Crescenta Valley’s Zargarians overcome grief for one final, beautiful tribute of a season

LA CRESCENTA — “You can’t put this in the paper,” Shawn Zargarian said. “But I’m an –”

– absolute taskmaster, terror on the sideline, thorn in the sides of generations of La Crescenta basketball players. A guy you would absolutely have loved your son to play for.

Ask the men who suited up for Crescenta Valley High School’s boys basketball teams over the past two decades, they’ll tell you: Coach Z will chew you out and stomp his feet and get T’d up. And, on occasion, tossed or even suspended.

He’ll also give you the biggest hugs and high-fives. Invite you to sit down, one-on-one, and share your perspective before the season. He’ll text to check in after tough practices and huddle you up and tell you he loves you, and mean every word, all of it.

So, on July 27, 2019, when Zargarian went to talk to his young sons at their home in Granada Hills, he had trained for years on how to address boys when things are hard, and had countless reps coaching up boys for a challenge.

But what could he say on that day, to his own boys? His wife, their mom, Nadin, had succumbed to breast cancer at the age of 40. Vaughn and Christian, then 12 and 9, had lost their biggest fan, the cool-headed yin to Shawn’s fiery yang, this brilliant, selfless lady who they can’t remember getting mad, ever.

There isn’t a playbook for what to say in that huddle, there just isn’t. But this is what he told his boys: “We’re gonna be OK. I promise you, guys, we’ll be OK. We’ll find a way. We’re going to be OK.”

And he meant it, every word: They found a way, and they’re OK.

Actually, they’re flourishing.

Father and son – both for so long Falcons fixtures – are finishing their CV basketball careers in tandem this season.

Entering Wednesday’s CIF-SS Division 2A first-round game at Pasadena Blair, Vaughn’s 35.5 points per game this season rank No. 3 in California and No. 10 nationally. That also ranks second for a single season in school history, behind only Falcons great Greg Goorjian, who averaged 43.4 points per game in 1978.

Meanwhile, in what will be his final season at the helm, Shawn is the architect of what might be the best single-season coaching job in the program’s long and successful history.

That’s according to his former coach, John Goffredo, for whom Shawn was a hard-nosed defender with an off-the-chart care meter, the guy who lost teeth diving on the floor for loose balls. His attention to detail was so keen that when his playing career ended, Goffredo took him out to Burger King to pitch the idea of teaching and coaching.

He’ll have been the Falcons’ head coach for 20 seasons, one more than Goffredo and two more than Ed Goorjian, who was the program’s first coach.

Like Vaughn, Goorjian’s son, Greg, and Goffredo’s son, Jimmy, register among CV’s most impactful players and top scorers. And like Vaughn, Jimmy found a way to flourish after losing his mom, Kathy, to cancer when he was 9.

When Jimmy was a senior in 2002, he said he’d been inspired by his mom’s strength, and that he came to appreciate basketball as a release, averaging 30.8 points per game as a senior and finishing second all-time among CV scorers (1,918 points) before taking his talents to Harvard.

Vaughn isn’t sure whether he wants to play college basketball, he said, because he’s eager to throw himself into studying to become a lawyer, like Nadin. That isn’t to say he hasn’t loved playing basketball, finding it, he said, almost meditative: “Whenever you’re playing, your mind is so focused on basketball, you’re hardly thinking about anything else.”

“You get lost in it,” Shawn said, “which is good.”

Because, John Goffredo said, “it’s something that isn’t sad or painful.”

That was true for the community at large in 2019 and 2020, said Tyler Carlson, a star guard on those teams that went through hard times off the court and went 29-6 and 25-4 on it.

A few months before Nadin’s death in 2019, Noah Domingo, a former CV basketball player and freshman fraternity member at UC Irvine, died after drinking excessively at a party. At CV, basketball games became bigger than basketball games, Carlson said: “It was relief for our community a little bit, just being able to bring a little joy on Tuesdays and Fridays.”

And John Goffredo was there during that time, he said, not to advise Shawn, but to listen. Because, no, there’s no playbook.

“It’s such a weird, crazy story,” Shawn said. “But to have him be here to support us and love on us … and for him to say, ‘I’m proud of you, Shawn,’ is more than I can ask for.”

They’re both proud of Vaughn, who tells people he was “born into CV.” From the time he was 3 or 4, he was a regular presence at his dad’s games and practices, usually on the bench and sometimes on the court in warmups and practices, shooting with the big boys whose games he so admired.

Now 17, Vaughn is a bulked-up, 6-foot-2 senior. He’s got “the cool, collected thing his mom had, thank God,” said Shawn, who plans to spend his retirement from coaching in the stands, just a dad watching his youngest son, Christian, play for Holy Martyrs.

“He’s such a kind and caring and loving individual,” said Jim Smiley, a fellow teacher and Shawn’s longtime friend, as well as a former boys basketball coach at CV for whom Shawn was an assistant. “His entire life is going to open up and blossom even further now that he’ll be without the responsibility of coaching.”

But first Shawn has unfinished business with Vaughn, who is also leading the Falcons – who went 7-0 in the Pacific League to win the title outright last week – with 9.2 rebounds, 5 assists and 2.5 steals per game.

What strikes Arman Pezeshkian, another former Falcons standout, most about Vaughn’s storybook season is how well he’s handling the pressure – and not only that coming from double- and triple-teaming opponents.

“His dad’s last year coaching, and he’s the main guy,” Pezeshkian said. “The fact that he not only averaged 35 points and 10 rebounds and they won league and beat Pasadena at Pasadena – which his dad had never done – I think this is the best season ever from someone at CV, and there’s been a lot of good ones.”

To net that long-awaited victory at Pasadena, it took 35 points from Vaughn, a double-digit second-half comeback, and maybe something more. Shawn said he’ll feel like Nadin – who had been such a constant presence at CV’s games, “even with tumors up and down her spine, all over her body, she came to every single one,” he said – is still present.

“There was a possession where this guy shot three layups and he kept missing, right at the end of the game,” Shawn said. “And then I went to the locker room where we were celebrating, and one of my assistant coaches from the past, Eric Yoo, he looked at me and he goes. ‘I feel like she kept blocking that shot!’

“And she might have been, man. Who knows? Because she’s always, always in our hearts, and always on our minds.”