MitchMash: Perham, Fennville and the season of team

The 2010-11 season officially ended Saturday under the hot bright national television lights of the ESPN Rise National High School Invitational.

Over the coming weeks, we'll all celebrate the individual mega stars and future college and NBA talents with All-American and Player of the Year lists.

As well we should.

But make no mistake – 2010-11 will and should always be remembered for the power of all things team.



All things community.

All parts united.

This isn't a basketball purist trying to ram fundamentals or ball sharing or a five-passes-before-you-shoot mentality down everyone's throat. Especially not after Monday night's national championship college slowdown and clank-a-thon.

This is a from any person USA who has remotely followed some of the most tragic and yet inspiring sports stories of 2011. At any level.

The most visible and heart-wrenching was told on the nightly news last month in Fennville (Mich.), where star all-around athlete, leading scorer and All-American kid Wes Leonard collapsed on the court and later died of an enlarged heart. It happened just moments after Wes made a game-winning shot to complete a perfect regular season.

With the nation following virtually its every move, Fennville (23-1) played before packed crowds and won three consecutive playoff games before losing in a Class C regional game to Schoolcraft in Vicksburg, Mich. Some 3,500 fans were in the stands and 70 more were members of the media.



Blackhawks coach Ryan Klingler was overwrought after the game but tried to put it all in perspective.

"These are 15-, 16-, 17-year-old kids," he said. "To be able to do what they did. ...I think down the road they'll have a strength that will be almost unbroken."

Wes' mother Jocelyn Leonard broke her public silence that night and offered this: "You won't get over it, but you've got to get through it. We couldn't get through it without everybody helping us."

In California, following three of its 10 state championship games, tears flowed as coaches and players told harrowing stories of teams bonding and persevering through suffering.

Lutheran (La Verne) reserve guard Kevin Payne made two shots - both three-pointers in the final 1:45 - to key his team's 64-59 Division III win over Bishop O'Dowd-Oakland. After the second, he pointed forcefully to the sky. His father, Kevin Sr., was killed in a car accident in August.

"It feels like a fairy tale right now," Payne said. "From everything we've gone through, and me personally. ... Sometimes I felt like quitting, and my (teammates) would not let me do it."



Pinewood (Los Altos Hills) girls coach Doc Scheppler openly sobbed after his team's second straight Division V title. His father, Earnest, died in May following a long bout with cancer.

"These girls were the love of his life, and watching them play helped keep him alive the last two years," Scheppler said. "They were all there by his bedside (two days before) he passed."

Earnest told them to win another state title that day. The Panthers didn't talk about it until the day of the state finals, when the girls made T-shirts with Earnest's initials and the slogan "refuse to lose." The Panthers then played their best game of the season in a 67-56 win over St. Bernard-Los Angeles.

"I'm proud of how they performed today, but more so (of) who they are as people," Scheppler said.

The boys team from Windward (Los Angeles) upset Salesian-Richmond 63-57 and afterward, coach Miguel Villegas broke down talking about his team's No. 1 fan and former player Daniel Tan, who died in January following a six-year bout with multiple sclerosis. Tan, confined to a wheelchair, sat on Windward's bench the past several seasons.

"If we were resilient today and throughout the season, it's because Dan was giving us strength," Villegas said.



Perham (Minn.) also received extra strength from a fallen teammate – the team's leading scorer – who clung to life most of the season from a hospital bed.

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Looking for answers
David Cresap looked into the crowd and had nothing. Like just about everyone in the small West central Minnesota town of Perham (population 2,500), Cresap was exhausted and overwrought.

Many eyes he looked at were bloodshot. Most faces were blank. All were teens at school searching for reasons why their 17-year-old peer and basketball star – seemingly in impeccable shape - could be fighting for his life in a hospital bed with a heart ailment.

Perham's leading scorer Zach Gabbard, a 6-foot shooting guard, had collapsed on the court during a Jan. 20 game at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton. Emergency crews immediately rushed Gabbard to Sanford Medical Center in Fargo (N.D.) where heart surgery was performed.

Locals looked to Cresap, the team's 16-year-coach who had been awake with family members for close to 100 hours, for answers.

"I honestly didn't know what to say," Cresap recalled. "I definitely could have crumbled. But thank the good Lord a light bulb went off inside and I told them I would be there for them, that we would get through this. … together."



Perham's basketball team, made up mostly of Gabbard's childhood chums, not only pulled through but somehow finished 31-1 and captured the school's first state championship. This despite another tragedy on campus the same week of the title game.

The community rallied, reached out nationwide and raised close to $100,000 to defray medical costs for the Gabbard family.

And Zach himself, after three major heart surgeries and two challenging touch-and-go months, is alive and stable. On Monday he was transferred to a transitional rehabilitation unit in Perham.

On Tuesday, Gabbard was visited by numerous teammates including Cresap's son Jordan, a 5-10 junior who called Zach his best friend and who actually took his place in the starting lineup.

"To see Zach like his old self cracking jokes and playing cards, man it was awesome," Jordan said. "It was just awesome to be all together again. It's been one wild roller coaster ride, that's for sure."

After a 10-0 start to the season, the wheels came off when Gabbard fell in a heap midway through the first half at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton. Medics arrived, the game was called, bewildered fans went home and inconsolable players were escorted to their locker rooms.



"It was just like a bad dream," Jordan said. "It was just surreal. How could this be happening? All we could do was pray."

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Sheer pandemonium
With their friend in critical condition, the Yellowjackets decided to carry on and play with a purpose. Scoring duties were divvied up. Motivation – even against lesser opponents – was never an issue.

Team huddles were broken with "one clap for Zach," and much like the Marine call of "leave no wounded behind," Perham started a "Put Zach on our back," credo.

"The thing is, we knew every day that Zach was fighting for his life so the least we could do was fight on and fight through adversity on the court for an hour or two a day," Jordan said.

The Yellowjackets received a giant boost before the quarterfinals of the playoffs, when Gabbard surprised them in the locker room with a visit. It was the first time any had seen him out of the hospital.



"We told them Zach was going to talk to them via a video feed," coach Cresap said. "Instead while they were looking at the screen, we rolled him in from the other way."

And when the team saw him.

"Sheer pandemonium," coach Cresap said. "There were lots of tears and high fives."

As Perham was introduced than night, Gabbard rose from his wheelchair for the first time and high-fived every player. The Yellowjackets breezed to a 57-40 victory.

"We were sky high that night," Jordan said.

The team and Perham community was rocked back to earth that same week with news of a murder of a fellow student Tabitha Belmonte, 16, who was shot numerous times by her boyfriend Dylan Cox, who fatally shot himself.



Many of the players knew Tabitha.

"We got on the team bus (to go to state championship game at the Target Center in Minneapolis) and discussed it," coach Cresap said. "They kids got to talk to each other about her, about what happened. We'd been through so much all season. We eventually re-focused on Zach and the game and as always, they responded."

It wasn't the prettiest of victories, a 45-37 victory, but then nothing about the season was tied with a red bow.

Gabbard, tired from his excursion earlier in the week, watched the game from a TV set at Minnesota Medical Center.

Nick Tobkin led the team in scoring with 15 points and the Yellowjackets made 15 of 17 free throws and six 3-pointers. Two of those were by Jordan Cresap who had 12 points and just one turnover in 33 turnovers while running the point.

When the final horn sounded, the players erupted. All of them held up three fingers while taking the championship team picture, in honor of Zach's No. 3 jersey.



"It was all for him," Jordan said. "Nothing was going to deny us, nothing could split us apart. The bonds are just too strong."

Updates on Zach and where to make donations.

E-mail Mitch Stephens at mstephens@maxpreps.com with human interest and inspiring high school sports stories.