By Pete Borello

Alta Vista High School boys basketball coach Bob Adams brings the team together for a pep talk before last Thursday’s playoff opener. Alta Vista is one of the few continuation schools in the Bay Area with an organized basketball team.

The uniforms aren’t as elaborate, the play isn’t as smooth and the crowds aren’t nearly as big as those you might expect to see at a high school game. But those associated with the Alta Vista High School boys basketball team don’t seem too concerned about all that.

They just want to play ball.

And that’s exactly what Alta Vista - a continuation school for the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District and the Palo Alto Unified School District - has been doing since 1997.

Most Bay Area continuation schools don’t play organized basketball. It’s taken committed athletes, selfless coaches, an enterprising teacher and a supportive principal to make it happen at Mountain View-based Alta Vista.

The program has evolved from rustling up a few games per season to playing in a league of six continuation schools, complete with playoffs. Alta Vista Athletic Director John Figueroa formed the league, known as the South Bay Big Six.

Alta Vista’s no-frills uniforms may not be as fancy as those worn at Los Altos High School, but they sure beat the numberless T-shirts and mismatched shorts of the early days. The crowds haven’t improved; it’s hard to attract fans when you play in an off-campus gym with no bleachers at 11 a.m. when the rest of your school is in class.

Attendance was in single digits for last Thursday’s home finale at the El Camino YMCA in Mountain View, where the Aztecs of Alta Vista opened the playoffs against New Valley High School of Santa Clara. Alta Vista won 45-33 behind a career-high 27 points from guard Nick LaFleur. This put the defending champion Aztecs in Monday’s final (played after the Town Crier went to press) at undefeated Brenkwitz High School of Hayward.

Just getting to the final has to be considered a major accomplishment for Alta Vista this season, which Bob Adams called the most difficult of his six years as head coach.

“We had to remove three kids for being disruptive,” said the longtime Los Altos resident, who volunteers his time. “We had a lot of discipline problems this year - more than any other year.”

Players’ foul language, for example, proved costly in an early season contest against Brenkwitz.

“We lost a game because of three bad words,” Adams said. “And they weren’t said all at once - they came at different times in the game, so we got penalized three times.”

The team aura took a turn for the better midway through the season when Solomon Hughes came aboard as assistant coach. Hughes, like Adams, played basketball at the University of California at Berkeley, albeit almost 50 years later.

“Two coaching heads are much better than one,” Adams said. “Solomon has been awesome.”

Hughes came to Alta Vista last fall as an instructional aide in special education and said he didn’t have any interest in coaching until he met with Adams.

“I heard a lot about Bob. We talked and connected right away - we both played at Cal,” he said. “I came to a couple of practices and it turned into a stronger commitment. It’s been fun - it hasn’t been all fun and games - but it’s been a good experience.”

The 6-foot-11 Hughes, who graduated from Cal in 2002 after a prominent basketball career there, is someone the Alta Vista players look up to figuratively and literally.

“He’s brought a lot to the team,” said Perett Fiaavae, a senior who’s played three seasons for the Aztecs. “There were a lot of attitudes before he came. Then he gave us a contract to sign and the attitudes got better.”

The soft-spoken Hughes believed a contract with the team would make the players more accountable.

“There were problems the second game I was here,” he said. “The goals (of the contract) were to get them to be more disciplined and mature - and to become better basketball players.”

It worked. After a shaky 2-3 start, Alta Vista won four of its next five games to place second in the league. Then came the playoff win over New Valley, in which the Aztecs rallied from a six-point halftime deficit.

“We were a different team in the second half of the season,” said Adams, who played basketball at Cal in the 1950s. “The contract defined a line, and if you crossed it, you’re out of here.”

Contracts are nothing new to Alta Vista athletes. Figueroa requires each player to sign a contract with the school before every season. It states that the student must attend class, not receive any referrals for poor conduct and earn a certain number of academic points every two weeks to participate in sports. The first time a student fails to meet these criteria, he is put on probation. The second time, he is removed from the team.

Considering students are typically sent to Alta Vista for truancy, discipline and academic problems, you might think such contracts would be hard to live up to. However, Figueroa said that hasn’t been the case. Although one player had to sit out last week’s playoff opener for missing school the day before, that’s been more the exception than the norm.

“Academically, they do better,” Figueroa said. “They know what they need to do to stay on the team, and they do it. Athletics can turn kids around - the motivation is there.”

When Figueroa arrived at Alta Vista in 1996, athletics were limited to physical education classes. It had been four years since the school offered extracurricular sports, which were abruptly canceled after a fight broke out at a boys basketball game.

Figueroa went to the administration to get permission to restart the athletic program. Principal Bill Pierce agreed, and Figueroa put together a boys basketball team.

“I saw these kids I had,” said Figueroa, in his 35th year as a PE teacher. “I thought this would be fun for me, too. It was a little selfish.”

Figueroa coached the team the first two seasons, which were short and not all that organized. He scraped to find teams to play and gyms to play in. The games were ragged, akin to what’s often referred to as “jungle ball.”

It’s not a jungle out there anymore.

Figueroa attributes much of the improvement in play to Adams, who came on the scene in 1999. Adams doesn’t just know basketball - he also knows how to connect with the students.

“Bob’s had a tremendous impact. He’s done a phenomenal job,” Figueroa said. “He has a great demeanor and doesn’t raise his voice. The kids love him to death - he treats them like his own kids.”

Adams initially intended to assist Figueroa. The retired business owner had been coaching youth basketball and found out about Alta Vista’s team from his wife Lois, a math mentor at the school.

“He stepped in without knowing it,” Figueroa said of Adams’ elevation to head coach. “At the first game of the season at Cal Hills, I handed him the clipboard and said, ‘It’s all yours,’ and I went to the table to keep score. He deserved it. We won the game, and he’s been in charge ever since.”

Figueroa has stepped back from coaching basketball - Don Hull assisted Adams the past few years - but remains the unofficial commissioner of the South Bay Big Six and runs the league meetings.

It’s doubtful there would be a league without him. Figueroa first recruited Robertson High School (Fremont), Cal Hills High School (Milpitas) and New Valley to form what became the South Bay Big Four. Peninsula High School (San Bruno) joined two years later, then Brenkwitz in 2003.

Figueroa aspires to add more teams but hasn’t found any takers among the 18 Bay Area continuation schools he’s contacted.

“I send letters every year, ” he said. “Nobody responds.”

Figueroa said he knows of only two other continuation school leagues in Northern California: one is in Marin County, the other in Fresno. Figueroa believes he knows why there aren’t more.

“Money,” he said. “There are costs for transportation. We’re lucky enough to have vans and the money to do it.”

That’s due to Pierce, who allows Figueroa to offer basketball as a fifth-period elective.

“Without his support, it wouldn’t happen,” said Figueroa, who supervises the class. “He’s footing the bill, and he’s very supportive.”

As the last period of the day, players can stay beyond the

45-minute time frame for extra practice with Adams and his staff.

Still, the practices are shorter than those at traditional high schools. This hinders the quality of play, but Alta Vista does run a few plays and has some skilled players. Senior power forward Kevin Riley played half this season for the Aztecs before transferring back to Los Altos High, where he led the Eagles to the Central Coast Section playoffs. LaFleur, a junior, is confident he will return to Gunn High School next fall and play there.

While this may be the end of Fiaavae’s career in organized basketball, he won’t soon forget the experience - not only the wins, but the friendships formed.

“We’re all friends on this team,” he said. “This is my family right here; all the guys are like a bunch of brothers.”

Such bonds are what keep Adams coming back year after year.

“The most rewarding thing is the relationships you develop with the kids,” he said. “It’s the friendships I have made with the kids.”

Kids who just want to play ball.