Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

At struggling Chaparral, respected coach hopes district sees ‘family’ amid restructuring

Todd Faranda

Steve Marcus

Todd Faranda, baseball coach at Chaparral High School, gives instructions to pitcher Rustin Ostrow, a sophomore, at the Chaparral baseball field Wednesday, March 16, 2011.

Todd Faranda

Todd Faranda, baseball coach at Chaparral High School, gives instructions to pitcher Rustin Ostrow, a sophomore, at the Chaparral baseball field Wednesday, March 16, 2011. Launch slideshow »

Walking to the baseball field at Chaparral High School, one easily notices two shades of orange on the brick wall at the front of the stadium.

One shade is from the original paint job. The other, a lighter color, covers the graffiti.

Everything about the complex screams for a makeover — the clubhouse is an old storage closet that is partially used for equipment, the fencing behind the backstop is worn out, and there is dead and wild grass in the outfield.

It’s early morning last Saturday when Cowboys coach Todd Faranda arrives four hours before his team’s home opener. Faranda meticulously works on manicuring the field’s grass and infield dirt, preparing to welcome back members of the school’s 1991 team to be honored on the 20th anniversary of their championship.

Faranda, in his fourth year as head coach, coordinated the effort early in the winter with hopes that his team — a group of seasonal and inexperienced players from diverse backgrounds ­— could better understand the program’s past winning ways.

The school was one of the Las Vegas Valley’s top athletic and academic institutions until the mid-1990s, when the neighborhood declined. Athletically, it struggles to compete in virtually every sport, often on the wrong end of lopsided scores and frequently struggling to find bodies to fill out varsity rosters. It appears to be much worse academically.

The Clark County School District recently announced it would reorganize the school’s staff under the guidelines of a federal grant aimed at improving low-performing schools. Under grant rules, a maximum of 50 percent of the teachers can be hired back. Employees who are not hired back can apply for other district vacancies.

For coaches such as Faranda, a special-education teacher, not being hired back in the classroom would mean losing the position in athletics. That’s a tough pill for him to swallow.

Later that day, Faranda, 30, addresses his team during practice. But before delivering a word, the fun-loving and often hard-nosed coach breaks down in tears.

“It would be a shame to not really do anything wrong and lose the opportunity of staying,” says Faranda, who started in the program’s junior varsity ranks. “This program has been like my baby. I’ve been at the school eight years. We have good families, good staff and good people.”

Chaparral High School Rally

Students rally outside Chaparral High School on Wednesday, March 9, 2011, in protest of the district's plans to reorganize the school. Launch slideshow »

Chaparral students have been vocal since reorganization plans were announced — Western and Mojave highs, Elizondo and Hancock elementary schools were also included — and several spoke at a School Board meeting to support their teachers. They walked from their campus on Annie Oakley Drive and Sandhill Road nearly two miles to the School District office in protest. The reorganization requires principals who have served three or more years to be removed, meaning Chaparral Principal Kevin McPartlin is leaving.

Faranda instructed his players not to protest, but rather to let their hard work on the field do the speaking. Teachers have been told they could start reapplying April 1.

“He is like a big kid. He is just like us,” said Jordan January, the team’s senior captain and unquestioned leader whose mother is a teacher at the school. “He wants to play this game as much as we do. That’s what we love most about him. He is showing us the right path to go.”

Faranda, who often sports a look similar to his players — baggy shorts and his ball cap pulled over his eyes — often takes batting or infield practice with the players. He loves to compete and takes pride in showing them how to approach the game.

“He tells children what to do, and children grasp it,” senior Steven Colon said. “He doesn’t try to overteach. He tells you the fundamental things you need as a baseball player.”

The players have Faranda’s back because he at one point had theirs. Take Joey Willson for example.

Click to enlarge photo

Todd Faranda, right, baseball coach at Chaparral High School, talks to players before practice at the Chaparral baseball field Wednesday, March 16, 2011.

Willson arrived on the last day of tryouts his freshman year, didn’t have the right equipment and barely knew how to hold the bat. “I didn’t know anything,” he said. “All I knew was how to run and catch the ball. I could barely hit, but didn’t have the proper form. I could only throw the ball 90 feet, and most times it would go 20 feet in the wrong direction.”

Still, Faranda saw something in his attitude and gave him a spot on the junior varsity team. Four years later, he’s a starting outfielder on the varsity team. Several of the program’s athletes aren’t your typical ballplayers — they have Walmart-bought gloves and cleats, and often have never played in a game before joining the team.

That doesn’t bother Faranda. He thrives on educating them in the history and traditions of the sport. During spring break, he’ll take a group of the team’s seniors to California to visit colleges and take in their first major league game.

“You can’t always look at baseball as wins and losses,” Faranda says. “You have to look at it as saving children’s lives and developing them as people. Sometimes for a lot of these children, just being part of something saves them. They’ll never forget this experience.”

Members of the 1991 team clearly feel the same way.

A handful returned for the ceremony last weekend. They shared memories with current players, taking pictures with them before ’91 coach Denny Clarkson threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Sophomore Koby Okuda, one of four Okuda brothers in the program dating from the early 1990s, caught the pitch. Clarkson and Okuda also accompanied Faranda to home plate when he delivered the lineup card.

Map of Chaparral

Chaparral

3850 Annie Oakley Dr., Las Vegas

Ron Sufana, an assistant with the title team, saw how poor some of team’s equipment is and donated a bucket of baseballs. Baseballs in good condition are the norm at powerhouses such as Bishop Gorman or Green Valley, but at Chaparral, they are a luxury. Because of the economics of the area, players often don’t have all the equipment — for instance, the team rotates four bats, whereas most players at better-off schools have their own bats.

“The zone has obviously changed a little bit (over the years), but that doesn’t matter,” said Jeff Morgan, the center fielder on the ’91 team who later became Chaparral’s head coach before leaving education for real estate. “The important thing is that they are out here and competing hard.”

Chaparral may appear rough around the edges, but that’s not the entire picture, the players say. That’s especially the case on the baseball field, where Faranda takes whatever resources are available to create a memorable experience. He said he frequently invests his own money to maintain the field.

“If people would come here and see how Chap really runs and see how hard the children work, they would know the truth,” January said. “The children here, the baseball players, basketball players and cheerleaders, all of us, we are family. This is how people need to see us.”

Faranda simply wants to remain the head of the baseball family.

After all, nothing beats heading to the diamond after school, walking past a few rough patches of grass, and doing what he calls his passion: helping educate a young person through the lessons of baseball.

“I have Chap orange in my blood,” he said. “I don’t want to be bawling my eyes out again to the children. The hard part for me would be losing the boys, losing the field, just losing everything I worked so hard to build.” Then he paused — “Everything I’m trying to rebuild.”

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