Imperfect Season

In a perfect world, trying to stop Montclair Prep’s high-powered running attack and score against the Mounties’ stingy defense would be the only things on the minds of Paraclete High’s football players for the Southern Section Division XII title game.

But the suicide of a former teammate and a freak accident that injured seven players earlier this season won’t be forgotten Saturday night at Valley College.

Paraclete will try to become the second team--Temple City was the first in 1973--to win a fourth consecutive section football title at any level.

“If we could win, it would just prove to us that no matter what happens to you, it can’t hold you back from your ultimate goal,” junior running back Curtis Brown said. “It would show that you can overcome adversity if you stick together.”

Paraclete, which defeated Banning for the Division XI title in 1997 and Kilpatrick for Division XII championships in 1998 and 1999, was intent on winning a fourth consecutive section title before the season began. But the No. 2-seeded Spirits were blindsided in October by two events outside their control.

First, a truck driven by a man who was allegedly under the influence of alcohol crashed into an outdoor eating area at the school where approximately 20 football players were seated after practice as they awaited rides home.

Then Brett Gacho, a junior who played on Paraclete’s varsity baseball and junior varsity football teams as a sophomore, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound 10 days later.

Gacho, who was very close to Brown and junior strong safety Joe Martin, disappeared on Oct. 17, two days before the accident that sent sent varsity players David McMurtry, Michael Eakman, Lymar Cole, Harvey Thomas and Chris Yee, and junior varsity players Garrett Lee and Josh Arrieta to area hospitals with injuries.

“All I remember is that a couple of guys were underneath the truck,” said senior quarterback Craig Herrera, who was watching a girls’ volleyball match in the gymnasium nearby when he heard about the accident. “It was really scary.”

McMurtry, a junior kicker who suffered a severely bruised left shin, agreed.

“I didn’t know what to do after I got up,” he said. “I was just so shocked. . . . I just heard [Chris Yee] screaming. He was on the table next to me.”

Yee and Thomas sustained leg injuries that have sidelined them since the accident, but miraculously, all seven players were released from the hospital that night.

“I thank God every night that none of us were killed in that accident,” Martin said. “Things could have been much, much worse.”

Although Paraclete’s players and coaches were understandably shaken, the team became tighter because of it.

“Just about all the players showed up at the hospital to see how their teammates were doing,” first-year Coach Jeff Cortez said. “I think that built a bond. The fact that all of the guys who were injured got to go home that night also helped. If we had lost somebody, it would have been much harder to deal with.”

Paraclete (12-1) dedicated the next night’s game--a 55-8 victory over Pasadena Marshall--to their injured teammates, and things began to return to normal the next week when McMurtry and Cole played in a 29-28 victory over Tehachapi.

Gacho, who shot himself shortly after his disappearance, according to a coroner’s report, was found two days later, however, and players wore orange elastic bands around their right pant legs in his memory during a 51-6 victory against L.A. Baptist the following Friday.

Many of the players still wear the bands during games in memory of someone who Martin said had a “perfect” life.

“You never would have expected him to do something like that,” said Martin, a pallbearer at Gacho’s funeral. “He was a good student who had the perfect girlfriend and a great family.”

It would have been understandable if Gacho’s suicide and the accident had had a negative influence on Paraclete’s performance on the field. But the Spirits followed their victory over L.A. Baptist with a 51-6 victory over Kilpatrick on Nov. 10 that clinched their third consecutive Alpha League title.

They defeated Mojave, 48-14, Big Bear, 42-6, and Kern Valley, 22-6, in the playoffs to advance to Saturday’s title game against top-seeded Montclair Prep (13-0).

“This season has showed us that death can be right around the corner at any moment,” Brown said. “That we can’t take life for granted. That we should do the things we love and cherish them. . . . I feel like I’ve been playing for a higher cause [since Brett’s death]. It’s been a major part of why I’ve been playing as hard as I have. The way I can show that he is still in my heart is by playing hard and never taking a play off.”