Team Shoots for a Different Kind of Goal : Tragedy: Katella High water polo players dedicate their season to two killed in car crash.

Their hair still damp from the pool, a dozen or so Katella High School water polo players gathered around their coach under a tree at Magnolia High.

It was their first team meeting of the season and even though they had just won their season opener over Redondo Union High, the talk wasn’t about the game.

They were discussing how to honor two dead friends who had been their teammates.

Jonothan Fabbro Curtis, expected to be their starting goalkeeper, and Stephen Bender, a reserve player, were among four Anaheim teen-agers who died July 29 when the car they were riding in on a desert road in San Bernardino County went out of control and rolled.

Another teammate involved in the crash, Steven Cass, is recovering from a broken collarbone and a punctured lung.

Only six weeks after the accident, some sense of normalcy has returned to the close-knit Katella water polo program. The players have gone to the funerals and endured uncomfortable visits by counselors. They went on a team trip to Hawaii, scheduled long before the accident, which provided an escape.

The reminders, though, are still everywhere.

“The traditional perspective on high school students is they have this feeling of immortality and lack of fear,” said Jon Shaddy, whose son, Dave, is a senior starter. “It’s now obvious they are all aware that they are not invincible.”

James Patterson, the driver in the accident, was not seriously hurt and is back with the team. He did much of the talking at last Thursday’s meeting, wanting to make one thing certain, Katella Coach Grafton Weiss said.

“James was concerned that if we decided to dedicate the season to Steve and Jon, we make it a 100% effort,” Weiss said. “He said he’s not going to quit halfway through the season and he’s going to get on anyone who does.”

Patterson, who would not talk to a reporter about the crash, could face charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and felony vehicular manslaughter. The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office is awaiting a report from the California Highway Patrol before deciding whether to file charges in juvenile court.

News of the accident hit the Katella community like a punch in the stomach. Weiss and his wife, Mindy, were in Palm Springs for the weekend, celebrating their eighth wedding anniversary. Weiss heard the news more than 24 hours after the accident from his mother-in-law, who read him newspaper accounts over the telephone. “I was in shock,” he said. “I just sat on the bed and cried. I couldn’t believe it.”

Players’ reactions were similar. No one wanted to believe tragedy had hit home. Some went to the crash site and visited survivors in the hospital.

Others were angry. Police found more than 40 beer cans strewn near the wreckage of the 1987 Chevrolet Suburban, leading many to conclude that the 6:20 a.m. accident came during a joy ride after an all-night drinking binge.

Weiss said a number of players were bitter because they believe Fabbro Curtis had just started running with some other students who drank. “Some of the guys had to come to terms with that,” Weiss said.

Survivors’ accounts helped to diminish the anger. Patterson had gone to sleep earlier than the others, getting about six hours of sleep, they said. When Patterson woke up, he felt fine to drive, they said.

Those involved weren’t sure how Patterson lost control of the heavy vehicle, which rolled at least six times. One of the front tires on the wrecked car was shredded, Weiss said, prompting speculation of a blowout.

The Katella players have welcomed Patterson back. He fits the profile of a leader--a 4.0 grade-point average and an Eagle Scout who has accepted an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy.

Any residual anger about the accident doesn’t seem directed at him. “It could have happened to anyone,” said Dave Shaddy, who would have been on the tragic camping trip if he didn’t have a scuba diving class the same morning.

Said junior Phil Wirthgen: “I’m not really angry at a specific person. I just don’t think it should have happened.”

Two days before the accident, Katella had played its final summer league game. The team would be taking a break until a trip to Hawaii for a tournament late in August.

Three days after the accident, at a previously scheduled meeting to discuss the trip, the team decided to go to Hawaii. The meeting, at a player’s home, also served as a mass counseling session. The school district sent four counselors for that purpose.

“It was a situation where we tried to make ourselves available to the coach, the school, the parents and the players,” said Don Baumeister, the Anaheim Union High School District’s supervising clinical social worker who led the counseling team, “so the tragedy would be handled as well as could be expected.

“Our job was to allow the expression of feelings and emotions to come out productively.”

While two counselors talked with parents in the back yard, the other two, who were Katella graduates, took the players into the house.

The players were told it was OK to talk about the tragedy and their feelings about it. Not unexpectedly, the players didn’t say much to the counselors. Mostly there was awkward silence, said Mustapha Hassan, an assistant coach who was in the room.

But after the counselors left, many players stayed and talked about memories of their dead friends, Hassan said.

That is the key, Baumeister said. “Everyone is going to grieve in their own way,” he said, “and I think that’s sometimes hard to remember when you are an adult and want teen-agers to emote.”

Bill Hoy, a death and grief educator who teaches at Cypress College, says parents usually don’t have to worry about reactions to tragedy by teen-agers. Counseling can be helpful, but most don’t need professional help, Hoy said.

“Your kid doesn’t have to be fixed,” Hoy said. “He’s not broken, he’s brokenhearted.”

Hoy works for an Anaheim mortuary that handled arrangements for two of the victims. About two weeks after the accident, Hoy gave a grief seminar for a group of Katella parents.

Hoy stresses that grief shouldn’t be considered a negative emotion, but a process that you can use.

“What we want to do in our culture is hurry up and get this problem fixed,” he said. “I believe grief is a gift to help us refocus and reorient our lives after a loss.”

It seems the team is trying to do just that. At the meeting outside the pool deck at Magnolia last week, the players dedicated the season to their former teammates and committed themselves to sobriety.

“We’re going to have a completely sober season,” Weiss said, “which I was assured was only an issue with James and he says he has not had any alcohol since the accident.”

Weiss, who also teaches science at the school, is starting his third season at Katella after 10 years as a walk-on coach at another school in the district, Magnolia.

Katella appeared ready to build on its water polo success last season, when it qualified for the CIF-Southern Section playoffs for the first time since 1978.

Fabbro Curtis was considered one of the top two goalkeepers in the Empire League. Last season he was named the Knights’ most inspirational player. Bender, who would have been a defensive substitute, was named most inspirational player on the junior varsity last year.

Without them, Katella players still believe they will challenge favorite El Dorado for the league title.

They can be a loose group, even during the physically demanding practices. Shaddy, the team’s leading scorer, calls them the “Sense of Humor Team.” Patterson is wearing dark sunglasses during a drill, but snaps “Hey, stop messing around!” when someone gets too giddy.

But the tragedy and its impact is still close. Voices crack and faces flush when players talk about it.

“As far as players go, we will be fine,” Shaddy said. “It’s just friends that we are missing now.”

Alex Perez, a senior, was especially close to Fabbro Curtis.

“Well, we miss him a lot,” Perez said. “We miss Steve too. That’s the way things go. We can’t do anything.

“I just live with the memories.”