Nomadic Tigers’ long, trying journey about to end

    The journey for the vagabond Tigers is nearing its end.
    For a handful of senior basketball players at Holy Cross, recounting their multiple practice and playing sites over the last several years will bring hours of entertainment in the decades to come.
    In the years following Hurricane Katrina and the relocation of their high school, the seven nomadic Tigers – Eugene Lawrence, Derrin James, Chris Kennie, Wesley Pinera, Trey Hooper, Ramil Hinton and Joel Pichon – held practices at more than 20 different gymnasiums, two parking lots and a tent for three years until their state-of-the-art palatial student center was completed in 2010.
    Now their days as athletes for the Navy and Old Gold are numbered as they prepare to enter the state Class 4A playoffs for the third straight year.
    And the man who nurtured them through the ordeal is head coach Juan Lumas, who lost his job and school, St. Bernard High, to the winds and flooding caused by the 2005 storm.
    St. Bernard High will likely never reopen, but Holy Cross, like most schools in the archdiocese, was not ready to give up its history and mission as an institution. Holy Cross held classes for students who could attend at The Dunham School in Baton Rouge and then at Cabrini High before returning to its Dauphine Street campus in portable buildings.
    Then the school board bought the heavily damaged St. Frances Cabrini Church and School and the adjacent Redeemer-Seton High School in Gentilly. Holy Cross set up classes in portables on the site while the new school was being built.
    As the season approached three years ago, the general student population may have been settled, but the basketball team had no gym.
    “It was beg, borrow and steal for us,” Lumas said as he attempted to recite the team’s numerous practice sites. “We worked out at Cabrini, Mount Carmel, Tulane, UNO, Little Farms and Muss Bertolino playgrounds, Chalmette, Warren Easton, Frichter Gym (in Arabi) and at Marian Central. Coach (Greg) Battistella had an electrician put in electricity so we could have lights.”
    The team also practiced in the school parking lot and in a temporary tent the school used as its athletic and physical education facility.
    The team played its home games mostly at Mount Carmel but occasionally used the gyms at Country Day, Archbishop Chapelle and St. Augustine when they were available. They used Mount Carmel and Brother Martin arenas for home playoff games.
    What’s amazing is the record the “senior vagabonds” amassed in those three years:
After enduring a 10-22 season as freshmen, the Tigers went 23-10 with a regional playoff berth as sophomores and advanced to the state semifinals last season with a 25-8 record. The seniors enter this year’s postseason with a 20-9 record.
    The early practices were trying.
    “Once we were able to get Mount Carmel to practice from 6-8 p.m., I kept the players in study hall from 2:30-5:30,” Lumas said. “I’d tell them to bring a sandwich.”
No one thought of bailing
    But throughout the ordeal not one player said he  thought of transferring to another school at which he would have been eligible to compete when Holy Cross’ immediate future was in limbo in 2005.
    “I sold them on the opportunity to play early as freshmen and on the vision of what we thought our gymnasium would be,” Lumas said.
    “When the guys stepped into the new gym for the first time, the first thing they did was to kiss the floor. They stayed around a long time. They just didn’t want to go home that day.”
    It wasn’t just the team that had to endure hardships. On Jan. 6, while traveling to Tulane’s Fogleman Arena to meet Jesuit, Lumas received news that his grandmother died.
    “I had to get off the bus to identify the body,” he said. “My mother and dad were crying. Then I got back to the team 45 minutes before the game started, and, believe me, it was a difficult night.”
    How far the Tigers advance this year will be known in the weeks to come. But regardless of the outcome, the seniors have a lot to be proud of.
    “They are a testament to what Holy Cross is all about. They stuck together because they love their school,” Lumas said. “I consider them role models for the rest of the student body.
    “I’m proud of the whole cast of Holy Cross players. What they achieved goes with the mantra of the school: ‘We build men from boys.’”