Terry Donahue’s legacy lives on with the California Showcase for overlooked recruits

A easy white card, coated in elegant handwriting, laid on Terry Donahue’s desk. His spouse Andrea discovered it after he died of most cancers in July, abandoning a loving household and a soccer legacy because the winningest coach in UCLA historical past.

She tucked it right into a shiny black body to guard as a result of it represented all the things her husband stood for.

“Alternative is a treasured present,” Donahue had written. “How typically we give it to others, and the way we reply when it’s given to us, can outline our lives.”

Months later, the Donahue household is dedicated to preserving one other reminiscence of the UCLA legend: the California Showcase, a one-day combine-like occasion initially based by Donahue and the {National} Soccer Basis in 2014. The occasion hosts tons of of graduating highschool seniors and junior school athletes to work out in entrance of NCAA Division II, III and NAIA coaches and employees.

The cardboard present in Terry Donahue’s desk that his spouse, Andrea, put in a body after the UCLA soccer teaching legend’s loss of life in July.

(Luca Evans / For The Occasions)

The occasion is being held Feb. 12 on the Orange County Nice Park in Irvine. Greater than 1,000 attendants have secured scholarships since its inception. It’s Donahue’s biggest accomplishment, his household mentioned — a manifestation of his perception within the energy of alternative.

“We now have to pay it ahead,” daughter Nicole mentioned. “Why would you not?”

Dan O’Shea, who coaches Donahue’s grandson Luke Ianni at Corona Del Mar, mentioned the showcase takes on an added significance this 12 months. School roster spots have tightened due to the same old incoming freshman class in addition to gamers who redshirted or are benefiting from the NCAA’s supply of an additional season of eligibility due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I don’t know if there’s a extra vital time, frankly, within the panorama of faculty and highschool athletes within the recruiting course of,” O’Shea mentioned. “The variety of spots has been compressed past perception.”

Registration for this 12 months’s occasion has been barely decrease than previously after final 12 months’s occasion was canceled due to COVID, mentioned Donahue’s brother Pat, who has been primarily answerable for the enterprise facet since its founding. Reclaiming consideration for the occasion has been a household affair: daughters Nicole, Michelle and Jennifer are all pitching in by calling coach after coach, whereas Pat has continued outreach for participation and upkeeping sponsorship.

“It’s protecting his spirit alive,” Andrea mentioned of the occasion. “It’s my connection to him.”

Her voice wavered, eyes shimmering. She was married to Donahue for 52 years.

“It’s him,” she repeated.

A 6-foot, 197-pound nostril deal with, Donahue walked on at San Jose State, then Los Angeles Valley School, and eventually UCLA. The household says it sees Donahue in each participant who receives a kind of envelopes — only a child grinding for a shot.

“The showcase embodies one of the best components of my dad, or the components that made him so profitable,” Jennifer mentioned. “It’s giving a chance to the underdog.”

Pat jokes he fired Andrea on her first day working the occasion, bodily selecting her up and eradicating her from mingling as a result of she was attempting to welcome each single participant who attended.

However she at all times caught round. Andrea’s favourite half is the occasion’s finale — when gamers who’d slipped previous the attention of Division I colleges would swarm into a big tent that housed a quasi-college truthful of potential recruiters. These chosen for a scholarship, which the Donahues estimate is about one in three attendees, obtain a crisp envelope, the white manila an indication of a promising future.

Chasen Gempler was a backup quarterback graduating from Vista Murrieta on the time of the inaugural California Showcase in 2014. Yearly, the occasion mobilizes 100 applications from throughout the nation. Gempler mentioned he spoke to each single certainly one of them.

Now a coach at Shadow Mountain Excessive in Arizona, he says he owes his profession to the occasion.

“I want I might inform Terry to his face, or I wanted I might have reached out earlier to him, that I used to be eternally grateful to him for what he did and what he set forth for that camp,” Gempler mentioned.

After three Rose Bowl wins with UCLA, Donahue retired in 1995, was in broadcasting for a short while and went on to function basic supervisor of the San Francisco 49ers for 4 seasons after being the group’s director of participant personnel, starting in 1999. However his real love was at all times teaching and dealing with youthful gamers, and within the years following his retirement, he’d misplaced a way of objective, his household mentioned.

“It was like one thing died in him,” Jennifer mentioned.

Watching the younger expertise at every showcase, Pat mentioned he would see the years peel off his brother’s face. The wrinkles smoothed as he identified athletes to coaches, Benjamin Button-ing into the identical beaming presence that captained the Bruins by means of shrewd recruiting.

Once they have been in school, Terry and Andrea met on a blind date. He tried to kiss her. She turned him down at first, she mentioned with amusing. She grew with him, again when he took a job on the College of Kansas out of faculty, watching him shovel snow and consuming off coaching tables.

The California Showcase helped keep that very same Terry Donahue within the last years of his life. The best way he was on the finish, Andrea mentioned, was the best way he was originally.

❤️ Support Independent Journalism

Your contribution keeps our reporting free, fearless, and accessible to everyone.

Secure via Razorpay • 12 monthly payments • Cancel anytime before next cycle