Barber: Cardinal Newman water polo back in the pool
SACRAMENTO - Sunday they would return to the bad air, the uncertainty and the weariness, and the strange flip sides of anxiety and boredom. But on Saturday they jumped in the pool.
The Cardinal Newman boys' varsity and junior varsity water polo teams left behind the fires that have ravaged the hills of Wine Country all week, playing a tournament at Kennedy High School here and River City High School in West Sacramento. It didn't erase the nightmares of the flames and smoke, but the competition provided something underappreciated in times of disaster: normalcy.
“What grounds kids are their home and their school, and that's their community,” said Cathleen Stafford, mother of sophomore player Bennett Stafford. “I mean, Bennett, by Day 2 or 3, he's like, ‘I never thought I would say this, but I want to go back to school.'?”
The Staffords had lost both home and school. Their house in Fountaingrove went up in flames in the wee hours of Monday morning.
As for their school? Every student in Sonoma County has been affected by the fires to some degree, but Cardinal Newman was one of only a handful directly in the path of the Tubbs fire. Half of the campus is leveled.
Principal Graham Rutherford doesn't know when kids will be allowed back, but figures the time away will be measured in weeks. In the interim, his students are likely to take classes online and/or use portable classrooms set up on other campuses.
Cardinal Newman's athletic facilities were mostly spared from the carnage. The football/soccer stadium, gym and tennis courts are all usable. Yet none of the sports teams has been able to practice before this weekend.
That included the boys' water polo squad. The team's primary practice pool is at the Finley Community Center, which has been turned into an evacuation center. The Cardinals also use the pool at Santa Rosa JC two mornings a week, but the air had been too foul for outdoor swimming.
The team was scheduled to play in the Dixon Round Robin on Saturday, but the week had been chaotic. Several families had been evacuated from their homes. The Staffords lost theirs, as did the family of a junior varsity player.
Cathleen Stafford, the team mother, had been up later than usual Sunday night. She was drafting an email to the team. It was a long one, because there were many items to discuss - Senior Night, a bake sale, a JV tournament, etc. Her husband, Chris Stafford, who had helped found the first Cardinal Newman water polo team when he was a senior there, nagged her to get to bed.
Cathleen sent her note at 11:01 p.m., just before the power went out. She walked to the family's big barrel-window bank, which was rattling in the powerful winds, and saw a deep orange glow behind Riebli Ridge. The Staffords proceeded to wake up neighbors and warn them of the fire that started to spread before their eyes.
“I think sending out that email saved our life,” Cathleen said.
The family watched in disbelief as the flames jumped the ridge and began creeping down the hillside. Cathleen left about 1:30 a.m. to get her mom, who was being evacuated in Oakmont. Chris and Bennett took off around 2:30 a.m. One of the last things Bennett grabbed was the Brian Ohleyer Memorial Cup that the Olympic Club had awarded his older brother Jack when he played at Cardinal Newman. (Jack Stafford is at UC Davis now, and the parents got to see him play water polo on Saturday, too.)
Using data their next-door neighbor received from his home security system, the Staffords figure their house was destroyed about 3:45 a.m.
They vacated to a hotel in Petaluma, and moved to a rental house in Bodega on Friday.
With stories like these, and with the boys not having touched a pool in more than a week, it would have been reasonable to forfeit Saturday's tournament. But coach Matt McDowell began getting texts from players, “Are we doing this?” “Can we play?”
The Staffords urged Cardinal Newman athletic director Jerry Bonfigli to give his blessing. He did, and McDowell was supportive. Eventually, 19 of 21 varsity and JV players signed on.
Cardinal Newman had invited all of its families to a Mass at St. Rose School on Tuesday. Beyond that, many of the students hadn't had much contact with one another. It was especially disorienting for the water polo boys, who spend as many as seven practice sessions together in the pool each week, and who have experienced a renaissance in 2017. The Cardinals were 4-17 in the Marin County Athletic League last year, McDowell's first as coach. This year they moved to the North Bay League, and carried a 13-4 record into the weekend.
With school and outdoor activities taken from them, the kids were moping.
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