The Season of Forgiving

She didn’t feel like going into the Gardena department store with the rest of her family, so 13-year-old Morghan Medlock waited in the car with her baby sister, who was asleep in a car seat.

Morghan had no way of knowing just how horrifying the next few moments would be.

Simehan, just 11 months, began coughing “in a freakish way,” Medlock said. So she took her sister into her arms to provide comfort, but Simehan’s head and body began jerking about, her eyes rolled backward and blood began to leak from her tiny eyes, nose and ears.

Medlock, remaining clearheaded, gave her sister CPR. It didn’t work. In just a few terrible moments, Simehan lay dead in her arms.

For years afterward, Medlock would beat herself up over her sister’s death. The official cause of Simehan’s death was unknown, but doctors told the grieving family that it was probably an aneurysm.

“Nobody could say anything that would make me think that it wasn’t my fault at the time,” Medlock said of a scene she has tried to push as far from her memory as she can.

“We got rid of the car. We didn’t want to live with those demons around.”

It was a terrible burden to carry into her high school years at Harbor City Narbonne, where Medlock became a freshman starter and eventually developed into one of the Southland’s best girls’ basketball players.

But first she stopped eating. She suffered prolonged periods of depression. There were days on the basketball court, despite her commitment to give 100% in the wake of Simehan’s death, that she just couldn’t do it.

“I would be down, and could never figure out why,” Medlock said. “I assumed it was just a bad day, but I think it was because I had never really let go.”

It wasn’t until after her junior season, Medlock said, that she finally allowed herself to cry for the first time. The years of people telling her it wasn’t her fault finally took hold.

“I had a few emotional breakdowns because I had blocked out what happened,” she said. “When I finally did let go, and talked to God about it, it all went away and I felt free as a person.”

Her coach, James Anderson, had many talks with his prized player. “She’s had to overcome some horrible things, and she’s done it,” he said. “It’s been great to see her mature over the years.”

Mature as a person, a player and a student. Medlock, a 6-foot senior forward who carries a 3.2 grade-point average, has been selected an All-American by McDonald’s and Nike, following a line of Narbonne standouts that includes Ebony Hoffman, Loree Moore, Lisa Willis, Willnett Crockett and Camille LeNoir.

“There is a lot of pressure,” Medlock said of trying to live up to the standards of those who preceded her. “The one thing they have that I don’t is a state championship.”

Narbonne won its seventh City Section title in 10 seasons, but a 53-29 loss Thursday to Long Beach Poly in the Southern California Regional semifinals ended the Gauchos’ season and their quest for a fourth state championship. Medlock scored only five points on one-of-five shooting and had five rebounds and three turnovers.

There’s no doubt, however, about Anderson’s influence on Medlock’s growth.

As her youth coach, he was there to support her in her darkest hours, and as her high school coach, to prevent her from wasting the talent that helped her earn a scholarship to USC.

“Morghan and [Anderson] went toe-to-toe a few times,” said Medlock’s mother, Shannon Barron. “He [helped her to keep] her perspective, kept her focused on the big picture, made her look at the people who didn’t make it. He challenged her to dig and show people what she was made of.”

The turning point in Medlock’s basketball life came in the City title game two years ago, when she missed a putback at the buzzer that would have tied the score against Los Angeles Crenshaw. It should have been an easy basket. Instead, it was a huge upset loss.

She was disappointed, but not devastated. She had already been that.

“I took for granted that I was supposed to make it, and I didn’t,” she said. “It made me look not only at basketball, but life, from a different perspective. It made me want to work hard for everything, to go hard on every shot, on every rebound, on every essay.”

Before the next season began, Medlock had cleared her head of the guilt associated with Simehan’s death. Medlock has averaged 21 points and 14 rebounds this season.

“She’s been at absolute peace the last three weeks, since she got that McDonald’s letter,” Barron said. “There’s no more hostility. She loves school, she loves her family. She’s starting to appreciate her dad [Michael Medlock] and she loves her life.

“She’s been through a lot. To get to the point she is now, she’s smiling, and it’s a genuine smile. It makes my heart warm knowing that it’s real.”