Saved by Friendly Competition

Mike Shultz is not sure why his young life sank to the depths that it did.

Why, when barely out of grade school, he got hooked by weed and speed, by tagging, by the enticements of the gangs in his Pico Rivera neighborhood.

But he knows what snapped him out of that life: the rhythmic pounding of a ball on a basketball court and the shock that his youthful afflictions were not unique, not even the worst among his friends.

Shultz, 19, learned many lessons and earned a chance to play competitive basketball in a Whittier-based program called CLARO--Challenging Latinos to Access Resource Opportunities, which provides support and a sense of cultural heritage to young Latino men at risk of succumbing to drugs and gangs.

Starting today, CLARO’s biggest event of the year, a three-day basketball tournament with 24 teams from throughout the Southwest and Mexico, will kick off in Whittier. The young men from CLARO think they have a good shot at winning. But they are acutely aware that, in many ways, they already have won.

“Seriously and not exaggerating, but if not for this program, I think I would have been in jail or dead by now.” said Shultz, a tall, dark-haired, lanky young man of Mexican and German parentage.

He was in the gym at Frontier High School--a Whittier continuation school that many of the boys in the program attend--barely breaking a sweat while shooting practice hoops with about 12 teammates. He knows the rights and wrongs of passing off the fast break, of shooting off the dribble and going in for the layup. What he had to learn were the techniques of being a productive human being.

“I knew right and wrong, but it was the right and wrong of being a gangster,” he said softly. “What I’ve learned here is the right and wrong of being a man. It got me thinking about what I was doing to my family.”

The goals of CLARO are straightforward: to teach youngsters from gritty Southeast Los Angeles neighborhoods the difference between maleness and manhood, to help them learn what it means to be an “hombre noble.”

“Many of these young men are constantly confronted with violence and drugs, and they enact this false sense of bravado,” said program coordinator Martin Flores. “We tell them that they don’t have to play those games. That there is a difference between surviving and living.”

The basketball teams are a big part of the 6-year-old program’s success, providing an outlet for the young men’s energies and a focus for after-school and weekend activities. A highlight is the annual Latino Heritage Basketball Tournament, which is rooted in basketball leagues that sprouted in the Midwest and Texas in the 1930s, when young Latinos were frequently barred from athletics in schools and on professional sports teams.

The tournament this year has attracted youth teams from as far away as Sacramento, El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, for a 53-game event that will begin today and extend through Sunday’s championship game. The games will be played in the Frontier and Whittier high school gyms.

The players are almost giddy with anticipation and planning for the tournament. They are also excited because a number of college sports recruiters have been invited. For many who come from troubled families or who have struggled academically, it is a special opportunity. All of them have ambitions that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Shultz, for example, is attending adult classes at Frontier to obtain a high school equivalency diploma. He is also a gifted artist who designed the CLARO logo: the bust of an Aztec man in an elaborate headdress. He has drawn murals for churches and for Pioneer High School and wants to design his own clothing line.

Joey Rosales, 17, said: “I want to major in psychology and become a counselor so I can come back and help these kids.” He motioned toward some of the younger boys hanging around the Frontier gym.

Rosales, a Whittier High School senior, is the unlikely captain of the CLARO team. He is a big teddy bear of a youth who carries too much weight to run up and down the court with the ease of the others. But he has been with the program for five years and, with his sweet, dimpled grin, he is the emotional center for the others. Perhaps it is because he embodies the conflicts with which almost all of them are familiar. His father left the family when Joey was very young, leaving his mother, two sisters, a brother and him dependent on welfare and child support for income.

After his older brother moved in with an uncle, Joey and the others moved from one hotel to another, living out of suitcases. He said he began hanging around the wrong crowd and would probably have gotten into drugs and gangs if not for the CLARO program.

For youngsters steeped in a culture that does not encourage men to express emotion, it is striking that all mention how much the program has helped them connect with others to hash out the wrenching moods of adolescence.

“I was surprised, ‘cause all these guys had the same problems I had,” said Joey. “I thought I was going to be alone, but I could relate to people my own age.”

At 14, Raymond Naudin, is one of the smallest guys on the court. But he has plenty of backup. His little brother Daniel, 12, just started playing, and his father Ray, 40, is usually around the gym, giving the boys pointers.

“It really helps to keep our family close,” said Raymond, a soft-spoken, earnest youngster who shakes your hand when he greets you.

He plays point guard on the basketball team, but he also likes baseball, football, playing video games, watching television and baby-sitting his 6-month-old sister Stephanie, who, he informs you, has just grown a first tooth that is pretty strong for being such a little thing. In his ninth-grade classes at Pioneer High, he loves math. He used to make Cs but has lifted his grades to A’s and Bs, which he hopes might allow him to fulfill his dream of becoming an architect.

Ray Naudin has seen a son who used to have problems with controlling his anger grow into a poised young man. In the last few years he has struggled to keep his own bearings. He worked for 20 years delivering office furniture until a broken wrist ended that career. He’s now attending adult classes at Frontier to learn computer skills.

“What makes this work is the people involved,” he said of the program. “It’s very honest; there’s no phoniness about it. They really show the kids a lot of love.”