Benefield: Lower Lake girls soccer team bonding after Clayton fire

Heather Murray had taken the Trojans' uniforms home to wash and sort and put into bags for the season opener.

As the Lower Lake High School girls soccer coach, Murray's duties can sometimes blur into part-time laundress, chauffeur and equipment manager. So it was when Murray and her husband raced into town when the Clayton fire broke out. They needed supplies in case they had to evacuate. But by the time they got back to their home off of Morgan Valley Road, the fire had shifted and Murray was not allowed access to her property.

It burned to the ground. She lost three goats, two cats and two dogs.

“There is nothing,” she said.

The Clayton fire burned nearly 4,000 acres and 300 structures - 180 of which were homes.

Items that won't make it on any official list of things lost were these: the Lower Lake High School girls soccer team uniforms, their goalie gear, players' travel bags, balls, cones and training tools.

Facing nearly unimaginable personal loss, one would forgive Murray if the Trojans' soccer team was not her first priority. But it's become a refuge of sorts - a safe haven from worrying about insurance issues, finding things worth salvaging on the property and helping her three children grieve their loss. Two kids had only recently moved out and her youngest is a sophomore, and soccer player, at Lower Lake High.

“It actually helps because it gives me a routine - I have to be there,” she said of soccer practice.

In those early days after the fire, team mom Ileta Duran reached out to Murray - the girls wanted to see her, she said. Coach was the only one on the team who lost a home and they wanted to check on her. They also wanted to play.

So they set a meeting date in the park because the high school was still off-limits. The girls wore the blue and white of Lower Lake High.

“As soon as they saw her, they just started running toward her,” Duran said. “It was all for Heather. The focus was just to get everyone back together.”

It's a remarkable bond for a team that is extraordinarily young. The Trojans graduated 10 seniors from the squad that went 0-9 in the North Central League I last year.

“These girls admire her a lot,” Duran said. “They ask, ‘Why does she worry about us? She has to worry about her kids, her home.' They are trying to make her proud of them.”

“It was really cute,” Murray said. “It was just to see me, if I was OK.”

Murray says she's OK. While the rest of her life is understandably chaotic, Murray says soccer is giving her a reprieve.

“It's helping me,” she said. “It's the one time of the day when I don't have to think about it.”

The Trojans are getting an assist in their comeback from a Lower Lake alum.

Zeb Becker, a 1992 Lower Lake High graduate and CEO of Rally Factory in Sacramento, put a rush order on a new set of uniforms for the Trojans.

The gear is expected to arrive Wednesday.

“They know how important Lower Lake is to me,” he said.

Becker also donated 200 “Lake County Strong” T-shirts to the Lower Lake booster club to sell.

The past year of fires in Lake County has affected Becker.

He grew up in Hidden Valley and was supposed to attend Middletown High, but too many of his friends were going to Lower Lake, so he opted for that campus.

And his mother taught for years at Cobb Mountain Elementary, a school severely damaged by the Valley fire.

“The whole thing that is going on is tragic,” he said of the series of fires that have badly damaged Lake County.

Despite the replacement uniforms, the girls soccer team is still without. The fire consumed the players' travel bags, the goalie gloves, water bottles and training equipment. Murray, who moved practice to the Konocti Education Center in Clear Lake after the fields at the high school were made off-limits, has been making due with donated balls and a handful of cones.

And the girls soccer team is not alone.

The Lower Lake football team lost tackling sleds. The softball team's storage unit was burned, Murray said, leaving them without a pitching machine, bats and gloves.

“It was a ton of stuff,” Murray said.

But it's Murray who is staring down the barrel of the start of the season. Two scrimmages have already been canceled. A preseason game against Upper Lake is on the calendar for Friday.

That's the good news, she said.

“I think they are ready to start their season,” she said of her players.

Murray, who thought the Clayton fire had shifted away from her home before she drove to town that day for supplies, never had a chance to grab mementos or things that held a special place for her. Sure, she was watching the fire like everyone else, but she thought it had shifted. At least for the time being.

But when she finally was able to return, there was little to sift through.

“You can see a little bit of China plates, a porcelain plate,” she said.

“It's very surreal,” she said.

Soccer has helped. Becker called it sport's ability to mend. Murray believes in it. She's been coaching soccer at a variety of levels for two decades. Each new season - even this one - brings new hope.

“I think we're all doing OK,” she said.