With his father's help, David De La Cerda found answers

Published online on Saturday, Jun. 20, 2009

The basketball at Broadway and El Dorado streets in downtown Fresno gets a bit rough sometimes.

"This last game got a little heated, and I had to get control," says Noel Gonzalez, one of the referees. "You know how some games can get."

Gonzalez is a substance-abuse counselor during the day, so he's tough to rattle. Also, there was hardly a referee's whistle questioned all of Thursday night. Really, the entire tournament had been like that, since it started back on June 2. You got the idea that all of the young men in tank tops and tattoos really got it, understood that the men in charge put together something special. Arguing foul calls with those same men would be especially disrespectful.

Sports are a big part of so many father-son relationships. And not just the Mannings or the Griffeys or Nicklauses of the world. My dad used to come in from a 14-hour day of farming, his shirt stained with grease and oil and sweat, and he would crouch down and catch my fastballs for an hour.

For every over-the-top nut-job screaming through a chain-link fence, there are 50 dads with an arm slung around a son or daughter, going for ice cream after the game.

My favorite father-son story of this year, though, is not exactly a fairy tale. Roy De La Cerda didn't know what to do about his son.

"I could see I was losing him to the prison system," he says.

He was right. David De La Cerda was a lost teenager. He'd flopped at four different high schools. He was in a gang; still has the tattoos up and down his arms.

"Every day I wasn't here," David says, "was another day to get high or rob somebody."

"Here" is the gym at Broadway and El Dorado, a breadbox with basketball hoops at each end. It's in the back of the World Impact Inc. building, run by an inner-city mission group. It also used to be the home of Bethany Inner-City Church, but like so many things in downtown Fresno, that group left a while back for a better location.

The building is also the adopted home of Open Arms Community Church, of which Roy De La Cerda is the pastor. For many years the gym has been open to the public on select evenings, a friend of Roy's opening it. Then when he couldn't, Roy started opening it on Thursdays.

He liked it when David started showing up, but he wasn't proud of what his son had become, hated that he could see the drugs in his son's eyes.

But he was determined not to give up, and he decided basketball was the answer. It was the one positive thing in David's life, the hours where he felt in control of his life. Sometimes David and his friends played for hours.

About a year ago, there was a time when no one could open the gym, and so David asked for the key. Soon, he was opening the gym on Tuesday nights, too.

They are maybe not the traditional father and son. OK, they are nothing like the traditional father and son. David was adopted by his aunt because his biological mother was in prison. The aunt was married to Roy, and even though the aunt and Roy divorced years ago, David still calls him his dad and best friend.

After David's life started to turn, when he decided to get sober, when he'd told so many about basketball that there were 40 and 50 guys showing up on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of four or five, Roy had an idea. A basketball tournament.

It would be called the "Father's Day Wild Card Basketball Tournament." The tournament would cost $5, but teams would be selected by drawing cards out of a deck. Roy could see that the guys from the same neighborhoods were playing together all the time, rivalries were forming. He wanted to break through that, make young men work with strangers, make new relationships.

The gym at Broadway and El Dorado isn't much. The floor is old tile. The walls are gray concrete. It's so small you can't shoot 3-pointers from the corners. On three sides, the out of bounds is a wall.

But it was a beautiful 4-on-4 tournament, half-court, make-it-take-it. Roy's family had a concession stand that they conveniently forgot to charge for. Roy asked his friend to help officiate. He made scoreboards for each side of the court with PVC pipe, shower curtain rings and numbers written on paper.

They gave nice trophies to the winning team and a tournament MVP trophy.

David figures 90% of the guys that played are into the same things he was, or at least "at-risk" of it.

David's team did not win, but it didn't seem to matter. At 20 years old, he's been sober a year. He got married to a preacher's daughter in May. They have a baby due July 25.

"Oh man," he says, looking down at his wedding ring. "I'm so excited. First right choice I've made."

David and his dad were two of the last to leave late Thursday night, their first tournament a seven-team success and they have plans to expand it in the fall.

"See ya, dad," David said as they hugged in the parking lot. "You did a good job."

"Thank you," Roy said. "I love you."