Full-Court Pressure : High School Basketball Player Juggles Motherhood, Schoolwork in Team Effort

The Lady Cats basketball team of Brea-Olinda High School is suited up and ready. The players trot out of the locker room carrying jackets, balls and bags of gear. One player--No. 32--carries her 4-month-old son.

Chespi Serna jogs across the gym floor and over to the crowded bleachers, a baby carrier cradled in her arms. Snuggled inside is little Juvenal, wearing a tiny basketball jacket. She tenderly deposits him with a friend’s mother. A moment later, she falls into line for the layup drills, looking like any other player in her yellow, white and green warm-up suit.

Serna, 18, a guard on the state champion Brea-Olinda’s varsity basketball squad, one of California’s winningest girls’ teams, had a baby last year and has since defied the odds, not only by returning to school and reclaiming her place on the team, but also by maintaining a B-plus average in the classroom.

Where other teen-age mothers have given in to the temptation to drop out of school, Serna has redoubled her determination to become the first in her immigrant family to graduate from high school. She wants a bachelor’s degree and a career working with computers.

While she admits that having a child so young was a mistake, Serna says she will make the best of it. She knows what the statistics say: Young mothers in her situation seldom finish high school and often end up on welfare. But she vows she will not.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m going to get an education and a good job because my baby’s future is counting on mine,” she said recently, sitting cross-legged on the gymnasium floor while her teammates practiced. “Maybe I didn’t have a baby at a perfect time, but my baby can still have a good life.”

At a time when it would be easy to feel isolated and oddly different from her peers, Serna has an extraordinary support network. During practice, her teammates fight for a chance to give “Junior” a bottle or gently rock him in his baby carrier. One teammate, knowing Serna and her live-in boyfriend are short of money, clips newspaper coupons for diapers. Her teammates’ parents take turns looking after Junior during night games.

“We’re just so proud that Chespi came back to school to finish her education,” said Barbara Llanes, a parent who rocked Junior at a recent game. “We want to do everything we can to help her do that. A lot of girls who got pregnant would never have done that.”

The athletic booster club and the team threw a lavish baby shower for Serna, and the booster club pays for her full-time baby-sitter. Although California Interscholastic Federation regulations generally ban anything of value being given to players, Keith Erickson, head of the booster club, said he checked with the CIF to make sure baby-sitting is allowed.

Serna’s coach reserved her spot on the team and helped arrange her independent-study courses so she did not have to come to campus late in her pregnancy.

“It’s unfortunate it didn’t happen later in her life, but these things happen,” said Coach Mark Trakh, who has led the girls’ team at Brea-Olinda to three consecutive state championships, the most recent on Friday night in Oakland.

“This isn’t about right or wrong, this is about what this kid has done to make the best of a difficult situation,” Trakh said. “She’s a battler, a fighter. And God, she’s making it.”

Trakh said that if Serna remained on the team, the “feeling of being a part of something successful” would make it easier for her to deal with the stress of juggling her roles as student, mother, daughter and girlfriend.

Serna’s presence on the team has become not only “a very positive, loving situation,” but has provided her teammates with valuable lessons about overcoming adversity, Trakh said.

“She doesn’t complain about it. She takes full responsibility,” said Susan Rhodabarger, 17, a junior and fellow Lady Cat. “It shows us that when we have a problem and complain, that we can just deal with it .”

Erickson, the booster club president, said the girls also have learned by vivid example that they cannot be cavalier about sexual activity.

Serna warns her friends to be careful, and even though she adores her little boy, Serna says she still feels a twinge when his needs force her to sacrifice times with her friends.

“My friends say, ‘Oh, we’re going to this club tonight, we’re going here, we’re going there,’ and I say, ‘Oh, I’m probably going to go home and cook dinner,’ ” said Serna, who shares an apartment with the baby’s father, Juvenal Rodriguez, 25, an auto body shop worker.

“There are times when he’s crying and I can’t figure out why,” Serna said. “The other day, I had just spent all this time getting him to stop crying, and he was finally quiet. Then I couldn’t find my practice shorts to wash, and I kept looking for them, and finally I just sat down in my closet and cried.”

Serna had dated Juvenal for three years. They consistently practiced birth control, she said, but just once they were careless.

She and Juvenal, both Catholics, decided abortion was not an option, and neither felt comfortable with giving the baby up for adoption. So Serna buckled down for the road to motherhood.

“I kept remembering what my father said when I told him I was pregnant,” Serna said. “He said, ‘I thought you said you were going to be the smart one and graduate!’ I just knew I had to do it, no matter what.

“You think having a baby is so cute, and it’s the hardest job you can ever throw on yourself,” she said.

With four months of experience under her belt, Serna is a confident mother, playfully tickling her baby’s hands in the locker room before a basketball game, a pale blue diaper bag resting at her feet.

Serna’s mother, Rosario, is impressed by her daughter’s grit.

“I thought it would be difficult for her to do it all,” Rosario Serna said. “Now I see how much smarter and stronger she is than I realized.”