Against the longest of odds, two basketball players from Los Angeles Loyola High end up in the Final Four
The plan is to meet sometime before their teams face each other in the Final Four. Maybe they will gather in one of the long, drafty corridors inside the Alamodome or off to the side of the raised court.
Somewhere, Austin Hatch and Dylan Boehm intend to take a picture that will serve as more than a memento for the Los Angeles Loyola High coach who has asked his former players to pose together.
The image will also be a reminder of life’s frailties and the unlikely paths that brought two players from the same high school to college basketball’s biggest stage.
Hatch is Michigan’s student assistant and resident inspiration after surviving two plane crashes that effectively ended his playing career.
“Every time I see this dude, I’m like grateful, you know?” Wolverines star forward Moritz Wagner said Thursday.
Boehm is the Cinderella of the Cinderella, a freshman walk-on who enrolled at Loyola Chicago without any assurances of making the team, much less making it this deep in the NCAA tournament with the 11th-seeded Ramblers.
“If everyone in the room’s being honest,” Boehm said, “no one expected to be in the Final Four.”
Hatch and Boehm are here and they’re contributing for teams that will meet in the first national semifinal Saturday afternoon. Hatch has grabbed rebounds during practices and encouraged players. Boehm has simulated Michigan’s Duncan Robinson and Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman as a member of the scout team.
They were never high school teammates, Hatch completing his senior season at Loyola when Boehm was a freshman on the junior varsity. But Boehm was sitting in the stands at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High in January 2014 when Hatch made a corner three-pointer in his first game back from life-threatening injuries sustained in the second plane crash he survived 2½ years earlier.
“The whole arena went crazy, stormed the court,” Boehm recalled. “We got a technical but that was one of the coolest moments of high school.”
Shooting and dribbling were far down the list of things Hatch had to re-learn in 2011 after the second crash in a small plane piloted by his father, Stephen. He sustained neurological damage after suffering head trauma, broken ribs and a punctured lung that prompted doctors to place him in a medically induced coma.
The crash came nine days after Hatch had been offered a scholarship to play basketball for Michigan, his dream school. His father, stepmother and a family dog perished in the crash that came eight years after another crash that claimed his mother, brother and sister.
Hatch survived the first crash only after his father, a doctor who was piloting that plane as well, removed him from the burning wreckage. He said he has no memory of either incident.
“Fortunately,” added Hatch, who was not aboard the Michigan team plane that skidded off the runway in high winds before the Big Ten Conference tournament last season because he travels only occasionally.
Hatch moved from his home in Fort Wayne, Ind., to Pasadena in the summer of 2013 to live with an uncle and enroll at Loyola High for his senior season. He said the move was an attempt to jolt him out of his comfort zone in preparation for college life at Michigan.
He appeared in five games with the Wolverines during the 2014-15 season, scoring one point when he made the middle free throw after being fouled on a three-pointer toward the end of a blowout victory over Coppin State. But with his athletic abilities having significantly diminished, Hatch went on a medical scholarship beginning with his sophomore season.
“I just needed to step away and focus more on my schoolwork,” Hatch said, “because basketball is great, but I’m at Michigan to prepare to succeed in life.”
Boehm had similar aspirations upon his arrival at Loyola Chicago. His basketball pursuits were secondary to the lure of the Jesuit school’s business curriculum, a partial academic scholarship and his love of big cities.
Getting to play for the Ramblers was a big unknown.
Boehm hadn’t spoken with the coaching staff before freshman orientation last summer. He strolled across campus to the athletic department with hopes of arranging a meeting and was informed the coaches were in the midst of workouts.
That didn’t stop Boehm once he reached the gym.
“He went over and introduced himself,” recalled Joseph Diesko, Boehm’s father, who was with his son that day, “and gosh, they talked for the longest time.”
Coaches told Boehm he could try out for the team in the fall. He did and made the roster, becoming the last man on the depth chart.
Boehm has learned that going a whole season without scoring a point can be glamorous. The 6-foot-5 forward recently had his picture prominently displayed in the New York Times while holding Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt’s hand. His family was shown on national television when a camera panned to the crowd for a celebration shot after Donte Ingram’s buzzer-beater in the opening round of the NCAA tournament against Miami.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Boehm, who has played a total of seven minutes in five games. “This is a whole ‘nother level of awesome.”
Boehm’s mother, father and younger brother will be there once more to cheer for him Saturday. Hatch’s fiancée and grandmother will also be in attendance, along with a cousin and his daughter.
Their high school coach’s allegiances will be split from afar.
“I’m torn,” veteran Loyola High coach Jamal Adams said by telephone. “It’s going to be a tough one to pick.”
Boehm said he would seek out Hatch before the game in an attempt to fulfill Adams’ request to get the photo that could make the coach feel like a winner no matter who prevails.
“I’ll go up and say ‘What’s up?’ to him,” Boehm said, “maybe get a couple of pictures and just ask him how he’s doing.”
Hatch continues to stay busy. He’ll graduate this spring with a degree in organizational studies before getting married in June and starting a job in the corporate offices of Domino’s Pizza the following month.
But first he’ll pause for a photo because life’s dominoes fell in a way that brought two players from the same high school together once more.
“What are the odds, right?” Hatch said. “I mean, of all the teams, it just so happens we both made the Final Four. The chances of two Loyola kids making the Final Four is slim, so I’m really looking forward to seeing him again.”
Follow Ben Bolch on Twitter @latbbolch
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