Heart and Soul : Memory of a Teammate Inspires La Mirada to Win CIF Title

They won the championship, and then cried for a dead teammate. Thus, on a cold, windy night in San Marino, La Mirada High’s “Season for Jimmy” ended.

Now it was time for the school--in mourning last spring after a football player was killed in a traffic accident--to celebrate.

“We’re going to have fire engines, a police escort, the team, the band, cheerleaders,” said Principal Howard M. Haas. “We’ll start here, go to City Hall and go around to all the elementary schools, have the kids out there cheering. I’ve never done a parade before.”

This was Monday afternoon, two days after La Mirada won the California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section football title for the first time in its 34-year history with a 28-7 victory over San Marino. La Mirada is in Section VIII, which has 31 teams.

Haas, 42, already in parade mode with a tie that had drums and drum majors on it, walked through the tree-dotted campus past students who flocked from one class to the next. Jimmy Wilson was not among them.

John Mele, the football coach, recalled the day in late April when, during lunch hour, a player came into his office and said: “Hey, Mele! Jimmy’s dead.”

Wilson was lying on Santa Gertrudes Avenue near the school. He had been riding in the back of a pickup truck as he and three teammates headed for Taco Bell. The truck made a turn, swerved to avoid a gardening truck and flipped over. Wilson’s head was crushed by the pickup’s back wheel.

“Everybody was shocked,” said Mele. “A lot of people just walked out of school. I went over there and was one of the first to identify him.”

Fault has not been established in the case, which the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said is still under investigation.

Wilson, who would have been a senior, was a starting defensive back and the student body president. He had a straight-A average.

“He was exceptional, a leader type and probably the most popular kid we had here,” said Don Gauthier, the freshman football coach. “I don’t know anybody who didn’t like Jimmy Wilson.”

For tailback Ryan Hura, the accident was especially tragic. He was driving the pickup.

“It goes through my mind every day,”

Hura, a junior, said Monday.

No one at the school will forget Wilson. And no one will forget how hard Hura ran Saturday night in his memory. Despite bruised ribs, Hura carried the ball 26 times for 149 yards--118 in the second half as the Matadores broke a 7-7 tie.

“He always runs hard, but I think it was something extra,” said Mele. “It was like he was possessed with Jimmy.”

“He’s been on our minds all season,” Hura said.

Wilson was the team’s honorary captain. His helmet was always set on the field, next to the helmets of the other three captains during pregame warm-ups. Beneath their jerseys, the Matadores wore T-shirts that said: “Season for Jimmy.”

La Mirada, which tied with Artesia for the Suburban League title, won four consecutive games in the playoffs to finish with a 10-4 record. Its stars were Hura; senior quarterback Mike Moschetti, who completed 12 passes and scored two touchdowns in the title game, and junior receiver Alex Khasaempanth, who caught five touchdown passes in the playoffs before breaking his arm in the second quarter Saturday night when he collided with a goal post.

Mele, 45, is a stocky, ruddy-faced man who once played quarterback for Whittier College. He is in his fifth year as head coach and 21st year at the Norwalk-La Mirada School District.

“It was a dream come true,” he said of the season.

After the title game, the team prayed for Wilson. “Then I told them that we had accomplished our three goals--to win our league, to win CIF and to win for Jimmy,” Mele said. “We all had tears in our eyes.”

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But there were no tears this week at the school, which is in an upper middle-class city of parks and homes wedged near the border between Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The parade is set for Friday morning, but it is not certain how many residents are aware of it.

“I frankly never knew when the team was playing,” said Mac Ausbon, president of the Chamber of Commerce. “I just wish I had gone to all the games, but I work late on Friday nights.”

Haas, new to the city, has already sensed its lack of identity. “Most people don’t know where La Mirada is,” he said.

But he had reason this week to believe that the school, with an enrollment of about 1,500, was doing its best to put the city on the map.

“Everybody’s just flying high,” said Haas, who came from Santa Ana to take his first high school principal’s job and has become known as the school’s biggest cheerleader. “My hope is that everyone will catch the winning spirit, and it will cross the board to academics. You hope that the kids get the feeling that if we can be best in sports, we can be best in academics.

“For a principal, nothing could be sweeter. You look for a balance of intelligence, heart and body. And we had it last weekend.”

Winning Jimmy’s Season wasn’t La Mirada High’s only success last weekend.

In the main office, the CIF championship plaque and a trophy for first place in the Southern California Debate League sat side by side.