mr. Touchdown” and “Mr. Legs.”

The brightness has dimmed. No one talks about his legs anymore, which don’t kick soccer balls or run for touchdowns. Or dance.

The wheelchair that held the legs and the rest of Gary Hubert sat on the straw-colored grass at Gahr’s Hanford Rants Stadium last week.

Hubert, 25, was coaching Gahr’s junior varsity soccer team against Warren High. It is what he lives to do now that he finally has accepted his paralysis as well as help for a drinking problem that started when he was a teen-ager.

Hubert, who has the dark, good looks he had in high school, wore a windbreaker zipped to his neck.

Afternoon had turned to night. Perhaps a dozen spectators huddled under the lights. But these boys played their hearts out anyway because that is the way Hubert played until a water-skiing accident paralyzed him almost six years ago.

Combative Attitude During Game

“Fight for that ball,” he yelled to his players. His chair was cumbersome under his 200 pounds, but he turned it anyway by swinging his arms.

There was a combativeness about Hubert that for the course of the game did not allow him to smile.

“Watch that pushing, ref,” Hubert said.

“Just leave me alone,” said the referee.

“Some of the worst officiating I’ve seen in a long time,” Hubert went on.

The referee looked down at Hubert and pulled out a yellow card, signifying a penalty against the Gahr bench.

Then the players tried to pick up where Hubert left off, but Hubert told them, “I don’t want none of you guys talking to the ref.”

The feeling of wanting to get up and help his players was constantly there for Hubert. What a help he probably would have been. As a sophomore in 1977, he was all-CIF, scoring 25 goals to lead the Gahr varsity to a San Gabriel Valley League championship.

Like a Little Brother

But these young players, on their way to a one-goal loss that would make Hubert’s record 2-4-2, shot errantly, the balls skittering past the goal and the running track and disappearing into bushes, where they were retrieved by one of Hubert’s best friends, Dennis Misner.

Misner, 41, is the varsity soccer coach and was when Hubert played. Hubert has become sort of the little brother Misner never had.

“He was the complete soccer player,” Misner said. “He had these big tree-trunk thighs. A real strong kicker. Great speed. I’ve had maybe 300 players, and would rank him in the top five.”

In Hubert’s annual, opposite a photo of him kicking the ball with one of his fabled legs, Misner wrote: I’m very proud of you. You have so much potential.

Hubert’s life changed one summer morning in 1981 on the Colorado River near Parker, Calif.

While water-skiing, he was pulled headfirst into the water. The impact broke his spinal cord.

His friends pulled him from the water. It took an hour to reach shore. Then, Hubert was flown to San Diego where four days later his spine was fused.

Today, he has no feeling below his chest, although he has some movement and feeling in his arms and hands.

“When I went to the hospital, I just couldn’t believe it,” Misner said. “It was evident he wasn’t going to be OK. I walked in the room and he was in traction, laying face down. A mirror was on the floor and we communicated through the mirror. He was more concerned about how I was doing.”

There had been indications long before that Hubert had been heading for a fall because of a drinking problem. He admits that he was a teen-age alcoholic. Written pyramid-style in ballpoint pen in his 1977 annual were suggestions from concerned classmates:

You’re some outrageous dude in sports and as a person. You have a great future in front of you. So don’t drink so much. . . . Don’t party hardy too much. . . . You better be careful with that Bacardi at the dances. . . . What’s going on Gary, you big stud and a half. Just don’t mess it up by catching a buzz too much.

“It was fast-paced living,” Hubert said after his mother had dropped him off for practice the day after the Warren game. “I got mixed up with drinking a little bit.”

The parties at the Hubert home in Lakewood were legendary.

“We’d party on Friday night and Saturday night,” Hubert said. If you drank, you were more likely to be accepted by your classmates, he said.

“At the time, we thought it was normal high school behavior,” said Sheila Hubert, Gary’s mother. “His class loved to party all the time.” She said she and her husband, Chuck, thought it was better to have the parties at their house than to have the kids driving around and drinking in their cars.

“We chaperoned, and the kids enjoyed it,” she said. “We didn’t approve of the drinking, but it was better to have them (do it) here. Sometimes it seemed like the whole school was here.”

After his junior year, in which he was named “Mr. Touchdown” as a star running back on the football team, Hubert did not play much more football or soccer because of other athletic injuries. He did continue to drink.

“I was sure he could have got a scholarship had he not been injured,” Misner said.

After graduation in 1979, Hubert played soccer on two amateur teams and worked at J.C. Penney as a forklift driver.

“He was definitely going down the hole,” Misner said. “He was so plastered (at a party) a few months before his accident, I hardly recognized him.”

Accident Was Hard to Accept

But on the day he went down in the Colorado River, Hubert said he had not been drinking. The aftermath, though, was worse than any hangover.

“It was very, very hard for him to accept the accident,” Sheila Hubert said. “Suddenly his whole life had come to a standstill. He was on the run constantly since the time he was born. He had crammed as much fast living into his life as possible.”

So Hubert stayed at home, sat in his wheelchair and drank beer and whiskey. Not all day, he said, but most of it.

“You just kinda drown your sorrows, more or less,” he said. He said he also used marijuana and cocaine.

“I saw him vegetate at home,” Misner said. “We went on rides in my truck before he had the nerve to be seen in public.” In the truck they listened to rock ‘n’ roll and talked.

“He told me there was a lot of things to look forward to,” Hubert said. “He helped me build my confidence back up. I was feeling pretty low. My friends didn’t know what to expect or how to treat me, so some basically stayed away.”

Two years ago, Hubert decided to enter a rehabilitation program for alcohol and drugs. Now, he said, “I go out once in a while and drink a few drinks, but not as much as I used to. Just to get out.”

Hubert is in his second season as a paid coach for Gahr, a job Misner talked him into. (Insurance has taken care of most of his medical bills, Hubert said.)

“At first I didn’t like to come out and watch soccer, because I wanted to go out there and play,” Hubert said. “After a while I figured I might as well come and help. I know quite a bit about the sport.”

Hubert has inspired his players.

“He’s a strong-willed individual,” sophomore Paul Rijnders said while warming up. “Soccer was his life, then he got hurt and it was gone. You’d expect him to turn his back on it, but he’s come back.”

Dan Votava, another player, said, “If he wasn’t in that chair, he’d kick our butts or throw us around. He’s a tough guy, he gives us a lot of confidence.”

The Gahr youngsters gravitate to Hubert when he arrives at school in the afternoon. Last week they pored over his annuals. “That’s Gary, right there, heading that ball,” Misner said, pointing to a photograph.

Hubert attends weightlifting and tennis classes at Long Beach City College, but it is his daily visit to Gahr that he most anticipates.

“I feel this has made my life more meaningful now,” Hubert said. “It’s given me something to look forward to. I can help the other kids out, keep them out of trouble. I like to see the joy in their faces when they’re having a good time. And I like watching them grow as persons.”

School Memories Are Vivid

Hubert watches the high school scene, the celebration of goals and touchdowns, the swirl of friendships and romances, the excited plans being made for the weekend. The memories return so vividly that he says, “Sometimes I wish I could go back.”

Would he do anything differently?

“Probably not,” he said. Then he paused. “I would have cooled that (the drinking) part of it a little bit. Too much excess. “

Girls pass by, and that is not easy for Hubert. Girls were always a big part of his life.

“I like to keep busy and try not to think about it,” he said. “But I do sometimes.”

He still is a ladies’ man.

“We’ll go out dancing and he’ll go up to some of the nicest ladies in the place, wheel out and sit there and ‘dance’ with them,” Misner said. “We talk about women a lot. It’s a big frustration, but he’s upbeat most of the time.”

It was time to coach, which took his mind off everything else.

“The chair ain’t really no difficulty,” Hubert said. And then, 10 years later, he wheeled, instead of ran, out to a soccer field at Gahr High School to shine again.