The Big Push Is On for Good of Bernal

The hopes and expectations of others are heavy burdens, but David Bernal has been shouldering them for three years.

The demands of his coaches and teachers . . . the pride of his neighborhood . . . the unfulfilled dream of his sick father. They are unwieldy objects with which Bernal struggles daily.

It’s a lot for an 18-year old to handle, even one who is 6 feet 1 and 300 pounds. But Bernal knows why they push.

“Yeah, sometimes there’s a lot of pressure,” said Bernal, a senior defensive tackle at St. Bonaventure High. “They all want me to do good and if I don’t, I know I’ll hear about it. But it makes me try harder.”

Thank goodness for that, because without direction Bernal, by his own admission, wouldn’t be worth much.

An Oxnard gang member most likely. A high school dropout almost certainly. Not a preseason All-American and one of Ventura County’s top college prospects.

“David has no idea how good he is,” said St. Bonaventure Coach Jon Mack, a supporter, disciplinarian and sometimes chauffeur of Bernal for three years. “When he sets his mind to it he can do almost anything on a football field.”

The mind. That has been the most difficult part of David Bernal’s body to train.

Not in football, where his mental grasp of schemes, stunts and technique is sound. But in a classroom, where words and ideas fly at him like cut-blocking opponents and the embarrassment of asking questions is often too much to bear.

“I can read, just not fast,” Bernal said. “I’m not good in some subjects but I want to be better. I’m a fair student, I guess.”

That Bernal has made the transition from his worn-down Oxnard neighborhood to the private-school atmosphere of St. Bonaventure is a noteworthy accomplishment. But in the next several years he faces even higher hurdles: a college entrance examination, on which he must achieve a certain score to be eligible for college football, and the move away from his friends and family.

“It’s gonna be hard,” Bernal said. “But they’re things I’m gonna have to do if I want to play in college. It’s not something I can put aside.”

Bernal carries with him the expectations of his immediate and extended family, and to some extent, that of his neighborhood.

Neither his father, David Sr., nor his mother, Maria, graduated from high school and they are passionate in their desire to see David Jr. earn his diploma. Various nieces and nephews look up to him as a success. Even neighborhood gang members and high school truants want to see him do well.

“They tell us, ‘Yeah, we read about your son, tell him to keep going,’ ” David Sr. said. “ ‘At least we’re going to know somebody who makes it.’ ”

But if not for a nap, David Jr. could well be dead.

On the night of Dec. 26, 1995, Bernal and his sister’s 21-year old fiance, Josue Carrera, were watching TV in the Bernals’ living room. They planned to walk the family’s dog together but David fell asleep and Carrera, who lived with the Bernals for six years, did the chore alone.

A block away, at 8:30 p.m., Carrera was killed in a drive-by shooting. His assailant, a former gang rival from their teenage years, recently was convicted of first-degree murder and given a sentence of 35 years to life.

Despite losing a confidant and friend, Bernal downplays the view of his neighborhood as a killing field.

“It’s not bad like everyone thinks it is, but it has its bad times,” Bernal said. “Sometimes it’s quiet, sometimes it’s rowdy. Lots of times there’s police car chases through here.”

Bernal’s surroundings make Mack uneasy.

“I worry about David any time I can’t see him,” said Mack, who often drives Bernal to or from the St. Bonaventure campus. “I read about the shootings and all the crime and I’m afraid every day to see that David Bernal got jumped by some gang.”

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It was the fear that David would become involved in violence that prompted his parents to enroll him at St. Bonaventure in 1993. Bernal had just finished an unproductive stay at an Oxnard junior high school and was indifferent to academics.

“The school I came from wasn’t very good,” Bernal said. “The teachers didn’t care as long as they got their paychecks, and we didn’t learn anything. I didn’t know any better so I was like, ‘If you don’t want to teach I don’t want to learn.’ ”

Bernal did excel on a flag-football team at a nearby park, playing with future St. Bonaventure teammates Topi and Teohua Sanchez and Pepe Villasenor. The Sanchez brothers’ father, Tomas, noticed David and encouraged his parents to send him to St. Bonaventure with his three friends.

Bernal was a varsity football player from the moment he became of one of St. Bonaventure’s 650 students. But away from the field he struggled mightily his freshman year.

“There weren’t many other Mexicans here and if there were, they acted white and I wasn’t used to that,” Bernal said. “The people around me, I saw they were rich and I wasn’t. I wanted to go back with people where we’re all equal.”

Academically, Bernal was overwhelmed. Paying attention in class and doing homework were as foreign as the puzzling sentences his teachers strung together.

“That first year, the stuff they taught us one day I couldn’t even remember the next,” Bernal said.

At times his frustration boiled over and he responded to taunts about his heritage and intelligence.

“There were a couple of guys he just laid out and they weren’t getting up,” Mack said. “I didn’t know if we’d be able to keep him.”

At the end of the year, Bernal announced he would transfer to either Oxnard or Channel Islands. Mack’s wife, Kathy, a St. Bonaventure teacher and a fervent supporter of her husband’s players, wept in frustration.

But Bernal changed his mind. Working as a summer-session custodian at Channel Islands High, he saw the lesser conditions and uninspired students he would have to join. Within two weeks he recommitted to St. Bonaventure.

From that point, Bernal has fought forward. He has managed a 2.3 grade-point average and wreaked havoc on the football field with astounding strength, speed and agility.

Last season, playing with a stress fracture in his left foot, Bernal had 14 sacks and 90 tackles. He also saw action as a tight end and fullback, catching 12 passes for 123 yards and three touchdowns.

St. Bonaventure finished 8-4, advancing to the quarterfinals of the Southern Section Division IX playoffs. Bernal was an All-Southern Section Division IX selection and the Ventura County small-schools defensive lineman of the year.

This season, Bernal must continue his football excellence while preparing for the American College Testing exam. But after a day of school and football, studying is not his first inclination, and the gentle reminders of Mack and the more pointed comments from his parents have taken on a new urgency.

David Bernal Sr. was forced to abandon high school after his freshman year at Santa Clara in 1965-66. After working several jobs in the intervening years, he was disabled three years ago by kidney failure and endures dialysis three times a week.

His poor health has made David Sr. all the more insistent his son be a success.

“My dream’s in him now,” the father said. “I went to a private school, I was a freshman first-string player on varsity, his story is like my story again. I want to see it accomplished the way I would have done it.”

The Bernal family cares about David Jr. because he is their flesh and blood. Mack cannot claim such a tie but treats his mammoth standout as a son nonetheless.

“You just gravitate to the kids you think you can help,” Mack said. “With David and the situation with his dad and all the things that are going on in his life, he needs something that I think I can provide.”

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Mack said the reward for his devotion will come the day Bernal returns to St. Bonaventure, college diploma in hand. The easiest road would be through the academic support system of an NCAA Division I football program. But if Bernal fails to earn a passing score on the ACT, he will have to first contend with the less-structured environment of a junior college.

“I have to impress upon whichever coach is blessed to get David that they’re taking on a responsibility,” Mack said. “They’ve got his talents on the field and they have to take care of him academically and socially.”

And help lessen the load of all those expectations.