Despite a Losing Record, Loyola Team Is a Winner

Cordie Williams, a sixth-grader at Culver City Middle School, was waiting patiently by the front gate for her visitors.

“Real basketball players are coming to see us today,” she said. “They’re going to talk to us about basketball and school and things like that. Real basketball players. I want to be one.”

Someone asked, have you seen any of these women play before?

Cordie Williams held her mouth and shrieked.

“They’re girls?”

Sometimes you can find biggest smiles in the strangest places.

The Loyola Marymount women’s basketball team knows that now.

They know many things now: about children who need a hug like it was a blanket, about privileged young women who have blankets to spare.

And to think, they learned it all by losing.

It started in December, while the young Lions were dropping their first 10 games of the season. Three times they scored less than 50 points. Three times they were beaten by 20 or more.

Julie Wilhoit, their charismatic second-year coach from Indiana, looked at the long faces and broken clipboards and made a decision.

What their win-loss record needed was a little context.

Wilhoit picked up the phone, called a homeless shelter in nearby Venice Beach, asked if they needed the help of a group of somewhat pampered college athletes.

It would be our pleasure, they said.

No, she said, it would be ours.

And the Loyola Marymount women hit the streets.

Finger painting with homeless children. Basketball clinics for the neighborhood. Speeches to middle school classes such as the one in Culver City.

They practice in the morning, attend classes during the day, reach into the community before dinner.

And when they don’t go out, the community comes to them.

Attendance has doubled in two years under Wilhoit, mostly because the neighborhood wants to see what these girls do when they are not helping them.

OK, so the Lions are still lucky to draw 500 fans, and some of those are Wilhoit-arranged freebies for those who can’t afford it.

From the ruins of a season has emerged a rare bond between an expensive private school and the sometimes rough waters that surround it.

Elite women athletes have learned that they can offer more to their world than their ability to hoist a jumper.

After Saturday night’s loss to San Francisco in the regular-season finale, the Lions are 5-21. The most accomplished 5-21 team in the nation.

“I have seen things I’ve never seen before,” said freshman guard Lynn Brown, recruited from a tiny town in Washington. “Homeless kids who just want somebody to talk to. I never knew I could affect so many by just being there.”

Erin Caviezel, a junior from another rural Washington town, was stunned the first time they visited a local school.

“I saw security guards and thought, ‘Did something happen?’ ” she said. “Then somebody told me they are there all the time. I couldn’t believe it.”

Other lessons have been more direct.

Winning isn’t everything. Food and shelter are much more important.

You are a basketball player for two hours a day. You will be a woman with a social responsibility forever.

“We will turn this around; I will not accept losing,” Wilhoit said. “But I will also not accept a situation where the girls are not learning from it.

“I want to get them away from their nice campus, their nice scholarship, realize who they are as people.”

Wilhoit, co-founder of Sneaker Sisters--a nonprofit service group that works with the team--said the response will make it impossible to stop, even when they are winning again.

“People say what we do is awesome and I say, wait a minute,” she said. “We are doing this for ourselves.”

They are also learning about humility. Anyone can do a public appearance after a national championship. Try it when you are an anonymous team with a horrible record.

At their recent Culver City middle school appearance, there were 15 children in the after-school class. Four of them left during the presentation.

Wilhoit and four of her players continued talking anyway, revealing their fears and their goals with the charm of those who are unpolished but inspired.

Amber Gravely, a freshman from Pasadena, spoke of the pain of sitting out the season because of knee surgery.

The next night, Friday, when the Lions played the University of San Diego, the game began with neighborhood children singing the national anthem. After the Lions had won, many of the children came down to the floor chanting the players’ numbers.

“Like we were the Lakers,” said Wilhoit, laughing.

Context: Imagine a coach actually teaching it. Imagine graduating from a Division I basketball program having learned it.

The Loyola Marymount women’s basketball team, 5-21 with a winning streak three months long.