Elsie Allen senior overcomes lows with help of coach

Elsie Allen senior Jalen Busby’s high school career is a tale of broken starts. It’s also a tale of the most fantastic finishes.

And his coach, Madison Lott, has been there for every low and every high.

Busby started high school at Santa Rosa High, but freshman academic problems pushed him back to his neighborhood school, Elsie Allen High, as a sophomore. The athletic young man quickly caught the attention of Lott who, at the time, was the Lobos’ assistant football and head basketball coach.

“Halfway through the season, we brought him up, and he played quarterback for the varsity team,” Lott recalled. But that Lobos squad went winless in league.

Busby’s sophomore basketball campaign was more of the same, a strong kid struggling to find his way on a regularly over-matched team.

But Busby kept after it. Lott made sure of it.

“He really struggled, but he was a hardworking kid,” Lott recalled. “He stuck to it, he didn’t give up. He was still a good athlete.”

He was a good athlete with a lot on his plate.

Busby has no father in his life and spends a lot of his time caring for his younger sister.

“It makes me respect him more as a kid and a man now,” Lott said. “I see all of the stuff he has to deal with on a daily basis.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, other demands, Busby is a driven athlete who responded and delivered for his coach.

With Busby behind center in his junior football season, Elsie Allen went 1-9 overall, but basketball was a different story. The Lobos began to shine behind the sharp shooting of junior Joe Hoeup and Busby’s workmanlike effort. The Lobos went 8-5 in Sonoma County League play.

Going into Busby’s senior year, both coach and player had high hopes for both sports. The plan - Lott calls it his “plan” - seemed to be working, players were buying in, playing as a unit, playing for each other.

Then two broken bones changed all that.

In the first scrimmage of his senior year, Busby scrambled into the end zone, leaped for six and came down on his collarbone. Broken. Later in the same scrimmage, Busby’s favorite receiver, Bradley Greiner, broke his hand. The Lobos’ promising season was no longer so promising.

But Busby being Busby, he came back from the injury to play his heart out for the Lobos and for Lott. He switched to receiver and made the first team All-Sonoma County League squad.

“I was very proud of him,” Lott said.

But Busby’s up and down career wasn’t over. Returning from their third-place league finish the prior year, the Lobos basketball team was loaded for bear - until guard Hoeup broke his ankle in the first scrimmage.

“When Joe got hurt, everyone thought the season was over,” Busby said. Everyone but Lott, who had to make Busby believe, too.

At the Lobos’ first practice of the season, Lott had asked them their goals. Down to a man they said, “Win league.” After Hoeup came in on crutches, Lott sat his team down again.

“He asked us the same question,” Busby remembered. “‘Raise your hand if it’s still your goal to win the league championship.’ Everyone raised their hand again. He said, ‘We have the same goals, nothing changes, we just do it a little different.’”

Without the remarkably talented Hoeup at the helm, every Lobo had to learn a new position. For understated Busby, the change in responsibility was perhaps the most dramatic.

“It really forced Jalen to come out of his shell and become a leader on the basketball court,” Lott said.

“Jalen was always willing to play Robin to someone’s Batman,” he said. “He deferred.”

But when asked to step up and lead the team, the senior responded.

“When he finally realized that no one could really stop him, I don’t know what triggered it,” Lott said. “It was really huge for us.”

The Lobos charged to a 11-1 league record and did something no Elsie Allen team had done in 16 years - brought home a league title.

“I’ve been there eight years; we have never had something that is ours,” Lott said. “They can look up there and say, ‘You know what? We earned that.’

“Those guys, win or lose, they stood by each other. That, to me, is what I feel like my job was to do, get those guys to stay with each other. We faced a ton of adversity every year.”

Some players more than others. But Busby knows he has someone to lean on, the coach who trusted him to drive the football team and to take over the basketball squad, leading them to arguably the greatest season in Elsie Allen’s history.

“He’s the kind of guy who would do anything for you, pick you up if you have family problems,” Busby said of Lott. “He’s like a father. He’s helped me with a lot of things.”

Both men call each other and their team “family.” Even after the season ended, both posted pictures on social media remembering the season, honoring their work, appreciating the team.

“He never quits on us,” Busby said of Lott. “He never puts us down. He always encourages us, no matter what the outcome is.”

The outcome is now hanging in the Elsie Allen gym: a banner that READS “SCL League Champions.”

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield.