Hometown Report: Glowering, towering Derek Swafford fuels Sacramento Dragons’ fire

Derek Swafford is the very image of fierce intensity, seemingly able to make paint peel by just glowering at it.

Swafford is a towering figure on the Sacramento High School campus in Oak Park as the dean of students. And he looks the part of grim-faced bouncer when he supervises practice for the region’s top-ranked high school basketball team, his voice reverberating off the gym walls.

Swafford’s rules and methods are simple. His players quickly learn he is not there to be their friend. He’ll coach you up, scold you down, put his arm around you, then repeat.

A player earns minutes with effort in practice. A player gets banished to the bench if he embarrasses the program with social media rants or poor behavior on campus. As the papa bear of the Dragons, Swafford will find out.

“I’m a brick, locked in,” Swafford said. “I live this. It’s what I do. Basketball is a hook. It’s a great way to learn accountability, loyalty, hard work, staying humble. There’s so much competing for kids’ attention these days – Xbox, video games, AAU ball, social media. Those things can distract you, and distractions can really hurt you.

“When I bark at a kid, I’m not doing it to tear him down. I’m doing it to wake him up. We’re trying to build young men. It’s a tough-ass world out there, the real world.”

Swafford uses basketball as an extension of the real world. The Dragons are 16-1 after falling 77-67 to highly regarded Moreau Catholic of Hayward on Monday at the MaxPreps Martin Luther King Jr. Classic at Cal, and the coach was quick to remind that lessons can be learned in defeat: how to compete, how to finish, how to bounce back. He’s gearing up his team for March and aiming for a trip to Sleep Train Arena, the home of the Sac-Joaquin Section championships and Northern California and CIF State finals.

In his 16-year coaching career at Sac High, Swafford has guided the Dragons to 14 league championships, five section titles and 10 NorCal playoff berths and produced enough college scholarship players to fill a Greyhound bus. This season, Swafford said he has a state championship-caliber team.

But the real prize, Swafford said, is going to college, with or without a basketball scholarship. He takes pride in his team’s 3.0 grade-point average.

The MLK event was a two-fold experience. Swafford wanted his players to understand who King was and what he stood for.

“And I want our kids to feel pressure in a place like Cal,” Swafford said. “They have to understand what pressure feels like. All these people on your neck, the fans, playing a really good team. It’ll be 10 times more intense in college.”

Swafford’s star players, guard Christian Terrell and forward Solomon Young, agree. They are four-year varsity starters, and they grinned in acknowledging they hadn’t truly arrived as a Dragon until Swafford chewed on them good and loud.

“We love the pressure,” said Young, headed to Iowa State on scholarship. “And coach really pushes us.”

Said the UC Santa Barbara-bound Terrell: “Swafford gets on us because he cares. He’s a big mentor. We love him. People don’t know that he’s a fun, lovable Swafford off the court.”

Swafford reminded his team Monday it is OK to lose. Adversity is part of life. How one handles and rebounds from it defines character.

“Failure is a lesson,” Swafford said. “People run from it. Can’t do that. We won’t. Too many kids have critical thinking skills that are flawed.”

Swafford can speak from experience. He dropped out of high school in Compton, then flushed out of a community college. He preferred to spend time in his van, at the beach, chugging beers. Then Swafford ran into a businessman friend who convinced him he was too bright to throw away his life.

Swafford attended Los Angeles Valley College, where he became the student body president and commissioner of black studies. He graduated from Sacramento State, earned a master’s degree at La Verne and never stopped learning.

“Went back to college at 24 and got hooked,” Swafford said. “You need education. I’ve run the full gamut. I’ll coach here two more years and probably be done. I wanted to build a program, make a difference, help kids. I’m 63, and I’ve already lived a full life. But we’re not done yet.”

This story was originally published January 18, 2016 at 8:08 PM with the headline "Hometown Report: Glowering, towering Derek Swafford fuels Sacramento Dragons’ fire."