Moving Away Isn’t Always the Right Move

Wow. You’re 18, you’re a hot-shot ballplayer and you’re going off to college.

For months, recruiters have been courting and complimenting you, and now they have handed you a four-year scholarship on a silver platter. It’s your ticket, to education, sophistication, maybe a national reputation. You’re going to be independent, away from home, playing with the big boys. What could be more exciting?

See ya, Mom. See ya, Dad. See ya, Orange County.

That was then. Now, six months, a year, maybe a year and a half later, here you are, back in the Southland, licking your wounds, wondering just where things went wrong.

For whatever reason, some county athletes are swallowing their pride, forsaking a free education and coming home.

In the past month alone, Rog Middleton (Tustin High School, Class of ‘87) left the University of Utah. Blaine DeBrouwer (Ocean View, Class of ‘86) left New Mexico State. Tony Panzica (Ocean View, Class of ‘86) left the University of Texas San Antonio. Other former prep stars--such as Tom Peabody from Mater Dei, Mike Labat from Ocean View, Mike Hess from Corona del Mar, Joe Seager from Newport Harbor, Mike Crowley from Marina--have returned home, right back where they started from.

All have individual reasons for leaving the school they originally signed with. For some, it was the academic demands of a four-year university. For others, it was the culture shock of being away from the sun and surf.

“There’s a red flag on every California kid, and if there’s even a hint that he won’t stay, recruiters won’t take him,” said Jim Harris, Ocean View High School basketball coach. “Southern California is unique. Other places are too slow, the weather is drastically different. If you’re a prime player in high school, why do you want to sit on the bench and be unhappy far away, when you can sit on the bench and be unhappy closer to home?”

That hard, uncomfortable bench is often a reason in itself for transferring.

“I think transferring has been fairly prevalent since the start of freshman eligibility,” said Arizona Coach Lute Olson. “It used to be a kid would come into a program and play freshman ball, allowing him time to adjust to being away from home. But now kids come in with the expectation of playing as freshmen. They have gone through the recruiting process, being told they are the greatest thing since white bread. Instead of looking at it realistically, they start feeling bad.”

And when you start feeling bad, home starts looking awfully good.

Wayman Who?

In the fall of 1982, Joe Seager was a senior center at Newport Harbor High School and a pretty hot property. He was 6-feet 10-inches tall and had been averaging 19 points and 10 rebounds a game. After making two trips, to Colorado and Hawaii, Seager visited the University of Oklahoma.

“I liked the school and I liked the coach who was recruiting me,” Seager remembers. “I signed on the first day of early signing.”

There was just one little catch. Because he signed early, Seager hadn’t seen the Sooners’ new freshman, a 6-9 power player by the name of Wayman Tisdale.

Seager redshirted his freshman year.

“But I had a lot of fun,” he said. “I met a lot of people. During the holidays, I got a little homesick. But after I was home for summer, I was looking forward to going back and I expected to play.”

But his sophomore year, Seager never got the chance to play. That year Tisdale, a junior, led Oklahoma to the final eight of the NCAA tournament.

“I thought I’d get a chance to play a different position,” Seager said. “But I wasn’t playing at all.”

Even though he was unhappy, Seager stuck out the school year. He returned to Oklahoma the next fall just long enough to turn around and come back to California.

“I wasn’t getting along with Coach (Billy) Tubbs. I didn’t like the Oklahoma atmosphere and being away from home,” Seager said. “My freshman year it was all new and kind of fun, but I talked about quitting then and got talked out of it. It was a big decision. After a while, I just couldn’t put up with the weather. If I was playing, I probably could have.”

So Seager came home. He played a season at Orange Coast College, then made a commitment to the University of San Francisco.

Seager started for USF last season but suffered two leg injuries, one during the season and one last summer. Now he’s averaging about 20 minutes a game as a backup center. This is his last year of eligibility.

“It’s been a pretty rocky road,” he said. “Some people have talked to me about going to Europe to play, but with all my luck, I think I’ll just hang it up and get a job.

“I learned a lot playing against Wayman every day in practice. But if I was coming out of high school now, I wouldn’t sign early. I’d wait. If you’re good enough, someone will take you.”

Class Struggle

When Tom Peabody was playing point guard for Mater Dei during the 1985-86 season, he wasn’t itching to get away from home. In fact, he kind of wanted to play for Loyola Marymount, but the Lions played a fast-break, running game--not suited to a product of Mater Dei’s slow-paced, ball-control game--so they didn’t recruit Peabody.

But two years later, Peabody is at Loyola. It just took him awhile to get there, because of a wrong turn at Houston.

One of the things that attracted Peabody to Rice University in Houston was the school’s academic reputation. The school was fairly small, in an interesting metropolitan area and offered--to Peabody, who had a 3.7 grade-point average in high school--the chance for a great education.

So, in the spring of 1986, when recruiters at San Diego State--his other option--said they were unsure they wanted to sign him, Peabody told them: “OK, I’m signing with Rice.”

“Recruiting is such a tricky thing,” Peabody said. “When I came home from Rice, I wanted to go there. When I came home from Stanford, I wanted to go there.”

But, despite his fine record in high school, Peabody found he wasn’t ready for an intensely competitive college curriculum. He didn’t manage his time well. He failed his first four tests.

“I just wasn’t mature enough to take it all on at once, basketball, school and being away from home,” Peabody said. “I felt like being an athlete was a hindrance there. I was looked at as a dumb California jock. I was 0 for 3.”

Peabody’s problems weren’t really related to basketball. He was playing well in fall practice, but he felt as if he was slipping further and further behind in school. His father and a good friend both became ill that fall. And when Peabody suffered a stress fracture and had to miss practice for a few weeks, his problems intensified, and he was no longer able to find an escape on the court.

“I became increasingly unhappy,” he said. “I was homesick, but not because I wanted to be at home. Because I didn’t want to be there.”

He decided to cut his losses and, with the understanding and best wishes of his coaches, left the day before the first game, Thanksgiving of 1986.

The next semester he enrolled at Orange Coast College, taking 22 units, and stayed away from basketball for a few months.

“It was very humbling,” he said. “A lot of my friends were away at school. The only reason I didn’t want to come home was because I didn’t want to be considered a failure.”

Eventually he started playing pickup games and adjusted his style to a faster, run-and-shoot game. Last summer, while he was playing in Slam ‘N Jam tournaments, recruiters from UC Irvine and Loyola called.

“I was shocked that anyone had noticed,” he said. “I thought I blew my one chance.”

Peabody accepted a scholarship from Loyola, is doing well in classes, and is redshirting this year, with three years of eligibility left.

He realizes that a lot of people might not understand how an 18-year-old kid could walk away from a free education.

“But money can’t buy happiness,” he said. “This is the best move I ever made. I learned a lot and grew up a lot that year. I learned that everything will work out.”

The Wrong List

Mike Hess, Corona del Mar’s starting point guard in the 1982-83 season, knew that choosing a college was a big decision. So he tried to come up with a list of the most important things to consider when making that choice.

“But it’s hard to even come up with an accurate list when you don’t have any experience in making that kind of a decision,” Hess said. “You think about things like the gym and how much you’ll play.”

Hess made five recruiting trips, to Stanford, California, Loyola, Santa Clara and the University of Texas. He chose Texas. He was offered a lot of playing time, he liked the school and Austin, and he looked forward to playing against top teams such as Houston.

But now he realizes he was working with the wrong list.

“My biggest flaw was not putting the coach higher on my priority list,” Hess said. “When you’re in high school you think, ‘Well, my coach loves me; I’m a top player.’ A lot of guys neglect to consider that, unless you’re playing for Bobby Knight and winning, it might be tough to put up with certain coaches.”

Texas Coach Bob Weltlich was a former Knight assistant, and Hess wasn’t the only player who had a hard time in his program. Early in the fall of 1983, two seniors--including the most valuable player from the season before--left the team, leaving the remaining players in a state of shock.

“The coach knew the game as well as anybody,” Hess said. “But we weren’t compatible.”

Hess played about seven games that winter, but he wasn’t happy.

“Everything should have been going great,” he said. “Basketball had always been the highlight of my life, but I was having a terrible time. I thought, do I want to spend my four years here?”

The answer was no. Hess left at the semester break. The publicity surrounding the departures of the other Texas players worked to Hess’ advantage, and other schools started calling him.

“This time the coach was on the top of my list,” he said.

He spent his spring semester at Loyola, attending school, and transferred to UC Irvine in the fall of 1984. He played right away, and that season, Irvine went to the National Invitation Tournament and beat UCLA and Nevada Las Vegas.

Things worked out for Hess, and when recruits come to Irvine, he usually shares some wisdom with them.

“Anywhere you’ll go, they’ll paint a pretty picture,” Hess said. “It’s hard not to have a good time when you’re on a recruiting trip. But you should spend time in the locker room and around the coach when dealing with the team. It’s easy to get caught up in the good times, but once you get there and it’s real life, it’s different.”

High Expectations

Last year, as a freshman at New Mexico State, Blaine DeBrouwer was happy.

“I thought I had found a place where I fit in well,” said DeBrouwer, who graduated from Ocean View in 1986.

And why wouldn’t he feel that way? His freshman season, he started 13 games at point guard and played in 27 of 30 games, averaging 18 minutes a game. He liked the coach and the program and, though he missed home and found living on his own a big adjustment, he didn’t mind life in Las Cruces. He even spent half of last summer there, going to summer school and playing ball.

But this season, everything changed. Two guards, who were on probation during the 1986-87 season, rejoined the team. Suddenly there were four guards fighting for three spots and DeBrouwer was the youngest. The coaches, on the day before the first game, advised him to redshirt.

“At first I thought I could use the year to improve, and just practice hard,” he said. “But even my practice time was scarce.”

For the first time in his life, DeBrouwer didn’t want to go to practice.

“It was hard to accept,” he said. “I thought my family would think I was failing by redshirting. When people heard redshirt, they would ask, ‘Where are you hurt?’ or ‘Are you academically ineligible?’ I didn’t feel I was improving or growing.”

Things didn’t get better. When he came home to visit, it got harder and harder to go back. When former Ocean View teammate Tony Panzica came through Las Cruces on his way home from Texas at San Antonio, it opened DeBrouwer’s eyes.

“He was leaving because they wanted him to play point guard, and he’s 6-feet 7-inches,” DeBrouwer said. “Tony was on his way home and, after talking to him, it made me realize that I could transfer, too.”

So he made what he calls the biggest decision in his life, and on Jan. 2, he told his coach he was withdrawing. Now he is at Cerritos College, not playing but working out with the basketball team and getting more practice time than he did at New Mexico.

He plans to play for Cerritos next season and then hopes to transfer to another four-year college, somewhere in California.

“I’m paying tuition and paying for books now,” DeBrouwer said. “That’s all new to me, but it wasn’t worth the free ride if I wasn’t happy.”

Still, if he had it to do over, DeBrouwer thinks he probably would make the same decision.

“It was the best decision for me coming out of high school,” he said. “I’m twice as mature now as I was then.”

Then Winter Came

Last week, Rog Middleton’s luggage sat stacked in the living room of his Tustin home. His mother had told him not to unpack, in case he was going to be leaving again.

But Middleton is staying. Last season’s Tustin High School star, who left the University of Utah on Jan. 5, has accepted a scholarship from Chapman College.

Middleton can’t pinpoint exactly what the problem was at University of Utah. He liked the coach; he was told he would get playing time, and the school offered a good physical therapy program, his chosen major. But he just wasn’t happy.

“I was enthusiastic,” said Middleton, who also took recruiting trips to UC Irvine, University of San Diego, Washington and Utah State. “But time passed and winter came and it started to snow.”

Middleton, whose trademark in Tustin was his shaved head, took to wearing a lot of hats.

Unlike other freshmen eager to play, Middleton asked Coach Lynn Archibald to redshirt him, because--early on--he suspected he might want to transfer and didn’t want to lose a year of eligibility.

Also redshirting and unhappy was Middleton’s roommate, Ken Crawford from San Francisco.

“Other guys told us (Salt Lake City) was great as soon as you got settled,” he said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was that hot. It was kind of dead. I just didn’t like the place.”

Middleton talked to his parents on the telephone about four times a week. On Dec. 19, after a game at Cal State Fullerton, Crawford informed Archibald that he was leaving. Middleton decided it was better for him to just leave rather than try to stick it out. He told Archibald the morning of Jan. 5 and that afternoon came home.

The phone started ringing immediately.

“It was chaotic,” Middleton said. “People were calling. I had a lot of questions.”

Middleton considered going to a community college but didn’t want to change schools again. He was attracted to Chapman because he had played for Chapman assistant coach Richard Prospero, who was freshman coach at Tustin. And he liked Chapman’s physical therapy program.

This semester he will live at home while attending classes. He still has four years of eligibility. He said it doesn’t bother him that Chapman is a Division II school.

“Ninety-nine percent of the schools that contacted me were Division I,” he said. “It’s not that important to me. The education is more important. I got a lot of advice from a lot of different people, and I’ve learned a lot. It took courage, but I had to do what’s right for me.”