For the Glory of Glendora : Tracy Murray Rallies More Than His Team Around Basketball

Wherever Glendora High School’s boys’ basketball team plays, a wave of supporters dressed in the school’s colors of red and black follows. The backers travel to the games to cheer their Tartans to victory and to witness any new developments in the growing legend of Tracy Murray.

The 6-foot 8-inch Murray, the state’s career and single-season scoring leader, is the pied piper of Glendora. He has brought excitement to the cozy town, north of Covina and west of San Dimas, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. Young and old alike turn out to see him play. Murray’s impact on Glendora is reminiscent of the movie, “Hoosiers,” in which a star player leads a small-town high school to the Indiana state championship, in the process uniting the community.

In Murray’s case, though, the final scene remains to be shot. Glendora has not yet won the State title, but the Tartans (31-2) can take care of that today against Menlo Atherton (31-4) in the Division II championship game at the Oakland Coliseum at 4:30 p.m.

Murray has done it all for the Tartans this season in averaging a nation-leading 43.7 points a game. He has scored 1,441 points, surpassing the mark of 1,259 set in 1977-78 by Greg Goorjian of La Crescenta’s Crescenta Valley. And in his prep career, he has scored 2,969 points, breaking the record of 2,693 set by Leon Wood of Santa Monica St. Monica’s.

But there’s more than just his scoring, according to his coach, Mike LeDuc, who mentions rebounding, passing, leadership and a flair for the dramatic.

“Tracy is always there in the crunch,” LeDuc said after Murray had scored 19 fourth-quarter points and finished with 37 in the Tartans’ 61-57 victory over Compton Dominguez in the Southern Regional final last Saturday.

Murray seems to be at his best when the pressure is on. He took off against Dominguez with the Tartans trailing by seven at the start of the quarter. He had made only six of his 16 shots at that point. And in Glendora’s semifinal victory over San Bernardino, he scored 31 points, including all 11 of the Tartans’ points in the third quarter.

“I just want to win, so I try harder when the game is on line,” said Murray, who is listed as a forward, but plays every position on the court. “My family is very competitive and that’s where I get my drive from.”

The following Murray has generated in Glendora is special, considering that he did not grow up in the area. Murray’s family moved to Glendora from Altadena his freshman year.

“My parents decided to move away from Altadena because our neighborhood had changed,” Murray said. “It had got to the point where people would paint on our fence every day and we would have to then paint over it.

“My mother (Candy) decided on Glendora because she wanted me in a tougher academic environment and she also noticed when she drove through the town, that every other house had a basketball rim up.”

Murray, who would have attended Pasadena Muir, said that the move turned out to be the best for him, even though he was not able to go to high school with friends he grew up with. He credits Glendora’s tough academic policies for his success in the classroom.

Recruited by most of the top basketball schools in the nation, Murray has reduced his list to UCLA, Nevada Las Vegas, New Mexico, Villanova and Louisville. He does not plan to choose until he has visited all five schools, having so far made trips to New Mexico and Louisville.

“I want to go to a school that has a winning program,” he said. “Of course, I would like to come in and play as a freshman.”

Playing a full season as a freshman would be more than Murray did as a freshman at Glendora. He played only the first five games, then had hip surgery.

“I had to have pins inserted because I had a natural growth injury to my hip,” said Murray. “I was 6-1 before I had the surgery and within a week after I had it, I grew two inches.”

He continued to grow, sprouting to 6-5 before beginning his sophomore year.

“I trimmed down a lot when I had the growth spurt,” Murray said. “I lost most of my baby fat during that time.”

Murray’s father, Robert, who played basketball at Pasadena City College and Cal Lutheran, encouraged his son to develop his basketball skills.

“I have always been able to shoot well from the outside,” Tracy Murray said. “I was able to make pro three-pointers when I was only 12 or 13 years old.

“My father would have us playing H-O-R-S-E and games of 21 in our back-yard court in Altadena. He would help me with my shot and other aspects of the game.”

Murray, who tries to get back to his old neighborhood every weekend, said that he learned to be a post-up player in the American Roundball Corp., a youth league in the Pasadena area.

“I was always a little bigger than everyone, so I had to play inside,” he said.

Before this season began, Murray and his teammates had a goal to win Glendora’s first Southern Section title. That dream fizzled when San Bernardino beat the Tartans for the 4-AA championship, 72-69. But, now the team is attempting to win a bigger prize.

“We have always dreamed of winning a state championship, but we never thought it would happen,” Murray said. “It was disappointing to lose the CIF title to San Bernardino, but now we are playing for bigger and better things. We want to win the state title.”

LeDuc agrees with Murray about Glendora’s fairy-tale season.

“This season has been just tremendous,” he said. “This has been an absolute dream, where everyone could come together like this. The last three weeks, every game has been a big game. The support here has been just fantastic, the only problem is that it all has to end.”