Cole Propels Saints Despite Loss of an Eye

Santa Clara High guard Chris Cole, as do most good high school basketball players, moves well without the ball.

Time and again in Tuesday’s 76-44 thrashing of San Diego Clairemont in the first round of the Southern California Division IV regional playoffs, Cole, a thin, athletic, 6-foot-4 junior, silently found a seam in Clairemont’s 2-3 zone and knifed close to the basket, as slick and unnoticed as a pickpocket at a county fair.

Repeatedly, a teammate would fire a sharp pass to Cole. Catlike, he would spring and hit short jump shot after short jump shot. Cole scored 11 points in the first quarter against Clairemont, helping Santa Clara take a 15-6 lead en route to an easy victory.

He finished with 15 neatly scored points and left Clairemont players scratching their heads and feeling for their wallets.

Just who was that kid in the goggles?

Cole’s unassuming on-court manner lulls defenses. And his goggles may leave opponents thinking that he is Santa Clara’s harmless librarian--content to keep the book while teammates Stevie Amar and Isaiah Mustafa bang bodies, and Art Barron and Anthony Maestas fire outside shots.

But as they often learn, the only time Cole slows down on the basketball court is when things get a little hot under the goggles. “They don’t bother me anymore,” Cole said of his goggles, “except for the times they get fogged up.”

Cole needs the goggles to protect a glass eye in his left socket. When Cole was 9 months old, doctors discovered a tumor and surgically removed the eye. Cole has worn a glass eye since infancy.

Cole’s consistent left-handed jump shot--he made all seven of his shots from the field Tuesday--was developed since childhood with the depth perception of just one eye. “I never remember seeing with two eyes,” Cole says softly. “So it’s, like, normal to me.”

Depth perception apparently is not a problem for a player accustomed to seeing only one way all his life. Cole, the only returning starter from last year’s state championship team, has mastered his disability well.

And when 33rd-year Coach Lou Cvijanovich sees Cole’s patient, heady on-court game, he doesn’t see an inspirational story: just a rock-solid basketball player.

“I started him last year because he fit into things just perfectly,” Cvijanovich said of a team that included current collegiate players Shon Tarver (UCLA) and Bruce Howarth (Cal State Long Beach). “He just does that damn all-the-time thinking on the court.”

Cole averages about nine points a game--a statistic that rarely garners headlines and attracts college recruiters.

But Cole thrives because his game is well-rounded. Although he scored a team-high 15 points against Clairemont, he would be the first to tell you that one of his steals or his lob passes inside to his best friend Amar give him more satisfaction.

“If I can get the lob in to Stevie and he gets the easy layup,” Cole said, “I know I did it. (As for) everyone else . . . if they (recognize it), they (recognize it) and if they don’t, it doesn’t bother me as long as the team gets the basket.”

It is all part of playing basketball the Santa Clara way: Cvijanovich has molded his players into interchangeable parts; Cole can play the point one time, then find himself posting up the next.

“Coming into high school, I thought the game was just scoring,” Cole said. “Coach showed me there’s more to the game than just putting the ball through the hoop. There’s passing and there’s defense. If you play good defense you get a lot of turnovers and you get a lot of easy baskets and then you don’t have to try so hard.”

Basketball seems effortless to Cole, who appears fluid and at home on the court. While Amar and Mustafa come up with the occasional dunk, Cole is the one jumping center every game. “He can outjump all of them,” Cvijanovich said.

Santa Clara, too, leaps over its opposition with regularity. After playing on a junior high team that included Amar and Barron and finished third in a state tournament, Cole was brought up from the junior varsity as a freshman to get the feel of a playoff team headed for a state championship.

His brother, Foster Cole, now a junior-varsity coach at Westlake High, started as a senior on that 1989 team when Tarver was a junior. Cole, who said that following in his brother’s footsteps was one of his goals, had little idea how soon he would be acting it out.

After making the varsity as a sophomore, Cole did not learn that he would start until it was announced over the public-address system one minute before tip-off in the Saints’ first game. He proceeded to start every game but one, which he missed for illness. That team was unbeaten and also won the state championship.

And tonight at 7:30 at Ventura College, Santa Clara will continue its attempt for a record-setting third consecutive state title with a regional semifinal game against St. Monica.

For one polite, shy, frail-boned junior, nothing less is expected. “I want to do it four in a row,” Cole said, smiling. “I’ll be disappointed if I don’t.”

Considering how much he has overcome thus far, disappointment has little place in his life. There only seems room for well-placed screens, feathery jump shots and fleet-footed defense.

“It’s like losing is impossible,” Cole said of a team that has won 20 consecutive playoff games. “We’re, like, super, almost.”

And every time Cole straps on the goggles and takes the court, the Saints come a little closer.