Centennial High Alumni Network
"BIG TEN" Apache Sports!!
This group is for all Apaches who participated in Sports (ex: Football, Basketball, Baseball, Track, Tennis, Volleyball, Wrestling, Soccer, G.A.A. Women's Sports)
"BIG TEN" Apache Sports (Photo Gallery)!!
This group is for all Apaches who participated in Sports (ex: Football, Basketball, Baseball, Track, Tennis, Volleyball, Wrestling, Soccer, G.A.A. Women's Sports). Feel free to upload your photos to the Photo Gallery!!
Phoebe Macon
La Verne Lutheran (Calif.) School basketball star Xavier Jones has two men to thank for still being alive: His coach and Steve Jobs.
According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, an iPhone -- a creation of Jobs' Apple Corporation -- helped teach La Verne basketball coach Eric Cooper how to perform CPR when he downloaded a life saving app called "Phone Aid" one night last week.
The very next day, Cooper had to put the skill to the test when Jones collapsed during a team practice. Cooper was able to keep his star pupil alive until paramedics arrived, at which point Jones had begun breathing again.
"When it happened, that was too much of a coincidence for me," Cooper told the Tribune.
It may have seemed like a huge coincidence, but given the holiday season, Cooper's timely intervention seemed almost a guided act of faith. Jones, who was set to play basketball at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point next year, has since been diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart wall that previously killed Loyola Marymount basketball player Hank Gathers during the 1990 college basketball season.
"I'm just thankful and happy to be here," Jones told the Los Angeles Times. "Things could have been a lot worse.
"I'm just happy to be alive."
While Jones hasn't decided on his next course of action -- one group of doctors has already recommended Jones have a defibrillating device implanted that would re-start his heart if it stopped again -- he and his parents said they were sure he would find a way to success.
More importantly, they were just thankful that his coach was able to think so quickly on his feet, and that he had such a timely interest in boning up on his lifesaving skills.
"I can't thank him enough for being there for my son," Xavier Jones' mother, Linda Jones, told the Los Angeles Times.
Dec 3, 2010
Phoebe Macon
Michael Vick paid his debt to society. Now he's trying to pay back his massive debt to creditors.
Despite earning $4.1 million since signing with the Philadelphia Eagles, Vick lives on a shoestring budget set for him by a court-appointed trustee. Most of his salary goes toward paying back creditors Vick owed before entering federal prison. Those creditors, which include banks, former business colleagues and former endorsement partners, were protected because of Vick's 2008 filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
A 112-page, court-approved document serves as Vick's "reorganization plan." It was uncovered by ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson.
Among the facts Munson discovered in the plan:
• Two-thirds of every dollar Vick earns goes to creditors and taxes.
• The rest of the money is strictly controlled. Think of it as an allowance.
• Vick can spend $4,250 per month on rent and utilities and $472 per month on a car. His mother, who was on Vick's payroll during his headier, pre-prison days, can receive $2,500 per month.
• Other obligations Vick owes include mortgages, child support, fees for his agent (who gets $800,000 through 2015) and for his tax lawyers (who will eventually receive a total of $2.6 million). The allowance does allow for Vick to pay $1,355 per month for private school for the two children he has with his fiancee, Kijafa Frink. (Munson calls it a "rare bit of extravagance.")
• His creditors stand to receive $12 million through 2015, provided Vick continues to receive a multi-million dollar salary.
Munson also writes that before Vick filed for bankruptcy, he frantically gave away $5 million to family and friends so that creditors couldn't get to it. The court-appointed trustee is trying to recover that money, which was given to Vick's friends, family and the mothers of Vick's children. This is being done via a lawsuit, meaning that the man in charge of Michael Vick's money is also suing Michael Vick's family. (Though Munson says a judge will likely rule in the trustee's favor, recovering the money will be a much more difficult matter.)
There have been countless reports about Vick's financial woes since he first got into legal trouble for running an illegal dogfighting ring, but Munson's story is the clearest picture yet of what Vick still has to go through. To watch a broadcast of Vick's games and hear announcers rave about his recovery, you'd think everything was behind him. This document says otherwise.
The more money Vick makes, the more money goes to creditors. A salary under $2.5 million would force Vick to pay 25 percent. That percentage jumps to 40 if Vick signs a deal worth $10 million or more per season.
This path to financial redemption follows the same road that led to Vick's personal reclamation. In both, he made stupid mistakes and then compounded them by being dishonest once authorities found out. After serving his time, though, he's dedicated himself to making up for his past misdeeds. It's not heroic, per se, but it's admirable. He could have run away like he does so often on the field. Instead, he appears to be trying to make it right.
It's ironic. Vick's success on the football field is what caused him to get in trouble in the first place. That same success is now helping him get out of it.
Dec 4, 2010
Phoebe Macon
(Written By Cameron Smith)
It's the season for giving, when heartwarming stories of personal and community sacrifice get the most attention. Yet one of those stories, focusing on a high school star who truly needs the help, has been more than a year in the making.
In early October 2009, 14-year-old Jared Williams was injured in a freak accident where another player's helmet hit him in the neck as he went in for a tackle. The Pinkston (Texas) High football player went down and had to be stretchered off the field, discovering only hours later that the accident had left him largely paralyzed.
The year since has been a long and arduous one for the teenager, who now gets around in a motorized wheelchair and is cared for by his mother, Arienna Williams. It's a difficult task, with the single parent trying to care for her son and provide funds to keep them housed and fed.
Yet that just got a bit easier, just in time for the holidays, with the gift of a new house for the Williamses, with the new dwelling built to be as handicap accessible as possible, unlike their current home.
According to the Dallas Morning News, fundraising for the new home began shortly after Williams was paralyzed last year, when Pinkston High and Dallas ISD started a fundraising campaign called Project 24, named for Williams' number. The campaign was so successful that, with the help of a few private donations, it raised enough money to pay for the Williams' entire new home.
Now the pair is waiting on the final touches to be completed, including a beautification project to help plant different shrubs and flowers around the property, with all landscaping support provided by Dallas ISD athletes.
It's a touching effort from a badly taxed public school system and any number of others who stepped forward when they didn't have to, to help a student who badly needed it. Williams isn't forgetting his own good fortune, either.
When a fellow Dallas-area athlete Diondre Preston, a quarterback for Molina (Texas) High, was paralyzed earlier this season, Williams and his mother were two of the first visitors to the player's hospital room the next morning.
Dec 8, 2010