Outside of religious zealots, few people enter into martyrdom cognizant of its risks: your cause can envelope you, control you, Velcro itself to you and define you. It can also hurt you.
As he leads his Vegas Rebels Amateur Athletics Union team through a Sunday afternoon workout at Walnut Cecile Recreation Center—hustle, follow your shot—Alex Bernal looks more mentor than martyr, but his story is one of sacrifice. He has black, buzz-cut hair, wary eyes and a tense jaw. He looks mean enough to have a Napoleon complex and get away with it.
Bernal started the youth program in 1999 as an employee for the county housing authority (today he handles gang intervention for county parks and rec). He drew players from the late-night summer hoops programs at the Walnut and Cambridge centers; young men thought to be incorrigible, quick to shoot hoops, quicker on the draw. Through basketball, he’d teach them about respect, hard work and functioning as a team. He’d offer them time, affection, patience and love, be the father many never had; his own dad left while he was in middle school. What Bernal didn’t foresee was the huge personal toll mentoring would exact upon him.
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Bernal, 38, had a rough upbringing. Born in San Antonio, Texas, and reared here, he couldn’t speak English until age 7. All through school he took special-education classes. Because he played soccer at Rancho, he says teachers passed him. “I graduated high school with a third-grade education, barely able to read. There was no proficiency exam back then.”
By age 20, he had two sons. He vowed to be a good father. But his clique consisted of gangsters, drug dealers and thieves. “I didn’t know how to make legal money.”
Bernal’s godfather, local rap pioneer Hurt Em Bad, introduced him to county gang intervention specialist Melvin Ennis. He asked Ennis for job. “Beetle [Ennis] was going to speak to some kids at Jo Mackey Elementary. I came in my best clothes and looked like a thug. Beetle introduced me and then left. Since then, I wanted to help kids.”
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Many of Bernal’s players have witnessed crime, drugs and death. He urges them to emote. Talk. Cry. “Some of them never got to grieve their loved ones,” he says.
“We’ve seen Alex cry,” says Alfonso McNeal, a junior at Mayville State University in Mayville, North Dakota. Pressed for specifics, he’s reluctant. Protective over the man who kept him from gangs when he moved here from Kansas City, Missouri.
Bernal’s spent $10,000 of his own cash keeping the nonprofit youth program afloat. He’s sold mix CDs, used credit cards and dug into his own pocket to fund trips to out-of-town tournaments, to get players’ groceries, pay bills, buy diapers. Because he’s Hispanic and most of his players are black, Bernal been accused of desertion (by Hispanics) and profiteering (by blacks). His devotion has also cost him his relationship. “You give everything you can to these young men. It’s time-consuming and spirit-consuming. If you have a partner who doesn’t believe in it,” he says, “it’s like you’re entering a double life.”
Bernal’s struggles were news to Juan Patillo, an All-American at the College of Southern Idaho. He knew coach cared. Players stayed with him. He got them out of trouble. It’s the way coach is, McNeal says. Since Bernal related his struggles, he feels free to talk: “Many of our dads walked out on us. Alex didn’t. My three-year-old son is named Jameer Alexander McNeal, in his honor. It feels good to know he cares about us, but you feel bad for him, too.”
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Life’s been no crystal stair for Tommie Sanders. Without Bernal’s intervention, “I’d be in jail or dead.” Even now, as a freshman at Arizona Western junior college in Yuma, shades of the former hothead peep out. He hates when former players disrespect Bernal. When two ex-Rebels cursed him out, Sanders reacted. Bernal had to cool him down. “I’ll defend him against anybody,” Sanders says.
A few weeks ago, the phone rang. It was Robbie Williams, Bernal’s most talented player ever. Bernal took temporary guardianship of him when his mother died; she was asthmatic and couldn’t find her pump. Williams stayed for 18 months, then bounced. He didn’t graduate from high school, got busted for drug possession and served time. Now he had a child and needed a job. “Even when you’re out of the program,” says Bernal, sounding martyr-like, “you’re still in it.”