PRIVATE LIVES, PUBLIC PLACES : Benched in the ‘City of Champions

In the shadow of the Forum, in the shadow of the Lakers, and of billboards declaring Inglewood the “City of Champions,” seventh graders at Monroe Junior High play football in a crisp, bright morning. Fast, without fear, boys almost men, they play with the intensity of those who know about losing.

The field is full of gopher holes; the obstacle course is rusty; grass grows through concrete. And in the middle are two brilliantly colored, brand-new basketball courts. They are stylish, smooth, designed with care, as if someone somewhere believed in miracles.

Reebok built the courts to honor Byron Scott, a student here once. He came back for the dedication and they still talk of it. He was a messenger from a world beyond failure, a force for good. Can he know of the difference his visit made? Can he remember the boys’ locker room at Monroe?

Buildings that have been sacked by armies have the feeling of this locker room: buckled, twisted, defaced, a hit list of initials on one wall, chillingly crossed through. The forces of evil ever-present. How can it be to walk into this room as a 12-year-old?

The miracle is not the Reebok courts, the lottery of stardust. It is those seventh-graders at PE, black and Latino, most of them reared in the language of hardship, yet still full of childish life and eagerness. They run as the wind, dodge, pass, fight to lead. This is their Superbowl. Their grace and talent both awe and hurt. Elsewhere, pudgy, middle-class little leaguers bear names like Cougars and Bobcats. Here, there are real lions.

Prowling the outside, dressed in black, hair sleeked, mouths twisted, are the foes: the fringe gang members, those going wrong. They delight in Fail grades and mock those who engage, who dress out in PE uniforms and want to do well. Without knowing, they are battling for the souls of men.

Between them and their prey stands a tall, blond 27-year-old, easy with himself and others--Tom Seyler, junior PE instructor. Instructor? No one teaches 60 boys in a group. He can only encourage and let them know how the world is: “Losing stinks.” The boys like him; they hang around him with tales of unfair Fs in English, of life’s injustices.

Seyler has hit the baseball over the far fence, gone one-on-one on Byron Scott’s courts, has shown his muscle and kindness, too. His father taught here 20 years ago; perhaps that is why, as a teen-ager himself, he turned down the gamble of a draft offer from the St. Louis Cardinals for the security of a college scholarship. Baseball great? Gym teacher? He knows how few shots a boy has.

Monroe has a name as the school of “losers.” It has character, though: teachers respond, they laugh. Seyler knows most of the boys by name. A few have put hooks into his heart: Davion, 6 ft.-1 1/2 at 13, strong and fluid; Herman, who can jump 5 ft.-11, Courtney, Chris--the regulars at the hoop.

Across the playground, pink Disciplinary Reference forms flutter like discarded candy wrappers. Most of the boys here have seen a man dead--or feel that they must own to having done so. Parents, or none, home life or none; the pressures are as intense as the fights that break out without warning.

“The gangs come on the campus,” says Seyler bitterly, “but I don’t see colleges here. I don’t ever see USC or UCLA bringing an athlete here, letting the kids watch him play--and saying ‘you can do it’, giving the kids some hope. I had it, I was outstanding, so I know what it is. I could find you at least 20 great kids here who could get a full scholarship to a major college. And they won’t make it.”

At lunchtime, 850 kids milling around. The Reebok courts are full: Boys trying out, wondering who will, who might, who has lost before he starts. In the noise and jumble, one boy sits on the ground, fumbling through a tattered and unpromising bookbag. Finally, he draws out his homework paper. And as he smooths it out, there is a glimpse of the most beautiful handwriting, perfectly spaced and with pride. Excellence amid disorder. It is indescribably moving.

How can the Lakers, a mile away, not send someone here to bring the news that it is worth trying, that there is a way out? A Laker spokesman says: “The odds are so overwhelming that it would be unfair to encourage kids at this level to believe that they could make it in the pros.”

What about making it in life?

Evil is never too busy to draft early.