Hard times bring teams together

When he lost his mother to pancreatic cancer and later his home to foreclosure, Tom Leach turned to his boys, just as Matt Logan did when his wife was dying of breast cancer and his three young daughters needed him more than ever.

The reassurances were modest, provided by teenagers who did little more than show up each day. And yet they conveyed a world of meaning to the men whose lives they continually brightened.

“Some people need football more than football needs them,” Leach says.

It has been a challenging couple of years for the football coaches from Temecula Chaparral and Corona Centennial highs. Leach lost his mother, his home and his marriage; Logan lost his wife and soulmate.

But amid all the losses there has been plenty of triumph. Leach’s Chaparral Pumas tonight will play host to Logan’s Centennial Huskies in the Southern Section’s Inland Division championship game.

The teams are a combined 25-1, with Chaparral’s only loss coming in its opener -- against Centennial.

But the teams’ records are insignificant compared with the comfort the players have provided their coaches.

“The camaraderie is something that’s there for you and helps you in any type of situation,” Logan says.

It was 5 1/2 years ago when Logan’s wife, Donna, was diagnosed with cancer. Logan’s assistants coached the team while he accompanied her to Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., for treatments.

On multiple occasions, it seemed as if Donna Logan had defeated her illness.

“When it looked like she beat it,” says daughter Lindsey, now 16, “we’d get all excited.”

But Donna succumbed to the cancer in July 2007, only weeks before the start of football practice. Huskies players, who had attended fundraisers for the family, placed commemorative stickers on their helmets and did their best to hide their own heartache from their coach.

“Obviously, we were a little down, but we couldn’t show our feelings because we had to be strong for him,” senior receiver Ricky Marvray says. “Just through our working hard and coming out to practice every day, getting him real fired up and trying to get his mind off things, I think we helped out a lot.”

Centennial captured the Inland title and became the first team from the Inland Empire to advance to a state bowl game, where a furious comeback against Concord De La Salle fell short.

The Logans were also getting help at home, where Megan Goins, wife of assistant head coach Jeremy Goins, assisted the Logan girls with homework and dinner. Matt Logan needed a refresher course on the next step with a dishwasher after filling the detergent dispenser with soap.

“He flooded the whole kitchen,” Lindsey Logan says. “There was soap everywhere.”

As for Chaparral’s Leach, it wasn’t too long ago when he didn’t have a kitchen to flood.

In 2005, as his mother was dying of cancer, the coach allowed himself to be convinced by a mortgage lender that he could afford a $500,000 home on the salary of a teacher and a teacher’s aide.

“It was kind of a bad situation,” Leach says. “During that time there were a lot of greedy people and a bunch of people getting taken advantage of.”

It’s a group that includes some of his players and assistants at Chaparral. Leach, who lost his mother in November 2005 and his house two years later when he could no longer make the $3,200 monthly payments, was among a handful of Pumas whose homes were subjected to foreclosure during the financial crisis that has ravaged the Temecula area.

Some players’ families still struggle to pay for basic necessities, prompting the team’s booster club and players to chip in for such things as cleat spikes and meals.

“If someone on the team needs something,” senior offensive lineman Trevor Fox says, “we’ll all pull together and get it for them.”

Leach helped by relaying stories of his personal misfortune, which included a crumbling marriage. Meantime, those players were returning the favor.

“He hasn’t really shown any signs of being down because he loves his team so much and he loves coaching us,” senior linebacker Andrew Taylor says.

It was not the first time football has saved Leach.

When he was in high school, Leach said, his mother moved out with her boyfriend, leaving him alone to mind the family’s two-story home.

“I had my own house at 16,” Leach says. “Isn’t that ironic?”

But Leach was a hard partyer headed down the wrong path until then-Westminster High Coach Jim O’Hara accepted his tearful plea to join the football team.

“If I didn’t start playing football when I did and my coach didn’t give me an opportunity,” Leach says, “I would be dead right now.”

Given another chance, Leach, 40, says he tries to treat every day as a gift, even though he has separated from his wife and rents a room in Lake Elsinore.

“There’s no sign he’s sad,” Chaparral senior receiver Fontayne Fuga says. “He’s just making other players laugh and enjoying it.”

Logan, 42, isn’t afraid to share a good cry with eldest daughter Lindsey when she approaches him to share recollections of her mother.

Then Logan sees his extended family and can’t help but smile.

“It’s what I love to do,” Logan says. “It provides an outlet and something to keep me busy and keep my mind off what’s going on outside of it.”

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ben.bolch@latimes.com