Quartz Hill’s Diamond in the Rough

When Brian Woodworth talks about the tough times in his life, like when his parents gave him up at the age of 6, his words do not come easily.

There is a bundle of emotion locked inside this big, strong, deep-voiced teenager who for years was a vagabond, moving from one foster home to another.

But Woodworth’s rugged face breaks loose with a look of joy when the conversation turns to an upcoming birthday.

“One more week until my 18th birthday,” Woodworth, a senior at Quartz Hill High, said earlier this month. “Makin’ it. Stayin’ up.”

It hasn’t been easy. Woodworth, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound three-sport star, has little contact with his mother and none with his father. During an eight-year span he lived in 20 foster homes.

The birthday allows Woodworth to open another chapter of his life and perhaps help him answer some nagging questions about the past. He has access to court records he hopes will enable him to learn about his father and why his family split up.

As he speaks, Woodworth occasionally rubs his tattooed left arm and scratches the side of his shaved head, just above his ear that is pierced with a gold ring.

Three weeks ago, he finished second in a long-distance passing contest at the NFL-sponsored Air It Out flag-football tournament in Long Beach, stunning onlookers with a 71-yard spiral.

But in this conversation Woodworth never mentioned the pass. Instead, he talked about a childhood that has only recently lost some of its bitterness.

At 7 he ran away from a foster home and used his allowance money to check into a motel for a night.

He has many such stories, but what is important is that life is good compared to the past.

“I never thought I’d see my 18th birthday,” he said.

Woodworth once believed he would be in jail, if not dead, by now. That was before he discovered what coaches describe as extraordinary athletic talent: power, dexterity and blazing speed.

That was before he met Matt and Lynn Anderson, who three years ago became his legal guardians.

Matt Anderson was Woodworth’s freshman football coach. Lynn was his science teacher in junior high. The Andersons, unlike others, were able to look beyond Woodworth’s rough exterior to reveal a warm, loving boy inside.

Lynn Anderson recalls being drawn to Woodworth after seeing him injured during a football game. He was lying on the sideline in pain and no parent or relative came forward to comfort him.

“He didn’t have anybody,” she said.

The Andersons took him in as part of their family and Woodworth has flourished under their guidance. He has a 3.1 grade-point average and excels at football, basketball and track.

Woodworth rushed for eight touchdowns and passed for 973 yards and 10 touchdowns last season, leading the Rebels to a record of 8-3. He also made three interceptions and scored on kick returns of 92 and 85 yards.

The only time he left the field was during special-teams play, and then only occasionally. Twice he was asked to punt, and one of his kicks went 63 yards.

In basketball, Woodworth, the Rebels’ center, is averaging 10.8 points and 9.5 rebounds. Come track season, he expects to reclaim a place among the Golden League’s top hurdlers.

Woodworth certainly isn’t lonely anymore. College football coaches are courting him with scholarship offers.

“Every coach who comes through here, I say he’s an athlete who could play a lot of positions,” football Coach John Albee said.

Until he met the Andersons, Woodworth succeeded with sheer grit in the face of a flawed support system.

All he knows about his father is that his first name is Keith. He can’t recall meeting him.

Woodworth’s mother, Pamela, 46, a security guard in the Antelope Valley area, pays infrequent visits to Brian. He says she has never explained why she yielded custody.

Woodworth is critical of the foster-care system, saying several of his host families used him as a source of income.

His closest companions and early role models were other foster children, many of them older and already headed for a life of drug abuse and crime.

Woodworth, who says he had a penchant for shoplifting, was following in their footsteps until he decided to break stride before his freshman year at Quartz Hill.

“In junior high, I didn’t care what people said,” he said. “I blew people off. I was rude to people. I thought I was always right.”

Lynn Anderson had a rocky first meeting with Woodworth in a Del Sur Middle School classroom.

“I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me,” Anderson recalled. “He gave me kind of an attitude. I told him, ‘You’ll like me someday.’ ”

Says Woodworth: “Nobody was really there to slow me down and tell me what was going on.” I didn’t know where I was going in my life.”

And now: “My attitude changed because of sports and all the stuff I wanted to prove.”

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Before the Andersons, Woodworth reached out to Bob Duncan, with whom he was paired in the Big Brother program 10 years ago.

But not even Duncan, a 70-year-old father of five who resides in La Canada, could get very close.

“When he was little and away from me, he would call me a lot, because he needed me,” Duncan said. “I would teach him things. I used to ask how things were going, he would say, ‘Fine.’ He never let on.”

The bond Woodworth and Duncan developed was through sports. Duncan took Woodworth to games and taught him how to throw a football.

Duncan, who often makes the 120-mile round trip to Quartz Hill to watch Woodworth play, said he prayed for a little athlete while waiting for his Big Brother assignment. The first time he saw Brian was at a track meet, sponsored by Five Acres, a youth home in Pasadena.

“He was in a running event and he was about 20 yards ahead of everybody else,” Duncan says.

As Woodworth, suitcase in hand, bounced from one guardian to another, sports became the outlet for his frustration.

“Sports, to me, was my family,” he said. “If that got taken away, I would have been destroyed. I looked forward to picking up that ball every day.”

The Andersons provided Woodworth with his own bedroom, but the adjustment to family life took time.

Communications barriers had to be broken. Woodworth was still staunchly self-reliant and would isolate himself from the family.

Not anymore.

“With all the garbage he’s gone through, he’s got his act together,” Lynn Anderson said.

Albee, the football coach, described Woodworth as a freshman as “a punk-type kid.” Now he sings his praises.

“He’s focused in on his future and trying to get ahead,” Albee said. “He’s always positive. A couple years ago, if I would crack the whip on him, he might have broken under the pressure. This year I didn’t see that at all.”

Albee said Woodworth, voted the Rebels’ most valuable player, is among the most impressive athletes he has coached in more than 20 years at Quartz Hill.

Basketball Coach Bernard Nichter calls Woodworth “the heart and soul of our team.”

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As a football player, Woodworth has been contacted by the likes of UCLA, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado State and Nevada. The only roadblock between him and a scholarship appears to be the Scholastic Assessment Test, which he has yet to pass.

Soon he hopes that will be settled, as well as his personal life.

“I’m going to have kids and a family some day,” Woodworth says. “And I want them to know who’s my dad and who’s their grandpa. I want to learn my family tree. I want to be able to tell my kids what happened.”