Clean and Sober, Back and Playing : After the Year He Threw Away, SDSU’s Tracey Mao Returns

The line wasn’t that difficult.

“Hi. My name is Tracey Mao, and I am an alcoholic.”

But on his first night at the Alcoholics’ Anonymous meeting, just over a year ago, it would not come. So he didn’t say anything.

And afterward, he let an acquaintance know how he felt.

“I told the guy that I was appointed by the court, but that I didn’t think I belonged there,” Mao said.

“My thought was that an alcoholic was a skid-row bum, some dirty guy.”

When Mao’s fists collided with his San Diego State football career on March 3, 1991, most people figured that the career was left, along with a young man’s broken face, on the parking lot of campus taco shop.

It wasn’t until his second meeting that Mao admitted his problem, and Mao’s admission is evident today. It is one major reason why he is on the SDSU practice field, preparing for the Aztecs’ Sept. 5 opener against USC.

“My feeling is that you can tell a lot about an individual’s character by how he handles adversity,” SDSU Coach Al Luginbill said. “I felt that Tracey made a serious, serious error in judgment, but he wasn’t a criminal.”

In mid-February, 1991, SDSU quarterback David Lowery had suffered a broken jaw in a fraternity fight. There was talk of the SDSU football team seeking revenge.

One night Mao had a few drinks. Talk didn’t seem so cheap anymore. Mao and a few buddies went looking for trouble. They found it.

Mao broke into the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity and slugged one young man. Shortly thereafter, he slugged another young man in the taco shop parking lot.

Neither victim had anything to do with the Lowery incident. But identities don’t always count in drunken rages. The worst of Mao’s victims suffered broken bones in his face and problems with his vision and sinuses. The other guy suffered bruises.

Mao--now a senior--was tried and convicted, sentenced to five years’ probation and one year in a work furlough center. Luginbill revoked his scholarship, and Mao watched last year’s team go to the Freedom Bowl from a distance.

One night. A lifetime in a bottle.

“I know I did it and I know I was wrong,” Mao said. “I was willing to pay the consequences.

“There’s no getting around something like that. It’s kind of like getting your hand caught in the cookie jar. The whole ordeal made me a better person all the way around.”

Mao, 22, says he has not had a drink since that night, and he ticks off the date proudly, like others might recall their wedding day.

“I’m really proud of that,” he said. “I am more proud of that than of anything that’s ever happened. Alcohol and college go hand in hand. This is party time. This is everybody’s prime drinking time.

“I’m not ashamed at all. My teammates will ask me, ‘You going to drink?’ And when I say, ‘No,’ they will say, ‘Why not?’

“They can’t believe it. Me, of all people.”

The year Mao sat out, Lowery became SDSU’s most valuable player.

The two had always been friends and, once again, they have lockers across from each other. But they have not discussed what happened on that spring night in 1991.

“We’ve never really gotten into detail about what happened,” Lowery said. “It’s hard.”

Mao, from Lynwood, said he started drinking after games in high school. But an occasional nip became an everyday occurrence in college--as evidenced by the fact that he had been in a substance abuse program two years before the 1991 attack after another on-campus drinking incident.

Now, he attends Alcoholics’ Anonymous meetings each Sunday even though he is no longer required to. He thanks his family and his fiancee, Shannon Clevenger, for their support. He thanks his coaches and teammates for making him feel welcome again.

“I think of the consequences--everything could happen again,” he said. “I could let all those people down again. I could lose everything.”

After Mao completed his obligations to society, Luginbill decided to allow him back on the football team. But there no longer was a scholarship waiting.

“He never made excuses,” Luginbill said. “He never tried to blame his problems on anybody else. It has been a pleasure to watch him handle this. He’s grown up.”

Now, he’s battling junior Terrill Steen for one of the outside linebacker jobs. Steen started 12 of 13 games a year ago and is currently working with the first team.

“(Mao) is making very, very few mental errors and very few physical errors,” said Barry Lamb, SDSU defensive coordinator. “He’s playing real strongly now.”

Said Luginbill: “He was rusty in the spring. In the fall, he’s really progressing.”

SDSU coaches like Steen’s quickness, but Mao, 6 feet 2 and 235 pounds, is the more physical of the two. Both have plenty of game experience--Mao became a starter as a true freshman in 1988, was the team’s second-leading tackler as an inside linebacker in 1989 and was sixth on the team in tackles as an outside linebacker in 1990.

Both players figure to get plenty of playing time. But Mao, even as a second-teamer, is thrilled to be back on the field.

Although he had doubts that Luginbill would let him return, Mao said he never considered giving up, simply because he couldn’t imagine life without football.

“I wouldn’t be able to do this on my own,” he said. “I hate to quit on anything, and that would be the ultimate quitting move. When Xyou’re down, you’re supposed to get up.

“If I didn’t have football, I wouldn’t have had anything to look forward to.

“You know what I mean?”