Taken to Heart : Winning Is Secondary to Building Self Worth at Sherman Indian High

At Sherman Indian High, athletics is more than an after-school activity.

Many of the students come to the federally funded boarding school with troubled pasts or to escape perceived prejudice in public schools. Others come because their homes on reservations are more than 100 miles from the nearest public school. Homesickness is a problem for most.

Because of these circumstances, Sherman Indian athletes--students must be at least one-quarter American Indian or belong to a recognized tribe--and coaches often form a special bond. Together, they leap hurdles much higher than those found on any track.

“They haven’t had a lot of success in any phase of their life,” said Don Sims, the school’s principal. “So, when you get that bond with them and you take them to that athletic field, it’s a mystical thing.”

In some cases, the hurdle is alcoholism.

The rate of death from alcohol-related causes for 15- to 24-year-old American Indians is 16 times greater than the rate for the same age group among all races in the United States, according to an official from Indian Health Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

One Mojave girl’s problems began when she was 6. Her father died and her mother turned to alcohol. Five years later, she, too, was drinking. The girl, now 16, is in her third year at Sherman Indian and plays on the girls’ volleyball and basketball teams.

“It keeps me going,” she said about sports. “It’s something to do besides just go find trouble.”

Her sentiments are echoed across the fields and through the gymnasiums. Many athletes said that sports are a way to stay clean and sober, to forget about their troubles.

School officials, meanwhile, disagree about the alcohol problem at Sherman Indian.

Leila Parker is a staff member of the Clark Behavioral Center, a substance-abuse counseling office on the Sherman Indian campus. She estimated that 80% of Sherman Indian students have alcohol problems that affect their schoolwork or cause them to be disruptive in the dormitory.

Sims called that estimate “awfully high,” saying that there are no more students with alcohol problems on the Sherman Indian campus than there are on any other high school campus. The difference, he said, is that Sherman Indian is a 24-hour environment, so administrators see all aspects of the students’ lives.

Said cross-country Coach Tom Colley: “I haven’t seen too much of a problem this year. In years past we’ve had to deal with some problems, but not this year.”

If a student is found with drugs or alcohol, counseling at the center is supposed to be mandatory. But Parker said many students slip through the cracks because the center’s three counselors are overloaded with nearly 200 cases and also because coaches and school staff members fail to enforce attendance at the mandatory counseling.

Ron Peck, the football coach, said it was “an out-and-out lie” that coaches turn a blind eye to alcohol use.

If anything, the coaches do a better job than the school’s dormitory supervisors on the watch for substance abuse, Peck said. Peck also has his own version of counseling:

“No partying,” or they are off the team.

In Peck’s logic, no alcohol, no problem. But some of society’s ills, such as prejudice, are more elusive.

The school’s athletic nickname, the Braves, seems ironic in the wake of recent demonstrations against college and professional teams that have similar names. Some American Indian activists have said that using such names as “Braves” or “Warriors” is dehumanizing and mocks Indian culture.

But one Navajo cross-country runner had a Washington Redskin blanket draped over her bed in her dormitory room. She shrugged when asked if she found that name and the Redskin logo offensive.

Some students, however, said that in public schools, they experienced prejudice.

Lydia Roach, who plays on the girls’ volleyball team, is a Cheyenne River Sioux. But in Carson City, Nev., where she attended a public school, her long, dark hair and brown skin put her at a disadvantage. Whenever there was a disturbance in her junior high classroom, Roach said, the teacher blamed the Latino and Indian students.

The students complained, but the teacher stayed. So Roach left.

Some boys are here because at public schools, they were asked to cut their hair if they wanted to play sports. Many Indian boys let their hair grow long. It is a popular style at the school and at football practice, long hair spills out of many a helmet. Before games, the student manager braids the players’ hair and tucks it into their shoulder pads so that it will not be yanked.

But those who came to Sherman Indian to be free of the perceived prejudice of the outside world have found that there is a price to be paid: remaining within the 87 acres of the Sherman Indian campus.

Roach plays basketball and volleyball to fill the time.

“There’s nothing else to do here,” she said.

Sherman Indian traditionally has excelled at cross-country, partly because running is an important part of many tribal ceremonies.

In the Navajo tribe, when a girl passes into womanhood, the other women massage her with special oils and then she runs, her whole family running behind her. In the Hopi tribe in Arizona, boys run up and down the mesas to prepare for their initiation into manhood.

During Sherman Indian’s heyday in cross-country, the 1970s and ‘80s, the Hopis made up about 25% of the student body and formed the nucleus of the cross-country team. The school won 10 Southern Section boys’ championships between 1973 and 1988, when it won the state Division III championship.

But in the late 1980s, the Hopis built a school on their reservation in Arizona and the Hopi population at Sherman Indian dwindled. As a result, the cross-country program has fallen slightly, but the strong running tradition lives on at the school. On Nov. 3, Sherman Indian won the Arrowhead League boys’ cross-country title and finished second in the girls’ division.

Part of the reason for the team’s success is its six-year veteran coach, Colley, who knows what it takes to make a winner. Colley was the 1976 state community college champion in the 1,500 meters for San Bernardino Valley and the 1977 NCAA Division III 1,500-meter champion for Occidental. He helped Occidental to two NCAA team titles, in 1977 and 1978.

Colley, who is not an Indian, has made achievers out of students whom others might have written off. He persuaded one boy who was having problems in the dormitories to go out for track last spring. The boy developed into one of Colley’s top runners, turned his grades around and stopped having trouble in the dorms.

“It’s just pushing the right button with one kid and encouraging them,” Colley said.

Each coach has a particular style of encouragement. At football practice, Peck’s is more aggressive.

“Let’s go,” Peck yelled at a recent practice, trying to get his players to line up for a drill. “We’re not on Indian time here.”

The players don’t seem to mind such politically incorrect chiding from Peck, a full-blooded Shoshone.

“If I had a football field that was a mile wide and two miles long, we’d be CIF champs every year,” Peck joked about the school’s cross-country prowess.

Peck has been football coach at Sherman Indian for the last two years after having been an assistant for 10 years before that. The Braves have never won a league title. This year, they are 1-6.

A major part of the problem is money.

Sherman Indian receives about $2,400 from the U.S. government per student each year. The money goes for tuition, textbooks, room and board. It also must pay for athletic equipment.

In the L.A. Unified School District, schools receive more than $3,545 a student per year and those schools do not have to pay each student’s living expenses.

Because of the tight budget, Sherman Indian cannot afford to bring the football players back to school early in fall for conditioning and training, as other schools do. Although Sherman Indian’s facilities are somewhat better than those of the other schools in the Arrowhead League--there are a lighted football field and an indoor pool--the athletic department runs frugal programs.

“We don’t have any of the frills,” said Kara Schwab, athletic director and girls’ volleyball and basketball coach for the last five years.

It is rare that the teams have practice uniforms. Last year, the school bought new uniforms for the boys’ and girls’ varsity basketball teams for first time in about 15 years.

Another problem is the drop-out rate. Rarely does a student attend Sherman Indian for four consecutive years. Often, students attend for a year or two, then return to a public school or their reservation.

So, coaches seldom get beyond teaching fundamentals. “We start, really, from ground level zero, each year,” Peck said. “This year, we had four returning letterman and our record indicates that.”

Coaches also must build team unity among students who come from more than 75 tribes, each with its own culture and language. Often, athletes from the same tribes form cliques.

“We remind them that we are all Indians here,” said Sims, who is part Choctaw. “We need to understand that and work together.”

The Indian culture lends its own meaning to athletics at the school.

In spring, the football field becomes the site of the annual inter-tribal powwow. The students and faculty dress in the traditional tribal costumes. There is food and dancing and the winner of the annual Miss Sherman pageant is honored. Female students compete in public speaking and in displaying a knowledge of their Indian heritage to become Miss Sherman.

Peck said that powwows are the best thing about being an Indian.

“The further away I have to park, the better, and I hear the drums pounding in the background and my heart just (grows),” Peck said. “It’s like homecoming.”

At one recent powwow, a player on Schwab’s basketball team was chosen Miss Sherman. Schwab had helped the girl throughout the pageant, so the girl asked Schwab, who is not an Indian, to dance with her in the place of honor during the powwow.

That is unusual, but to the girl, all that mattered was that her coach had been kind.

“The thought had never even occurred to her that it might offend people,” Schwab said. “That really encouraged me, that the value of someone isn’t their race.”