Scoggins Finally Sees the Big Picture
The oversized, colorful letters -- DPHS, for Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta -- that adorn the canvas back of the Chargers’ water polo goalie cage look suspiciously like something Shane Scoggins once might have spray-painted on a cinder-block wall or the side of a building.
“I’ll always have the graffiti influence in my work,” he said. “But I want it to be more legitimate.”
Scoggins, a 17-year-old senior at Dos Pueblos, is a former tagger in the midst of painting over his life, and he credits the Chargers’ water polo and swim teams with helping him reform.
“I’ve kind of been on the straight and narrow,” he said. “I’m doing legal art, and I’m doing legal things, and I have no reason to go back and do illegal things.”
The Chargers (8-0) are ranked No. 1 in the Southland by The Times and are among the favorites to win the Southern Section Division I boys’ swimming championship on Friday night at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach.
Scoggins competed in the 50-yard freestyle -- his only individual event -- in preliminaries on Wednesday. He also will swim legs on Dos Pueblos’ top-seeded 200-medley and 200-free relay teams.
“I don’t think that I’m a star, but I think I’m contributing and I feel pretty good about things,” Scoggins said. “I have the opportunity to be on a swim team that is awesome, and I don’t need to mess that up.”
Scoggins was cited in July for possession of alcohol by a minor and sentenced in Teen Court, an innovative juvenile-diversion program for first-time offenders that is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.
He was required to perform 20 hours of community service, participate in life-choices classes and undergo five sessions of drug and alcohol counseling. If there are no subsequent offenses, Scoggins’ record will be sealed when he turns 18 and effectively expunged.
Other times, Scoggins has been chased away from train tracks, creek beds and freeway overpasses, where his type of “work” is prevalent.
But it wasn’t until Dos Pueblos swimming Coach Chris Parrish confronted him as he headed to school after another morning spent tagging in February that Scoggins decided to commit to changing his ways.
“I did have my time where I had to learn a lot of lessons, and I think I did,” said Scoggins, who added that he has not gone tagging since his confrontation with Parrish.
A well-spoken extrovert, Scoggins appears to manage nicely on an otherwise straight-arrow team.
“He’s one of the kids who I really enjoy, but he’s also one of the biggest challenges because he questions authority,” Parrish said. “Not that he’s disrespectful or anything, but he’s the kind of kid that, if you don’t have a rationale for something, he’s going to question it.”
Added Egan Gans, who swims breaststroke and is a member of the 200-free relay team: “I guess he’s a little bit different. It’s definitely not a bad thing, though. It just adds color to our team.”
Scoggins is headed to Ventura College this fall to play water polo and try to shore up his study habits and grades. He has a 2.8 grade-point average.
Like his art, Scoggins’ academic struggles can be traced to graffiti.
“This is kind of what I do instead of my class work,” he said. “I retain the stuff that I learn in class. I just have a hard time doing the work itself, because I always end up drawing in the margins.”
Scoggins was enrolled in Advanced Placement art classes the last two years. He credits his start in graffiti with awakening a talent he didn’t know he had until the eighth grade.
“It’s illegal graffiti, and I’m not trying to justify it in any way,” Scoggins said. “But I like the art, I like the work, I like the energy and I like the expression that people put into it. That really drew me to it.”
A piece of Scoggins’ art recently was exhibited in a Santa Barbara gallery, proving to him that it no longer had to adorn block walls or freeway overpasses.
“You can cross over,” he said. “It’s not for everybody, but I can make that jump.”