Cheering Section

Different evening, same heartwarming routine.

After Brea Olinda High put the finishing touches on another blowout girls’ basketball victory in late January, a short boy with glasses and neatly groomed hair raced across the gym floor and embraced one of the Ladycats in a ferocious hug.

He gripped her tightly, as if together they had won some great prize. In many ways, they had.

The longtime love affair between Darren Crow and the Brea girls’ basketball team has produced many special moments. But few are as meaningful as the times the 19-year-old with Down’s Syndrome gets to show his affection for a group of girls that has adopted him as a teammate.

Darren is the team’s honorary ballboy, but his primary function at games is as a noisemaker. Wearing his team-issued green, white and yellow warm-up jacket, he usually sits directly behind or across from the Ladycats’ bench, cheering Brea on with a high-pitched humming sound that constantly changes tones. Sometimes during big games, he takes a position behind the opponents’ bench.

To the untrained ear, the sounds Darren makes are incomprehensible. To the Ladycats, they are the clear and unmistakable intonations of love.

“He’s such a team supporter,” Brea forward Jill Trader said. “The whole team rallies around him. He’s like a source of inspiration because he’s fighting through all this himself, but he wants to help us strive for more. He’s awesome.”

Brea’s No. 1 fan will make another appearance at a state title game when the Ladycats attempt to win their third consecutive championship--eighth overall--against Pleasanton Amador Valley at 6 p.m. Friday. Look around Arco Arena and you can’t miss him--he’ll be the one with his hands cupped over his mouth as if he’s trying to keep his nose warm.

Darren had been attending Brea games with his parents--both Brea alums--for several years before Coach Jeff Sink took over the program in the 1994-95 season. Back then, Darren was just a loud, anonymous voice in the stands. Sink got the boy involved, first inviting him and his mom to practice, then to games.

Sink filled a need on two fronts. He saw a boy who needed attention and acceptance from his mainstream peers. And he saw players who could use the unconditional love and life lessons that Darren could provide.

“I thought it would be cool to have him around to show the kids the other side and show them a sense of humility,” Sink said. “He’s really a remarkable story.”

Darren took a little getting used to, though. Sink had him sit on the team bench for his first game, prompting players to scoot over. But when Darren showed up for his second game, the girls hugged him and accepted him as an integral part of Ladycat basketball.

Darren’s relationship with this year’s team has been especially close because many players have known him since elementary school, when they played at the Crow house with his sister Emily, a Brea senior who stopped playing basketball in junior high. Darren knows the players’ names and has many of their pictures on the wall of his bedroom.

Darren will graduate in June from Valencia High, where he attends special education classes. His condition, according to his mother, is of moderate severity; his greatest difficulty is speaking, though he can understand most spoken language. He can barely write his name.

“Darren is basically middle-aged at age 19, and he’ll start to rapidly age now,” said Joyce Crow, Darren’s mother. “Probably what he’s attained now [the functional development of a 7-year-old] is where he’ll be. This is pretty much as good as it gets.”

Darren is a cagey basketball fan. For example, he knows to be quiet when Brea is shooting free throws and to raise a ruckus when an opponent is on the line.

Darren’s father, Randy, and his mother have involved him in mainstream society as much as possible, signing him up for Boy Scouts and allowing him to work as an usher at a local movie theater. They also take him skiing and white-water rafting on family vacations.

The Ladycats have, through the years, offered assistance as well. Former player Jennifer Saari taught Darren to shoot a basketball. Dawn Metz, another former player, invited Darren to her graduation party, where he blissfully collapsed from exhaustion after dancing the night away.

Every Wednesday, Darren is brought to the Brea campus for lunch through a program called Circle of Friends. Designed specifically for him by the school’s psychologist, the program allows him to interact with different groups of students, including members of the girls’ basketball team and their friends.

Darren will probably live the rest of his life with his parents, and he’ll always have Ladycat basketball.

“As long as they’ll have Darren,” Joyce said, “Darren will participate.”

Joyce delivered a touching tribute at the team’s postseason banquet in 1995, when she counted down the top five things Darren and the Ladycats had in common:

”. . . And the No. 1 thing the Ladycats and Darren have in common: They’re not normal! That’s right, not normal! It is not normal to win 65 games in a row, 13 straight league championships, seven straight CIF Southern Section championships.

“It is also not normal to have Down’s Syndrome. It is not normal to have epicanthic folds of the eyes, underdeveloped speech and a chronological age of 14 but a developmental age of 6.

“And it is not normal to be accepted and included by a team of world-class athletes, coaches, parents and boosters.

“It is not normal, but most surely exceptional.”