Looking Back

By Brandon HENSLEY

One night several years ago, after another victory for his Crescenta Valley High boys’ basketball team, I finished interviewing Coach Shawn Zargarian. By this time as a reporter I had developed a comfortable relationship with him, unafraid to ask questions that might take more than the customary two-minute where’s-my-sound-bite-so-I can-leave interview sports reporters usually prefer. If my style bothered him he didn’t show it and, after our handshake outside the Falcons’ locker room, he turned to leave with a satisfied smile. But after several steps near the double doors, he stopped, turned back and slowly said, “You know … you’re a really good writer.”

That was unexpected. I try to write my stories as if every person in the world will read them with the expectation that very few actually will. I was surprised Coach Z ever took time out of his teaching, coaching and family duties to read my stuff, yet I appreciated it immensely.

As our paper celebrates 10 years this week, I was asked to write a perspective on my time as a reporter. I thought of Shawn, especially now, less than two months after his wife Nadin passed away from cancer. Appreciation is the overriding sentiment I have for him and his teams over the years. Since I started this job, my favorite place to be is in a packed CV gym on a Friday night against a league rival or at a big playoff game, replete with a raucous student section and, of course, Nadin seated behind the Falcons’ bench trying to corral their two sons Vaughn and Christian running around with basketballs.

With the gym’s giant walls insulating us from chilly nights, Z’s teams always seem to bring the heat, especially last season, which was the most successful in the program’s history: a CIF Division II-A semifinal appearance and a regional runner-up position in the state championships.

Of course, the gym hasn’t been the only place to be when it comes to sports hotspots over the past decade. Fans will never forget the 2014 football season when a hungry Falcons team, which went 8-2 the season prior but was denied a playoff spot, dominated its opponents to bring home a CIF title and its first ever undefeated season. Watching quarterback Brian Gadsby operate that offense was something special. (What stood out most was just how affable and unassuming Brian was. He’s a champion on and off the field, and if I could rank my favorite athletes to interact with, he’d be No. 1.)

I wasn’t an expert in water polo – okay, I’m still not – but I certainly learned a good amount from the great 2013 CV girls’ team that won its first ever CIF championship. It was a wet and wild experience to cover players like Elissa Arnold, Ashley Taylor and a young energetic coach in Brent Danna, who in celebration somersaulted into the water of Irvine’s Wollett Aquatics Center.

Every season after the final buzzer players leave and eventually some coaches like Danna do as well. Shawn though has been a Falcon since he suited up for John Goffredo in the 1990s, and boy has he made his presence felt all these years later.

Whether he’s in the classroom or on a basketball court, his trademark booming voice and intense nature never fail to make an impact. And yet, those emotional displays and broad shoulders belie his quieter, personable nature when you get him in private. Even after a tough loss, he’s not so scary to interview and, if you talk to anyone close to him, it’s clear his effect on the community runs deeper than the navy blue stitched on every Falcon jersey.

All of this will make it easy to rally around him this season, much like the community did for Goffredo when his wife Kathy passed away 26 years ago (that unfortunate connection is also not lost me).

That night outside the locker room, after Shawn turned around and complimented me, he finally did push open those doors to meet up with friends, colleagues and most importantly, his wife. That can’t happen anymore and there’s nothing I can write in this space to make it better. All I can do is say thank you to Coach Z for a decade of memories following him and his players, and to CV Weekly for giving me the opportunity to cover those teams and for allowing me to write these thoughts.

  Brandon Hensley