Sweet Season Eases the Heartache for Stagnaros

This should be a joyous time in the Stagnaro household. The Christmas tree is up. The holidays are coming. And Brea Olinda High football players Nick and Steve Stagnaro are key components of a team that is playing for the Southern Section Division IX title against La Verne Bonita tonight at Mt. San Antonio College.

Make no mistake, the boys are enjoying this championship run. Steve smiles as if he’s in a daze. Nick is even more hyper than usual.

But the happy moments are fleeting. The boys’ parents are divorced, and they’ve stopped spending time with their dad. Earlier this year, their mother learned she has cancer.

The only true joy in the family’s life right now is the boys, who have come so far this season that it’s as if a higher power decided the family deserved the good fortune.

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Steve, a sophomore quarterback, wasn’t even expected to be a starter this year. But when the first-team quarterback, Brian Woidneck, broke his arm in July, Steve stepped in and proved to be a precocious star with uncanny listening skills and decision-making abilities.

He missed three midseason games with a high ankle sprain but somehow returned even stronger than he was before. He is Orange County’s top-rated passer in the playoffs, completing 12 of 23 passes for 288 yards and five touchdowns.

Nick’s role with the Wildcats also was uncertain heading into the season. The senior defensive back felt he had a lot to prove after getting repeatedly burned last season--and he acquitted himself nicely with 11 interceptions. He needs one more to tie the school record.

But little did Nick know he would also be pressed into duty as a part-time starting receiver, leading to a highlight reel of Stagnaro-to-Stagnaro connections. The first time Nick caught a touchdown pass from his brother, against Western in Week 6, he couldn’t describe his feelings.

“I got out of the end zone and I gave [Steve] a big hug and told him that I loved him,” Nick said. “It was a very emotional thing, especially looking up into the stands and seeing our mom.”

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Michele and the boys’ father, Don, divorced nine years ago. But the boys still spent about half the time with their dad, who lived in nearby Diamond Bar. Don would throw the ball around in the yard with his kids and encouraged them to lift weights to develop the strength they would later need as high school athletes.

“He always pushed us to the max,” Steve said. “That’s why we have that [never-quit] attitude in us.”

Last year, the boys stopped going to their dad’s house as much. Being teenagers, they liked spending most of their time with friends, and their friends lived in Brea. Don, a retired detective who spent 27 1/2 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, moved to Palos Verdes in May.

He attends all their games. Nevertheless, the boys said they have not talked to their dad in person or on the phone since a falling-out last February.

“We used to switch off going over to his house every other week, but just with football and stuff we didn’t have time to see him,” Nick said. “He always writes us letters and says how proud he is of us.”

The situation almost seems like a big misunderstanding, given the fact that the boys and their dad say they would like to resume their relationship.

“I love them very much and am proud of both of them,” Don said. “They’ve been a joy to me all these years to watch and see them grow up.

“I’ve been waiting to hear from them. I would love to be more involved in their lives.”

Nick said he intends to “patch things up” after the season ends tonight, so perhaps one of the family’s problems will be solved.

The other problem isn’t quite that simple. Last February, Michele learned she had a cancerous growth in the base of her spine.

But she couldn’t bring herself to tell her sons. She tried to keep everything around the house as normal as possible, even though she often was sick from the radiation treatments she received three times a week.

“I got up at a normal time every day to go to work,” said Michele, the director of a medical billing company in Tustin. “If I was sick I didn’t show them and if I had a reaction to the radiation I didn’t show them.”

Said Steve: “She would be sick and we wouldn’t even know about all the [hospital visits she made] while we were at school.”

In the spring, Michele took a trip to New York to visit cousins. When she came back, she told her boys of her illness. They were devastated.

Brea Olinda Coach Jon Looney, who keeps tabs on his players in the off-season, noticed an almost immediate change in Nick and Steve.

“They’re two different personalities, and it made them a little more extreme in both areas,” Looney said. “Nick became a little more hyper, Steve a little more subdued. I think they’ve come out of that to some degree, but the scar is still there.”

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The boys try not to think too much about the future.

Not now. Not yet.

There is the game tonight, which will serve as a temporary and necessary distraction.

But the clock is ticking.

Nick is headed either to a community college to play football or to Pacific to play center field for the baseball team next year, leaving his younger brother behind.

“I wish I could come back one more year,” Nick said. “I’m anxious to see how his career takes off.”

Michele’s future is also uncertain. She recently endured a particularly tough stretch when, Steve said, “she didn’t know if she was going to make it.”

For the time being, the boys have dedicated this season to their mom, who remains active with the Wildcat booster club and shows up early at games to help cheerleaders post signs.

“My mom’s incredible--everything she’s gone through just to make us happy and do what she does,” Steve said. “She’s constantly being the one to take care of things. Sometimes I wish she didn’t because she puts a lot of stress on herself. I’m just glad we’re making her proud of her two boys.”

Said Nick: “Every time I make a good play, like a pick or something, I point to the stands for her. It’s all for her.”

When Nick and Steve look up into the stands tonight, they will see too many friends and relatives to count on both hands. Their cousins will be there. One of their grandmothers will be there. A former stepfather will be there.

And then there will be mom--and dad.