SHAQ: THE EARLY YEARS

The Cole High Cougar basketball team has a long and storied tradition.

Whenever the team bus drives back onto Ft. Sam Houston after a game, past the rows of white tombstones and the camouflaged jeeps, into the driveway of the faded brick school building, the players sing the school alma mater:

“Alma mater hail to thee, colors green and gold . . .

One day, in the winter of 1988, they sang it different.

They sang it in rap.

“To you . . . uh, uh . . . we pledge our loyalty . . . yo, yo . . . “

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” recalled then-assistant coach Herb More. “Then I looked back and, yup, it was Shaq.”

*

Shaquille O’Neal as a high school kid.

The mere thought is as incongruous as an adult Gary Coleman, an old Dick Clark.

Could you imagine Shaq attending high school? Fitting into a desk, posing for a yearbook picture, dunking the acne off some opposing 6-foot-3 center?

People like Shaq, aren’t they just born big? Or appear here from another planet? Isn’t that what Shaq is saying with his Superman tattoo?

That’s what I thought--what probably a lot of us thought--until the Lakers began their Western Conference semifinal series with the San Antonio Spurs.

Then came the word that, yes, not only had Shaq been to high school, he had been to a high school in this town.

He was here only for two years, having arrived from Germany after his military father, the infamous “Sarge” Harrison, was transferred.

But it was here that he played his only American prep basketball.

Remember his widely ridiculed comment, “I’ve won everywhere but college and the pros?”

He won here. In his two seasons, his team went 68-1 and won a state championship.

I still didn’t believe it.

So Tuesday morning, I drove to that high school.

And I still don’t believe it.

For Shaq, one might expect a large, sprawling school with glitz and attitude.

Cole High is a small, quiet, 300-student institution smack in the middle of an Army base.

One might expect to walk into the lobby of Shaq’s high school and find his photos and trophies in a giant case.

Cole High, instead, displays only a jacket worn by its namesake, World War II hero Robert G. Cole.

The only clue that Shaq even played here is his face in a team photo commemorating the undefeated state champions in his senior year, and his name on the team trophy.

Both are in a case outside a tiny gym.

Which has only several rows of bleachers.

And only on one side.

“This place is more about academics then athletics,” said Sue Rowland, a math teacher who once tutored Shaq.

Which makes Shaq’s appearance here something of a south Texas dust storm, loud, dramatic and brief.

He was so different from anyone who had attended this school, before or since, that a decade later it is hard to fathom his ever being here.

In a place where the students are products of conservative military families, he was rap music.

In a place where the second-tallest guy on the basketball team was 6-3, he grew to 7 feet.

He not only played for More, he played with More. The 6-6 assistant coach suited up for practice because he was the only one big enough to challenge Shaq.

“The summer after Shaq transferred here, people started hearing about how good he was, and they would say, ‘He goes to Cole High? Little Cole High?’ ” recalled Athletic Director Larry Ransom.

And then he didn’t, graduating to Louisiana State, and three years later to the NBA, a long way from the heat and drabness of Ft. Sam Houston.

But like that dust storm, he left tiny bits of him behind.

You know today how Shaq loves being the center of attention, in control?

Sue Rowland saw it here.

“Shaq sat in the front row of my class, every time, those long legs stretching right up to my desk,” she said.

And when she tried to keep order in class?

“I would tell everybody, ‘Get busy,’ and sometimes there would still be talking,” she recalled. “So Shaq would turn around and holler, ‘Hey, you heard her. Get busy!’ ”

*

The Cole High Cougars often wondered what it would take to make this big, jolly kid mad.

They finally figured it out during a now-legendary game at Southside High, which Cole had already routed once.

Before the game, the officials gave the Cole coaches a message.

“The Southside coach had told them to be ready for the biggest upset in Texas history,” recalled More, now Cole’s head coach. “We went and told that to Shaq.”

Shaq, a senior, nodded.

The first time down the court, he dunked so hard, he bent the rim slightly.

His second time down, he dunked again, bending the rim some more.

His third time, another dunk, more disfigurement.

“The rim looked like a roller coaster,” More said.

Cole’s shooting guard finally went to the sideline, complaining that it was impossible to shoot at a rim so badly bent.

The coaches shrugged.

They knew Southside would be shooting at that rim in the second half.

Cole won again, easily.

*

You think Cougar opponents were frightened when they spotted O’Neal in his junior year?

The folks at Cole saw him first during spring football practice.

He showed up, about 6-10, 250 pounds, and asked for a uniform.

Ransom, then a football assistant, lost his breath.

“I said, ‘What size shoe, son?’ ” Ransom recalled. “He said, ’18.’ I said, ‘Man, I got no 18s.’ ”

Ransom held a pair of workout shorts to Shaq’s waist and realized, he didn’t have any shorts that would fit, either.

“Good thing we weren’t in pads, because I also didn’t have any pads,” Ransom said. “In Shaq, we weren’t quite sure what we had.”

What they had was the world’s biggest . . . statistician.

Even though the coaches were convinced he would have been a terrific tight end, Shaq ran only a few pass patterns before deciding to stick with basketball.

But because many in the small school played several sports, all of his buddies were on the football team.

So, not wanting to feel left out, he spent his junior and senior football season walking the sidelines with a clipboard, keeping stats, trying not to block everybody’s view.

Shaq indeed tried to fit in here. And sometimes, painfully, he did.

One day he told Rowland that, like other children of lower-income military families, he could not afford his senior yearbook.

Rowland, the yearbook sponsor, was prohibited from giving any away.

Today, because his photo is in it, copies of that yearbook have been sold by memorabilia collectors for hundreds of dollars.

But not to Shaq. A couple of years after Shaq’s graduation, Rowland sent him a copy.

“I’ll never forget him,” she said. “I don’t think anybody who knew him here ever will.”

*

Then there was the time Shaq led the unbeaten Cougars into a game against tough Gonzalez.

The Cougars won by five.

The winning margin was attributed to free throws. By Shaq.

“Free throws? He never had a problem here with free throws,” More said. “In fact, he was one of our best free throw shooters.”

Shaquille O’Neal as a high school kid? I still don’t believe it.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.