Foothill's Schwartz has risen to top despite some mind-boggling obstacles
| Thursday, Nov 27 2008 01:00 AM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 01:56 PM
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Foothill senior Chris Schwartz makes a habit of leading the race pack, pushing himself to the limit only when necessary.
Foothill's Chris Schwartz, center, with foster parents Robert Gonzales, left, and Martha Gonzales.
Chris Schwartz never used to think about chess while running. But now, when his iPod isn't charged, it's a good way to pass the time while he's chasing the wind: When is the best time to castle? If my opponent clears out his pawns, how can I safely move my rook to his seventh rank?
"Sometimes I visualize different things," Schwartz said. "I also do Sudoku puzzles, and sometimes I find something that I get stuck on. If it bothers me, I'll be thinking about it."
Schwartz, 18, is the Foothill senior who will be heavily favored to win his second consecutive CIF state cross country championship Saturday at Woodward Park in Fresno. He won the Division I race last year, but Foothill has since dropped to Division III, leaving Schwartz with less competition this year.
"There's a hundred good things I could say about him," said Tony Saldana, a Bakersfield High, Foothill and Bakersfield College running standout in the 1960s who has taken to following Schwartz's career. "There's nothing bad I could say about the kid. He's so awesome."
But the most staggering feature about Schwartz's running has nothing to do with races or times. It's the past he had to traverse to get here.
He's been in five foster homes, two group homes and was in and out of mental hospitals until, he said, he was abandoned by his mother at age 11.
"It's not like he's this rich kid that comes from this great family," Foothill coach Arron Rietz said. "Growing up, he had a really hard life."
But these days, that doesn't stop him from leisurely thinking about something as random as chess while he blows by the competition.
"I've kind of gotten over the serious stuff by now," Schwartz said.
There have been miles and miles of serious stuff.
Schwartz doesn't remember everything about his childhood, but he knows that he grew up in Bakersfield with his mom, Tina Lerma. A man she was living with abused Schwartz regularly, he said, so the boy ran away from home.
"I couldn't take it anymore, so I kept running away," Schwartz said. "And no one could figure out why, because I wouldn't tell anybody."
He eventually was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted into a series of mental hospitals in the Los Angeles area.
The final time Schwartz visited a hospital was at age 11. It was only for a month, but when it was time for him to be picked up, Schwartz said, his mom didn't answer the phone. Neither did his grandmother.
Social workers took custody of Schwartz when he was released, telling him that she had gone to Mexico to meet up with the same man who had abused her son.
"All I knew was that my mom left me," Schwartz said. "I was angry."
Attempts to reach Lerma were unsuccessful.
Schwartz was placed in a group home in Bakersfield until foster parents could be found. When they were, Schwartz, hurt and confused, usually wore out his welcome.
"I got in trouble a couple times at school because I was angry, and then someone would piss me off even more," Schwartz said.
It was during one of his stays in a foster home that Schwartz said he finally started to right his ways.
The family that took him in, he said, treated him like their own. He was given gifts at Christmas, taken out to eat, even taken to therapy as an attempt at permanent life improvement.
But a true family was something Schwartz had never had before, and, still angry and confused, he rebelled against it, running away several times, whether it be to a friend's house or to nowhere in particular.
"They loved me like their own child, and I treated them like crap," Schwartz said. "... I felt miserable. I wanted to go back to my mom. I wanted some kind of guidance, but I was being a knucklehead."
Finally, the foster family decided it could no longer keep him, and so it called social services -- which, by protocol, would come take Schwartz back to a group home within a week.
But the running away had done some good. It was then that Schwartz realized he could run and do it for a long time without tiring. He started using that to his advantage on the Edison Middle School playground, outlasting everyone else during pick-up football or basketball games at lunch.
"The coach saw me, a tall, white guy running, playing football with the other kids but not getting tired," Schwartz said.
And so, at long last, Schwartz had a home he looked forward to. Every day after school, he'd practice with the middle school track team. That gave him incentive to try sports in high school.
"When I was done running, I felt better," Schwartz said. "I felt a little relieved, not so stressed out."
Then destiny struck. The next fall, after missing the sign-up deadline for football, Schwartz decided to try cross country.
"Never stopped running since," he said.
A few weeks later, he won his first meet, a frosh-soph race at Lake Ming that landed his photo in The Californian .
"I like the way he's improving himself," said Saldana, the avid Schwartz follower. "Maybe he came from a family that couldn't make it, and now he (showed) he can make it on his own."
Schwartz placed 132nd at the state meet as a sophomore, then really started to improve when he learned, with some guidance from coaches, how to pace himself.
Armed with that newfound knowledge -- pacing is something he's learning to this day -- Schwartz dominated the cross country circuit as a junior. He swept Central Section races and won the Division I state cross country title in 15:13 with a sprint at the finish. He then won the Central Section and placed second in the state at the 3,200 meters during track and field season.
"He went from people not knowing who he was to being one of the best runners in the country," Rietz said. "We try not to take it for granted ... I probably honestly could coach for 30 more years and not have a runner as good as him."
This year, he's kept things going. Schwartz hasn't lost a race all season except for the prestigious Mt. SAC Invitational, where he ran a personal-best 14:46 but took second to Trevor Dunbar of Kodiak (Alaska) by five seconds. His normal race habit is to run out in front of the pack, but without pushing himself to the limit unless he has to.
"The thing about Chris is that he's willing to put himself through more pain than anybody else," said Ridgeview cross country coach Adam Setser, a former Foothill runner himself.
After he goes for another state title Saturday -- Foothill has moved down to Division III in all sports -- Schwartz will continue his running career at the Foot Locker National Cross Country Championships Dec. 13 in San Diego, where Schwartz placed 37th last year and is shooting for a top-5 finish this time.
And as Schwartz's running prowess has increased, so has his comfort level at home. Toward the end of his sophomore year, a friend on the cross country team who was living with the Gonzales family told them about Schwartz -- his background, his problems, his running. They researched before they made their newest addition.
"I remember Chris said he wanted to get dreadlocks," said Martha Gonzales, Schwartz's foster mother. "I said, 'You know that if you live at my house, you may not have dreadlocks. You need a haircut.' And I took him to get one.
"I asked him some things, and I wanted him to tell me the truth, and he did. I already knew, so I knew he wasn't lying. And as long as you tell the truth, then it's all up front."
When the Gonzales family decided to take Schwartz in, he became the 16th foster child -- and the last one, the parents say -- in 20 years at what foster father Robert Gonzales jokingly calls Gonzales University.
"I always tell these kids, as long as they stay in sports, they're going to stay out of trouble," Martha Gonzales said. "When they're busy, they won't have time to be in trouble."
For his part, Schwartz said he's more comfortable now than he ever has been. That took some time, both sides say, but it was well worth it.
"We've had a couple of hiccups, but he's learned from each one," Robert Gonzales said. "... Especially in the last year and a half, he's really kicked it up a notch."
Or, like Martha puts it: "He lost his childhood. Right now, he's still a child. But eventually, he'll catch up."
You can see that maturation in the way Schwartz plays with the Gonzales' grandchildren, talks with ease to his foster parents and discusses his past without a hint of remorse.
"When I started talking to my therapist, he knew right off the bat I never had schizophrenia," said Schwartz, who still attends regular therapy sessions and still has occasional contact with his birth mother. "It was something completely different. I was being hard-headed because I didn't want to tell the real reason why I was acting up and trying to get attention. I was being abused. I was abused."
Schwartz is now in his fifth foster home (along with two group homes) in seven years. But he'll almost certainly stay put until next summer, when he plans to go to college.
"I'm the happiest now that I've been in a while," Schwartz said. "Since I was with my mom."
Schwartz has shaken off his past and accumulated enough athletic and academic achievements to peak the interest of Division I schools. Schwartz said he'd like to sign on for a running scholarship with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the spring.
"Hopefully, he's an inspiration to other kids," Rietz said. "The end of the world isn't how you were raised. It's what you make it."
Want to know how far Schwartz has come? How finished he is with running away from life and how much fun he's having running towards it? Come down the hall at the comfortable Gonzales home and into his bedroom.
There are posters and pictures of Steve Prefontaine, the late distance runner with an inspirational story as good as Schwartz (and in one photo, Schwartz said, visitors routinely mistakenly think that's him, and not Pre, running along the beach). There are the medals and awards, more than a shoebox full for running and a few for chess. There are photos and newspaper clippings.
But when a visitor asks what his favorite decoration of all is, Schwartz doesn't take long to turn around and point above the closet, where a "Most Improved Student" plaque rests.
"I was getting a D in English my freshman year," Schwartz says with a grin, "and I raised it to a B."
Grades. Running. Charisma. Chris Schwartz has arrived after a long, winding journey.
And it was totally worth it.
"I can look back right now and say I wouldn't change a thing," Schwartz said. "Then I wouldn't be here right now."
