This is a Thanksgiving themed story that ran in Thursday's paper... Many football players claim their team as family but San Dimas sophomore Cawatas Brown actually had to choose between his real family and his football team.
SAN DIMAS - For the first time since he can remember, Cawatas Brown didn't play football last Thanksgiving.
He is making up for it with twice as much this year.
The 8 a.m. installment at San Dimas High School includes pads and a helmet.
The football tentatively scheduled between his first and second turkey dinners will include a backyard and his six siblings for the first time since they were scattered a year-and-a-half ago.
The sophomore cornerback will practice for two hours this morning in preparation for San Dimas' quarterfinal playoff game against Rosemead on Friday.
After a Thanksgiving meal at his current residence - his second living arrangement in two weeks - he'll take the two-hour train ride north to his mother's house in Santa Clarita. Now that she has been granted the ability to care for his brothers and sisters again, Brown will try to sneak in some family football the day before fourth-seeded San Dimas (10-1) plays for the right to be one of four teams remaining in the CIF-SS Mid-Valley Division.
Since the state deemed his mother unfit to care for her seven children June 1, 2007, Brown has lived at the McKinley Children's Center, which shelters up to 88 foster children on its San Dimas campus. Though an arduous transition, it was a sizable upgrade from the two bedroom apartment in a gang-infested Long Beach neighborhood that housed Brown, his four brothers, two sisters, mother and grandmother since his father died six years ago.
Brown slept in the living room for reasons that had nothing to do with tryptophan.
"It was nine people cooped up in a small apartment," Brown said. "It was good, but we never had enough to go around."
When his mother recently finished her state-mandated parenting classes and purchased a Santa Clarita house large enough to accommodate her seven children, Brown was presented the option to rejoin her. But a life in the Valley 35 miles north of Los Angeles meant no more San Dimas football.
"Before I started playing football I was gonna go back to Santa Clarita," Brown said. "As I kept playing, people on the team kept getting closer and closer to me, so I stayed. I want to graduate from here. This team is my second family."
Brown visits his mother most weekends, leaving after Saturday practice and returning Sunday night.
But his life is in San Dimas.
"It's an honor as a coach," San Dimas football coach Bill Zernickow said, "to know somebody is giving up being with their flesh and blood to be here."
In his first year at McKinley, the flighty San Dimas freshman considered football, but didn't play. Though he is a starting cornerback leading the team with five interceptions, the last time the 6-foot, 185-pounder strapped on the pads before his sophomore year was in Pop Warner.
Zernickow discovered Brown's less than subtle athletic ability in a freshman P.E. class basketball game - "he was the one tomahawk dunking on ninth graders," Zernickow said. By football season's opening week, Brown had ascended to starting status.
He intercepted his first pass in San Dimas' third game. Twice this season he made game-clinching interceptions that kept San Dimas (10-1) ranked atop the CIF-SS Mid-Valley Division. He closed out a tense 35-27 league-opening win over Covina. His interception of Bonita quarterback Terry Paradez was the Bearcats' last offensive play in a 50-33 San Dimas win.
He returned his most recent interception 80 yards for a touchdown against Ganesha a week before San Dimas ran over Baldwin Park Sierra Vista, 67-12, in the first round of the playoffs.
"For his first time back playing football since Pop Warner, this is pretty wild," Zernickow said. "Just think what his upside is in the next couple of years. He has the legitimate athletic ability and frame to be a major Division I recruit."
Zernickow has experimented enough with Brown on offense to declare he will carry a heavy load next year at wing back when he steps in for senior Daniel Joseph, who has run for 1,400 yards and 21 touchdowns this season.
But the San Dimas coach tries to restrain himself from planning too far ahead - "It's a fluid situation," Zernickow said.
Because football creates curfew conflicts with McKinley, Brown moved in with a friend of his grandmother's last week. Zernickow has dealt with numerous boys from McKinley - he estimates 15 are currently attending San Dimas, not many of which are success stories. Brown, however, is yet to encounter trouble in or out of the classroom.
"He's kind of the poster child for them over there," Zernickow said, "of what can happen to you if you do things right."
