Team Rebounds From Slayings of 2 Coaches

They won!

The Clippers basketball team of Ted Watkins Park in Watts, the team whose members lost two admired coaches in street killings in a month and doubted they had it in them to finish the season, won their final game Saturday.

A three-point swish, a standing ovation and, finally, something to high-five about.

“We felt like we had lost everything, we had lost our coaches, but in the end we won,” said team member Michael Godinez, 14. “Everything our coaches told us, we proved them right.”

They dressed in their blue-and-gray uniforms and played beside a courtside banner reading, “In Loving Memory of Salim and Baby Marcus,” the names of their two slain coaches. And as the youths took to the court, they said, their coaches’ words resonated through their minds, stoking their determination.

“Yeah, Salim used to tell us, ‘Play as hard as you can, never give up,’ ” said Omar Olmos, 15, during a team meeting before the game. “So we’re gonna play, we’re gonna do it for them.”

Salim Dawson, 22, the Clippers’ first coach, was shot in the heart on Feb. 22 and died on the street a few blocks from the park.

Then on March 17, Marcus Tonodeo Jr., who had taken over for Dawson and led the team to one win, was gunned down by two assailants with high-powered rifles.

Neither Dawson nor Tonodeo was a gang member, police said, and each was killed for no apparent reason.

The back-to-back wallop knocked out the team’s spirit.

Members spent almost as much time together at funeral and memorial services as they did on the court, and missed several midseason games. During a pregame meeting Saturday, their sadness was so close to the surface that several got choked up and couldn’t finish their thoughts.

“We’re all like a big family, we’ve been through so much,” said one boy. “I mean, Dawson, he was like a father to me.”

“I didn’t believe it when I heard it had happened to Marcus,” Omar said. “It was too much bad news. How could there be that many bad people around?”

Stephanie Lewis, president of the Kids in Sports league that plays at the park and the mother of a Clipper, said her son slipped into a deep depression and lost his appetite after Dawson died.

“After the second one, he couldn’t get out of bed for a week,” Lewis said of her son, Stephan, 14.

She said they prayed together after Dawson’s killing, turning to Bible verses for consolation.

“But the second death? It was devastating,” Lewis said.

Lewis talked with other parents, all grasping for ways to deal with their sons.

It broke their hearts to see their boys cry, she said, and parents found it difficult to console boys at the awkward age of 13 to 15.

“He took it real hard, it was too much to deal with,” said Marcos Lopez, 33, who said all he could do some nights was sit next to his son, Juan Gonzales, 13, in silence.

Lopez himself was badly shaken. He had signed up to be the team’s first coach, but had stepped down because of his heavy work schedule.

“If I would have just stayed on as coach, none of this would have happened,” Lopez said Saturday during the game.

Lewis said she and others “just wanted to end the season.... I mean, who was going to coach? It was almost scary to even ask someone now that there had been two back-to-back deaths.”

She called a meeting to decide whether to cut short the season. But parents and coaches of the 12-team league with 150 players decided that giving in to grief would be a bad choice for the boys. They would all play one more game and then end the season. The teams had missed too many games and it would be difficult to figure out team rankings. Instead, every player in the Ted Watkins Park League will be awarded a participation trophy.

James Dawson, Salim’s father, volunteered to be the Clippers’ third coach. “It takes my mind off the loss,” he said. “In a way, it’s therapeutic for me.”

The Clippers met a week ago for one last practice before their final game.

It was as much a wake as a practice, as the boys recounted all the advice of their past coaches and vowed to do good by them.

“Salim would tell us to keep our heads up, to keep playing,” Juan said. “That’s what we are going to do.”

The Clippers had lost more games than they had won, leading James Dawson to call them underdogs. They started out slowly Saturday and trailed most of the first half, with many turnovers on errant passes. But their parents in the packed bleachers cheered on even after their missed baskets.

“Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” Dawson shouted from the sidelines.

Sure, he and the team had talked about how this final game was about the importance of perseverance, not winning. But in the second half, the Clippers started to build a consistent lead.

One player, who had had the ball stolen from him in the first quarter, made two free throws in the fourth. Juan hit a three-point basket.

It was like some kind of crescendo in a G-rated movie as parents rose to their feet in tears, the final buzzer rang and the Clippers won, 43-38.

“It feels real good to win. Did you see that last shot? It was real sexy,” Juan said. “Yeah, that’s what Salim used to tell us. It was a real sexy shot.”