Making Their Bench Marks

By TIM BROWN

Feb. 1, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Tracy Gamache, a senior water polo player at El Toro High, sat alone and mourned her lost playing time.

Distanced from teammates who were her friends, and having lost her sense of athletic purpose, Gamache grieved over effort seemingly unrewarded.

“I was really upset about it,” said Gamache, who might have quit the team had her parents not forbade it.

Moments before, she had stormed from the pool deck into the locker room, where she found a lonesome corner and wept.

Eventually, several of her teammates came upon her.

“You know, no one’s pitying you,” one told her. “Your attitude stinks. If you look at this from a team perspective, you’ll probably have a lot more fun.”

Gamache pondered the stinging observation and later she said, “I knew I couldn’t argue with them about it. They were right. Now I see myself as helping the team.”

No one ever liked the bench. But almost everyone gets there eventually.

The kickball captain rides the bench in high school. The high school shortstop flicks sunflower seeds in college. The college quarterback wears a baseball cap backward and holds a clipboard in the pros.

It happens. The ride ends somewhere.

There is nothing wrong with playing a few sloppy minutes at the end of the game, when the parking lot is emptying and the cheerleaders really can’t be bothered anymore.

In fact, there is a certain dignity to it.

Anybody can practice hard and study diligently when the reward is as significant as a college scholarship, or a newspaper headline, or a crowd’s admiration. But what if the reward is nothing but the reflection of glory? A front-row seat? A varsity jacket with no varsity letter sewn on it?

Six weeks after she ran sobbing from the pool deck, Gamache is among El Toro’s most vocal players. Some of her teammates say she might be the team’s most inspirational player even though she hardly plays.

“I love the sport of water polo,” she said. “Playing is a great thing and when I do get to play it means a lot to me.

“But it’s really about how many friends I’ve made, and how many people I know I’ll have with me even when water polo is over.”

For the Good of the Team

Call them what you’d like--reserves, benchwarmers, program depth, practice bodies--they are part of the sporting landscape, and they far outnumber the stars.

Coaches call them vital.

“Playing is better than not playing,” Ocean View boys’ basketball Coach Jim Harris said. “But if you do this long enough, you understand the importance these kids have on your program. It’s those guys, their attitude, that make you better. Practice is where you perfect your game, or try to.

“They have to start off with a great attitude. When reality sets in, then what? Practice becomes their competition.”

Ocean View is 21-2. Andrew James and Jeremiah Riel have a part in that, though their contributions can’t be adequately quantified. Other than, again, in 21-2.

At Calvary Chapel, John Azevedo runs one of finest wrestling programs in the state. Inside of it, Steve Fremen has fought to reach varsity status, a battle Azevedo finds endearing. Fremen doesn’t have a varsity decision, and still Azevedo gushes over his unquestioning effort.

“These are kids I’ve enjoyed as much as anyone in my program, [including] my state champs, just because they’re the types of kids who never give up,” Azevedo said.

“They don’t complain. They work hard. That’s something I don’t know if I could have done. If I wasn’t successful, I don’t know if I could have stuck it out.”

Ryan Young and Ross McCollum have made little obvious impact on Troy’s 20-2 basketball team, but Coach T.J. Hardeman said they help drive the program from within.

“If you have a good, winning program, you have more kids like that,” Hardeman said. “If you struggle, maybe there aren’t as many kids who are involved.”

Their stories are so similar they could be one. They all want to play. None of them started out to be reserves. The hours in the gyms, beneath the bench presses, running miles through their neighborhoods, weren’t spent to make others better. They were spent to win playing time, then to win games.

Therefore, these aren’t totally satisfied kids. Their willingness to man the bench for the good of the team is tinged in disappointment, either in their situation or in their personal lack of skills.

“It’s kind of discouraging,” said McCollum, a reserve guard at Troy, “doing all of the practicing and working, but you don’t get to play. All in all, though, it’s all right, because I’m still playing basketball.”

Only last week McCollum went to Hardeman and asked again about playing time, about being added to the playing rotation. Again he was told to keep working, to keep trying.

“I love the game so much, so it doesn’t bother me that much,” he said. “I would play basketball 24 hours a day if I had the time. I just love playing. And it’s not that bad this year because our team is so good.”

And so he plunged into the routine again, thrilled to be a part of it and unwilling to release the notion that it could be so much more.

“These kids are not necessarily successful, and they still come to practice every day and work hard,” said Azevedo, the Calvary Chapel wrestling coach. “It just shows the type of character these kids have.

“Obviously, they like the sport, they like the challenge, they like the struggle. It takes a kid with a lot of character to meet that challenge day after day, year after year.”

As often as once a week, Steve Fremen’s parents ask him when he will challenge Andy Tuffnell to a wrestling match. Tuffnell, a senior at wrestling-rich Calvary Chapel, is No. 1 in the county and No. 3 in the state in the 160-pound weight class.

Fremen, a junior, also is a 160-pounder. He competes for the Calvary Chapel junior varsity, but has yet to set foot on a varsity mat. The only way from the bench to the mat is through Tuffnell.

Fremen has not yet issued the challenge, but said he will soon.

“I know in my mind kind of how it’s going to go,” Fremen said. “I’m not expecting to lose. I’d like to win. I’ll go out there and find out as the match goes on.”

A Moment of Glory

Maybe you’ve never noticed players like her. You look over the tops of their heads to the court, past them to the star, through them to the real action.

But, not long ago, in a girls’ basketball game against Woodbridge, Mariko Mikami scored for the first time.

It was a mere layup at the end of a game Newport Harbor lost. Yet Mikami, an exchange student from Chiba, Japan, remembers only that her teammates rejoiced over her accomplishment.

“Everyone was whooping it up,” said Mikami, who laughed at the word “whooping,” even as she pronounced it. “It was very exciting.”

She called her parents in Japan with the news, making it one very expensive layup.

“Of course I want to play in the games and score,” she said, “but it’s nice to play any kind of basketball. I wanted to make friends, so I started playing. It’s easier that way.”

Newport Harbor Coach Gregg Savage graduated many of his leading players after last season, and in this one the team lost 15 of its first 18 games. The improvement, then, comes slowly and imperceptibly. As the defeats mount, so could the tension, and Savage said he has been fortunate to have a sturdy spirit such as Mikami’s on his bench.

“In a way, they’re the most important people if you want to have a really successful team,” Savage said. “Those girls that sit on the end, they cheer, they have fun together, they create the whole team atmosphere. There’s not the feeling of ‘you versus us.’

“It takes a big person to sit there and stay excited, stay into it, and have as much fun when you know they want to get in there. It’s got to be difficult. But they still come to practice, and those are the kids you want to have around as a coach, the kids that still want to work hard, still want to improve.”

Hard on Parents Too

Mikami’s telephone call to her parents was a telling gesture, as was their support of her achievement. Many coaches say the attitudes at the far end of their benches come directly from the players’ homes, where parents set the tone for a willing participant or a grousing disruption.

Kids aren’t the only ones with the occasional requirement for instant gratification. There are few hours more disappointing to a parent than to attend a child’s game, only to spend the entire time staring at the back of his head.

“If they are excited for the kid, then it works,” Troy’s Hardeman said. “Every parent would like to see their kid be the star. Some are more realistic.”

Still, it isn’t easy.

“We’re very proud of him,” Ross McCollum’s mother, Jackie, said. “We’ve had several of the parents from the team that have similar kids ask us how we manage it. We tell them that we have left it up to him. It’s a tough deal to sit there and watch your kid sit on the bench. But if he’s accepted it, I guess in some way we have to.”

Matthew James, father of Andrew, a seldom-used forward at Ocean View, said Andrew’s lack of playing time was nothing a thousand free throws a day and a little more aggressiveness wouldn’t solve. He chuckled a little.

He is proud of Andrew, who has grown out of a severe childhood asthma condition and into a hearty competitor. As a 6-foot-2 forward, he would have to be.

“It definitely keeps him out of trouble,” Matthew said. “He likes playing ball and the camaraderie with the other fellas, the rewards of slight fame. I think he’s being fulfilled by it. He’s hung in there.”

Slight fame, he said. His son laughed a little. Even the status of being on the team, a good team, has its failings.

“It’s also hard,” James Andrews pointed out, “being known as the guy who doesn’t get in all the time.”