Fullerton's Hicks beating the odds

The Orange County Register

09.29.09

By Marcia C. Smith

On the losing team stood a winner, a Washington State senior safety who picked himself off the Coliseum field after Saturday’s 27-6 defeat to USC and walked toward the visitor’s tunnel with his Cougars helmet held high.
   Xavier Hicks Jr. wasn’t born with a set of silver spoons. He didn’t even have a set of parents. His mother, Marcie Cortez, was a Valencia High freshman and 16 years old when she gave birth to him on the day after Christmas in 1986.
   “Mom, you have to come to all my games this year,” Hicks told Cortez before the season began. “Promise me. This season is for you and all that we’ve been through.”
   Wearing a No 26 jersey and carrying a camera she bought the night before, Cortez was in the Coliseum stands relishing what she called “the proudest moment of my life.” Beside her stood more than 30 friends, her two other sons and their grandmother who can’t speak English and doesn’t understand the game but knows every sacrifice the family made to see a day like Saturday.
   Xavier Hicks Jr. began as Cortez’s best-kept secret. He was the reason she wore baggy clothes on summer days, hiding her growing belly for eight months from her classmates and her Mexican Catholic parents whom she knew would be disappointed.
   For her son, she suffered through morning sickness in the Valencia High bathroom stalls, and she ran away from home for two weeks before calling her parents from now-defunct Martin Luther Hospital Medical Center in Anaheim when she was about to give birth.
   She knew her Mexican immigrant parents, Nazario and Maria, brought their four children to America for a better life. She knew they had sore backs and rough hands from 20 years of picking strawberries and oranges. Working long hours for little money was the price they paid to buy their children the opportunities they wished but couldn’t have for themselves.
   “And then I was irresponsible,” admitted Cortez, 39, who would have three children by the time she turned 20 — all fathered by Xavier Hicks Sr., an upperclassman and Valencia High football player who left behind his sons to join the Army and now dips in and out of their lives.
   “My sons could have ended up in bad places,” Cortez said. “Society and all the statistics say they’d never succeed given what they were born into. I get that the odds weren’t in their favor, and I did everything I could so that they’d have opportunities and make the right choices.”
   She left high school for an El Camino continuing education program that allowed her to care for her babies while earning her high school diploma. After school, she’d work at Rosa’s pizzeria across the street from Valencia High, clearing tables, mopping floors and taking orders.
   She didn’t have a car. She took the bus everywhere. She couldn’t afford to move from her parents’ home until her youngest, Randall Hicks, was 2 and she was making enough money as a secretary at a doctor’s office during the week and a waitress on the weekends.
   When her boys were old enough, she signed them up for Little League and took a third job to keep their growing bodies in uniforms, cleats and gloves. Then the boys, who were already taller than their 5-foot-4 mother by the time they were 10, wanted to play Pop Warner football.
   Coaches put Cortez on a payment plan so her sons could stay on the teams until they were old enough to play at Fullerton High. All three were solid students and football players who attracted college scouts offering, in some cases, scholarships and financial-aid packages.
   “Football gave me a chance to go to college and do something positive for my family,” said Hicks, 22, who has NFL hopes. “Everything my mother went through has been a motivation.”
   Hicks, a former Freeway League Most Valuable Player who made the Register’ All-County team, signed with Washington State. The fifth-year senior is set to graduate in December, majoring in comparative ethnic studies with a minor in human development. He has started 26 games at safety, including the past 13 and last season ranked second on the team in tackles (78).
   Hicks, however, got tangled up in a rent dispute with a teammate during college. A second-degree assault charge was filed against Hicks, who entered a guilty plea on a lesser misdemeanor charge. He served a work-release and jail sentence and a three game suspension.
   Michael Hicks, 20, is on an academic scholarship at San Diego State, where he plays rugby and last year traveled to Ireland as wing on the national under-20 team.
   Randall Hicks, 18, is redshirt freshman on the Fullerton College football team. He and his mother enrolled at the junior college on the same day. Cortez, who attends night school, will be working toward a degree in psychology or social work so she can counsel young mothers
   “I’m 39 but I feel like I’m 19 and wanting to pick up my life where I left off,” she said.
   Her boss, Craig Van Thyne, of Yorba Linda, and her employer, Empire Pipe Cleaning Inc. in Orange have raised money so Cortez can see her three boys play.
   “The reality of it is that God has put me and my sons at the right place at the right time,” Cortez said.
   Her sons have been inspired by her. Now she is inspired by her sons who have become grown men.
   This past Saturday against the Trojans, Hicks had three tackles, including one that held Stafon John son to a yard on second and-goal. He also broke up Matt Barkley pass intended for David Ausberry.
   His Cougars lost and fell to 1-3 on the season. But while his family watched his final game at the Coliseum from the stands, Xavier Hicks Jr. left a winner.