Tough to Get Message Across

“What are we here for?”

That was the innocuous question muttered by a confused coach walking toward the Woodland Hills Taft auditorium filled with 600 team captains, cheerleaders and student body presidents from more than 50 high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

They dressed in T-shirts, shorts, jeans, jerseys. Some wore headbands, others earrings. Some carried backpacks. One sucked a lollipop, another fiddled with a chain attached to his pants. Most wore name tags that identified their school and sport.

This was the City Section’s Student Athletic Leadership Conference, designed to bring together school leaders to talk about sportsmanship on and off the playing field last week.

It wasn’t mandatory for schools to send a representative, and some didn’t come to the two-hour session.

Jordan Farmar, an All-City basketball player from the host school, had a test scheduled and wasn’t enthusiastic about being there after attending last year’s session.

“You can only say so much,” he said.

Many have heard similar admonishments, suggestions and recommendations from coaches and administrators, but this was a chance to meet their rivals out of uniform and hear from a special keynote speaker, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo.

Delgadillo graduated from Franklin High, captained four sports teams and went on to play football at Harvard. He faced the difficult task of trying to pass along important lessons to a large group of restless and skeptical teenagers.

“Today, you are leading your teams, and tomorrow, you will be leading our city,” he said.

The boy chewing the lollipop didn’t swallow, which was a good sign that Delgadillo at least had their attention.

Mixing personal stories with time-tested philosophical observations, Delgadillo sought to inspire the students to “dream big dreams.” He talked about character, conduct and leadership. He reminded them to take a second look at their so-called “enemies” off the sports field.

He said Wilson High and its former standout quarterback, Ron Cuccia, were his hated rivals through high school.

“I wanted nothing more than to crush Ron Cuccia,” he said.

Then, on his first day at Harvard, he met his roommate and his jaw dropped. It was Cuccia.

“Turns out, he wasn’t the villain I’d imagined him to be,” Delgadillo said. “The uniform is different, but the goals are the same. And so, my enemy became my friend.”

He reminded the students that “if you are trash talking, you are not a leader.”

He told them, “It requires no great test of character to make your way through good times, but it is a test of character to deal with the bad times well.”

He closed with a tale about his father putting him on a plane to Harvard.

“My father said to me in almost a nonchalant way, ‘Don’t forget to come back,’ ” Delgadillo said. “I said, ‘Dad, I’ll be back at Christmastime.’

“It was years later that I realized what he meant. You’ve been given an opportunity that others do not have. If you make it, don’t forget to come back to help others that are less fortunate than you.”

Afterward, the students separated into 11 groups. Some of the larger groups, such as football and boys’ basketball players, spent little time talking among themselves. They heard from a couple of administrators and broke up after being asked to fill out evaluation forms about the conference.

The question, however, isn’t whether they thought the conference was worthwhile, but whether they learned something.

Trying to teach sportsmanship and encourage leaders to lead is fundamental to what high school sports are about.

Delgadillo is proof that at some point in his sports experience, he learned how to answer the question, “What are we here for?”

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.