HOPE AMID THE ASHES
Their lives turned upside down by the North Bay fires, teen athletes take to substitute fields and stand-in facilities to regain a sense of normalcy
“It gives them a sense of safety. It’s really important to have the community, that they have a place to go that is familiar and where there is support.”
— Susanne Babbel, a San Francisco psychologist specializing in trauma and depression
SANTA ROSA » Nikko Kitchen wants nothing more than to help Cardinal Newman High march through the North Coast Section football playoffs this fall. Anything to distract the teen from the memories of October wildfires that torched his split-level home in the Coffey Park neighborhood.
A month after one of California’s worst fires scorched this vineyard-covered city, a sense of recovery is unfolding on the playing fields where hundreds of kids like Kitchen have found a sanctuary from the most devastating experience of their young lives.
“When I step onto the field, everything from the outside world doesn’t matter,” said Kitchen, a senior wide receiver.
All that mattered in the early morning hours of Oct. 9 was escaping an inferno that leveled about 1,000 homes in a once-leafy neighborhood that has become a graveyard of debris.
Kitchen, 17, drove behind his father’s car out of their cul-de-sac when his dad suddenly stopped at the corner. Brian Kitchen just had to return to his beloved home one more time. Then he noticed movement amid the thick ash and smoke as flames engulfed the subdivision.
Riz Gross, who was born without legs, crawled on the molten-hot pavement because her wheelchairs already had burned. Her father, Rod Gross, tried shielding her from raining embers as propane tanks exploded around them.
Kitchen, 48, got rid of whatever he had stuffed into the front seat of his car to make room for the neighbors. Then he and Nikko helped them into the car with the woman lying on Brian’s lap.
“If he had gone a little faster, he would
have missed us,” Riz said.
The Kitchens took the neighbors to an emergency center. Gross, 26, was transferred to a San Francisco hospital to treat major burns on the left side of her body. She is recovering at her grandmother's Santa Rosa home, ready to resume her acting career as soon as she can.
Nothing’s routine
A bright Hunter's Moon appeared above a football stadium in Forestville recently where Kitchen could put aside the life-and-death drama while catching crisp passes from quarterback Beau Barrington.
Paul Cronin, who for 15 years has led the vaunted Cardinals football program, barked orders from the center of a field El Molino High is sharing with Cardinal Newman because the Catholic school suffered major fire damage 15 miles away.
For a moment, it almost seemed like an ordinary autumn evening. But nothing is routine since a conflagration gutted Santa Rosa as part of the worst series of wildfires in state history. Northern California blazes claimed at least 43 lives and destroyed 8,900 homes and other buildings while forcing about 20,000 residents to evacuate.
The restorative powers of sports have been well chronicled for those who have suffered a collective tragedy. The Astros' World Series victory this fall lifted spirits of floodsoaked Houstonians just as the New Orleans Saints washed the sorrow away four years after Hurricane Katrina.
Without a professional team to rally behind, Santa Rosa citizens have wrapped their emotions in youth sports in search of respite from a fiery hell. Even as some of the playing fields were singed, Santa Rosa sports teams from youth to high schools have provided an outlet for kids to heal.
“It gives them a sense of safety,” said Susanne Babbel, a San Francisco psychologist specializing in trauma and depression. “It's really important to have the community, that they have a place to go that is familiar and where there is support.”
Babbel said playing sports can reduce the chance of long-term posttraumatic stress disorder. “One of the things trauma does is it makes you feel powerless and out of control,” she said. “In sports, you don't feel so powerless because you're doing something.”
It has made the Santa Rosa United Soccer Club almost whole again after 50 family members lost homes, including 12-yearold defender Emi Watanabe. Her first time back on the field, “I had a huge grin on my face,” she said. “My mind was on anything but the fire.”
The Rincon Valley Middle School student fled her parents' Mark West Estates home on crutches a day after straining a knee in a game. The girl didn't have time to grab shoes.
The soccer club can't use its fields across the street from Cardinal Newman's campus because of fire damage. The kids are sharing city-run facilities and also practicing in Petaluma.
Opposing teams from Livermore and San Jose have greeted United with gifts and love at weekend tournaments since the fire.
“People will give money to the homeless, but when I am part of it, I can see how people come together as a community,” Emi Watanabe said.
A similar scenario has unfolded in Santa Rosa's running community where Greg Fogg, Maria Carrillo High's cross-country coach, created a network to help victims.
Almost 30 runners and coaches from Santa Rosa high schools lost homes.
Never mind Fogg had lost his own house of 23 years and his office at Keysight Technologies, which was partially destroyed. The coach felt immune from personal losses because he had suffered worse in 2006 when his son Garrett died of meningitis at age 15.
The coach wanted to get his runners back on the trails as soon as the choking smoke cleared.
“Depriving them of this is like depriving them of food and air,” Fogg said. “The worst thing you could do to runners is coup them up.”
Fogg isn't sure how the Pumas will respond after training was disrupted during the heart of the season. A group of his runners trained in Truckee while others worked out at Bodega Bay.
The Carrillo boys are ranked third in the state's Division 3, the girls fifth. The boys, in particular, have talked about winning a state title Nov. 25 at the CIF championships in Fresno as a testament to their resolve.
Fogg told the runners, “I know a good way to end this.”
They said, “Oh yeah, we know how this ends.”
On the field
Cardinal Newman football players know how they'd like to finish the season — with a state Division 3 trophy.
Ninety Cardinal Newman students lost homes, including five on the varsity football team. Lost amid the destruction: 19 classrooms, the library, main office, counseling offices, and its baseball and soccer fields.
Principal Graham Rutherford hopes they can return to the sprawling campus early next year, but he doesn't know when it might happen. Newman has created four satellite locations where its 620 students have continued lessons.
Monica Mertle's sociology of sports class spends Friday mornings at Windsor Bowl, where many of the football players were the day before their North Bay League title game against rival Rancho Cotate.
Mertle, who doubles as girls' basketball coach, wants the students to forget the calamity for a moment and just be kids.
Senior wide receiver Kyle Carinalli and Barrington, the quarterback, needed the break after losing their homes. They also were among the students whose Scholastic Aptitude Tests were destroyed because they had taken them a day before the fires struck. They retook the college entrance exams Saturday, then went out and won the league crown with a 37-24 victory.
Weeks after the fire, Cronin, the school's coach, asked Santa Rosa residents what he could do to help. Almost everyone said just keep winning.
The second-seeded Cardinals hope to do it again this weekend in the North Coast Section quarterfinals after Barrington threw two long touchdown passes to Carinalli in a 49-7 victory over Kennedy-Fremont in the first round Friday night.
“We have a huge chance here to bring this community together,” Carinalli said. “No one else has that chance, and because of this fire, we do. It's our chance now.”