THE COMEBACK KID : Despite a Series of Adversities That Would Discourage Many Others, USC’s Cynthia Lynne Cooper Has Learned Not Only to Deal With Her Life but to Make It a Success

Mary Cobbs let a smile escape with a sigh. She had just chronicled the turmoil that seems woven in the fabric of Cynthia Lynne Cooper, one of the eight children Cobbs has ushered into this life. Yet, she was smiling and laughing. Like Cooper.

For Cooper, 21, it’s been a race to be the best, the first and the baddest, as preached on the streets and blacktop basketball courts of Watts. Cooper has taken that playground style to USC, where, in fits and starts over five years, she has become her team’s most overlooked natural resource.

“Oh, Lynne, she was never still. Not a day in her life. As a baby, she gave me the most trouble. It wasn’t a long labor, but it was a hard one. She was born on Easter. She never stopped crying.”

Cooper has done her share of crying, but, somehow, she comes out smiling in the end.

“Mom always said, ‘Ghetto is a state of mind,’ ” said Joanne Cobbs, Mary’s eldest child at 29.

Mary Cobbs wasn’t going to let the ghetto claim her children. No way. The Cooper children were at home, working, doing homework, looking after brothers and sisters. They were too busy to be hanging out on the streets.

“When my husband left, people were saying to me, ‘Your kids are going to be prostitutes and drug addicts.’ I swore that would not happen,” Mary Cobbs, who works for the RTD, said. “I’ve always felt that just because you live with pigs doesn’t mean you have to get dirty.”

Cynthia’s responsibilities as a middle child were to the house--as in house cleaning. Her chores conflicted with the after-school basketball practices at Locke High School. Cooper was the team’s star but couldn’t make it to practice.

“You could say there was a conflict,” Cooper said.

Mary Cobbs didn’t see a problem.

“The coaches and I went round and round,” Cobbs said. “I didn’t want her to play. I thought she used to get out of work around the house. I just wanted her to play in the games, not practice. I told them she could play if the team would come over here and take care of my house. I admit, I’m a dictator, but in order to run a family that size, you have to have control.”

Cobbs’ control extended beyond her family. Soon, she was dictating to Locke Coach Art Webb and assistant Lucious Franklin.

“She made me quit in the middle of my senior year,” Cooper said. “Mom didn’t want me to go to practices, just show up for the games. I’d be gone for like a week at a time. I’d never miss a game, but I missed practices, that’s for sure.

“Mom and I talked it out. We worked out an arrangement where I had time to do what she wanted me to do. Before my junior year, I don’t think my mom saw one of my basketball games. She didn’t realize how good I was. She didn’t realize I was going to go somewhere in basketball. She didn’t think I was serious.

“When USC came into the picture a lot of things turned around. I had the opportunity to go to USC, big letters--U-S-C. Then it hit her upside the head. A free $15,000 education.”

Basketball became a way out.

“But some people around here didn’t want (Cynthia) Lynne to leave,” Joanne Cobbs said. “It’s like crabs in a barrel, one starts to crawl out and the rest claw at him to keep him in.”

The chance for Cooper to be the first family member to attend, much less graduate, from college, got Cobbs very interested in basketball. She told Cooper to score more. “You’re better than all of ‘em,” Cobbs told her daughter.

All part of the college preparation. Joanne Cobbs was doing some thinking, too. “Before she left, I told her to get ready, that school would be hard. But Cynthia doesn’t like to listen,” Joanne said. “She wasn’t prepared. When school came around, she was packing the day before. I kept telling her she should have been saving up and buying clothes and things all along. No, not (Cynthia) Lynne. The day before school started, sure enough, we were out buying bedspreads, socks, towels.”

Joanne Cobbs remembers helping move her sister into the USC dorms. “When we got there, there were some men in the dorm. All I could think of was, ‘Lynne, you are coming back home, now .’ ”

Cooper was also amazed, for other reasons.

“When I came to move in, people here were pulling up to the dorms in limos.” Cooper said. “I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t like it in the dorms because there were so many white people. I came from a black school and a black neighborhood. I had never seen so many white people in all my life. I took one look and said, ‘I’m gone.’

“In my freshman year, I wasn’t scared on the basketball court. But as far as academics and social life here, I was totally lost. I would go to class and there were things discussed in my class that I had never heard of. I learned something right away: When you go to college from a school like Locke, you are three times behind. You have to work three times harder. If you were an average student at Locke, you’re in trouble.

“I told Coach (Linda) Sharp I wanted to leave. I told her there were too many white people in my dorm and I wanted to move to another. She wouldn’t let me transfer, she said, ‘Cynthia, this is the other side.’

“I hated everything. I was ready to leave, just get out of here. When you say it’s like a different world here, that’s what it is. These people are very, very different from what I knew. My first experiences with people here--they weren’t very friendly. I had a roommate, but when she was gone, I’d just sit in my room with my lip poked out.”

Cooper found that her street smarts and rapid-fire jive-speak didn’t impress upper-middle-class whites. Rhonda Windham, USC’s other starting guard, grew up in the Bronx and knows the adjustment Cooper had to make.

“When she first came here, she made a lot of people mad,” Windham said. “She wasn’t used to dealing interracially. From Cynthia’s standpoint, she’d just dealt with minorities. But that’s what life’s all about. She may have been a little scared. People here weren’t as friendly. They were driving around in their Mercedes and Porches. Where she came from, that meant they sold drugs.

“They made fun of her. It’s very intimidating. As a defense, she would just talk louder so people wouldn’t get a word in edgewise.”

The social and academic adjustments weren’t the only changes Cooper faced in her first year at USC. The other was the bench.

The undisputed stars of the Trojan program were the twins--Paula and Pam McGee. Cooper found herself gritting her teeth and riding the bench.

“I wanted to shoot and Sharp wanted me to get the ball to the McGees. Until I realized my role, there was a conflict. I’d argue with the McGees, they’d say, ‘Hey, get the ball inside to us.’ I’d say, ‘Forget you, I got it inside last time. I’m shooting.’

“Coach Sharp lets the players on the team know their roles. I was the sixth man. That hurt. Where I’m from, the best man wins. If I’m better, I play. I didn’t take too kindly to that. I thought she was dogging me. I had an attitude.”

That’s how she was known, the city kid with the attitude. A talented, but selfish player who would rather mouth off than pass off.

“When she came here, I think she had a little chip on her shoulder,” Sharp said. “Cynthia wanted to start as a freshman. In nine years I’ve started only four freshmen. We had a talk.”

Cooper had never been told not to shoot so much. Furthermore, Sharp told Cooper that she would have to come back in her sophomore year with defensive skills.

Cooper worked hard. She not only came back with better fundamentals, she came back to Cheryl Miller.

“When Cheryl came in, I was a little concerned,” Cooper said. “Lucious (Franklin, the Locke High assistant) told me I would have to pay my dues. But here’s Cheryl coming in and starting. I thought, ‘Cheryl is a freshman. Let her pay her dues. It’s my turn to shoot.’

“I thought for sure I would be starting. There was no doubt in my mind that I would not start. But Kathy Doyle was starting. I was hacked. My role was as spark plug. Spark plug?”

Thus began Linda Sharp’s phone acquaintance with Mary Cobbs. Conversations went along these lines: “Why aren’t you starting Lynne? Start Lynne. She’s the best you got.” Click.

Still Cooper sat. And seethed. She began to see the design when USC won its first national title in 1983. She was the starting guard in her junior year. Another championship ring. Cooper was so busy thinking how sweet it all was that she didn’t notice some things were slipping away.

By then, Cooper was established on court and campus. Plenty of friends.

“In college, life is party, party, have a hangover, get up and study, then do it all again,” Cooper said. “I got caught up in it. It threw me for a loop.”

Cooper was too looped to bother much with school. She was academically ineligible one semester her junior year. At Christmas, Sharp gave Cooper two hats: a dunce cap and a mortar board. It was like saying, “It’s your choice.”

Some choice. For Cooper, nothing--not parties, not popularity, not friends--was more important to her than basketball. She bore down and came back. That was Comeback No. 1.

Windham was smiling her slight smile as she surveyed the USC campus.

“I laugh when people say USC is in the ghetto, that’s a joke to me,” she said. “Where Cynthia is from and this place, it’s like night and day. It’s like a whole different world.

“Look out there. It’s green and everyone is smiling. People are riding their bikes and they are happy. People here, their biggest stress is telling their parents they got a ‘C’.

“They go home and the big thing is ‘What’s for dinner? When can I go shopping? How much can I charge?’ Cooper has more responsibilities with her family. She comes home and her mom’s at work and she’s thinking, ‘Oh, my niece might be home so there’s a dinner to cook. There’s probably a baby I’ll have to bathe. I’ve got to get my brother going on his homework.’ She’s just got a lot more responsibility than other people know about. She’s the heart and soul of her family.”

Last season, Cooper watched as her mother took on increasing financial burdens. Because she had moved home to help out, Cooper decided she needed a car to get to school. Another debt. She got behind in her school work. She wasn’t working hard in preseason.

Cooper felt jammed, worse than ever before. She looked for a place to go and all she could think of was ‘run.’

“My life was crumbling,” she said. “I felt my mom needed help with the bills. My little brother needed leadership as far as his going to school. I felt that my mom needed me. I felt that she needed me working.

“The biggest problem that I had, I would run. Instead of confronting my problems and getting insight, I would run.”

Cooper ran, but not far. One day she simply vanished. She didn’t go to classes, she didn’t go to practice.

“I left school and did not tell Coach Sharp a thing, I didn’t tell anyone,” Cooper said. “I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought she would figure it out, that was my attitude.

“I think one reason was, if I talked to Coach Sharp, she’d talk me out of it. She always makes sense.”

Cooper took a job as a bank teller in Inglewood and left USC and basketball behind. Mary Cobbs was biting her tongue, for perhaps the first time in her life. Her child was making a mistake but she’d have to work it out for herself.

“When she was talking about leaving school, I told her, ‘The same things you are tired of now, you are going to be tired of in a 9-5 job,’ ” Cobbs said. “I told her I didn’t need her help. I know how it is, once you get behind it seems like it’s never going to end.”

Sharp said she tried to contact Cooper, to get messages to her. No reply. While USC was slipping to its worst season in five years, Cooper was promoted to head teller.

One day Cooper began coaching elementary school children and officiating games after work. “Once she got back with basketball, I knew she’d worked it out,” Cobbs said. “That was the sign.”

A sign, yes, but a sign of what? Cooper had made plans. With money still a problem, Cooper was close to accepting an offer to play in a European league.

“I was going over to play ball in Austria,” Cooper said. She said a ticket to Vienna was waiting for her at the airport. “On a Friday I got a call from (USC assistant coach) Fred Williams. It was the day before I was to leave for Vienna. I was packed.

“Fred asked me to come back to USC. Registration was that Monday. I told Fred about my deal with Austria. I told him, ‘I’m going to talk with my mom. I’ll call you tomorrow.’ ”

What did Mary Cobbs say? “I was there bright and early Monday morning to register,” Cooper said, by way of answer.

The next question for Cooper was, “Do I have a team to come back to?”

“I had a meeting with Sharp,” Cooper said. “I thought she was going to yell at me. She just sat me down and started making sense. She made me realize she was in my corner. She made me realize that I had made a mistake. She told me she wanted me to graduate. My pride had gotten in the way. It was like, I felt I made a decision and I can’t come back.”

Windham said the team had a mixed reaction to Cooper’s return. Some players had felt Cooper let the team down.

“I was mad when she left, she hadn’t talked about it,” Windham said. “But she came back, and that’s so much harder than leaving--coming back to face your mistake. I knew she was going to come back. How did I know? Because Cooper is not a quitter. She has too much fight in her heart, she’s come too far.”

That was Comeback No. 2.

The start of this season was a beginning of another kind for Cooper. At last she was comfortable with her role on the team, with her contributions. She was comfortable with classes. She was well into her studies in physical education. She was comfortable with her social life. She had many friends.

Then, as so often had happened to Cooper, just when things were going well, adversity dealt her another blow. Cooper’s 22-year-old brother, Everett, her inseparable shadow while they were growing up, was stabbed to death in a fight in Los Angeles on Oct. 4.

“Those two were always together when they were kids,” Cobbs said. “He taught (Cynthia) Lynne to play basketball. They used to cut up in church and giggle. When Ricky (the name his family called him) went into the service, they’d write letters.”

It was the first death of anyone close to Cooper. “It was devastating,” she said. “When we were growing up, a lot of people thought we were twins. When I heard, I thought, ‘He’s gone? I don’t get to joke with him anymore?’ That whole week was like taking care of business.”

That meant that Cooper made all the funeral arrangements and handled all the details for her family.

“When they told me (about her brother’s death), I went into left field,” Joanne Cobbs said. “When I came back, here was Lynne making all the arrangements. It was role reversal. It was like I wasn’t the oldest anymore. (Cynthia) Lynne did everything. Her exterior was as calm as could be. You have to worry about someone like that. After we all left the hospital, she didn’t come home. She got in her car and drove to San Diego (where her boyfriend lives.) She just left.”

Instincts took over and Cooper ran. When she came back a week later, it was with a steely front. Another defense. Cooper came back to practice, but it was as if she wasn’t all there. She was angry. She would slam the ball down and ignore Sharp’s coaching. Cooper had an attitude. After one particularly disruptive practice, Sharp took Cooper aside for a talk.

“She clammed up, she didn’t talk a whole lot,” Sharp said. “She was going off into her own thing, again. I just told her that basketball was her outlet. If other things in her life were not working, why mess up basketball, too? She worked it out.”

Cooper, with the wisdom of hindsight, knows what the anger was about.

“I had made up my mind that it wasn’t going to bother me,” Cooper said. “I had to be strong for my family. I realized later that I never got a chance to sit down and cry and let it out. I never had a chance to mourn. I never had a chance to feel sorry for myself. I was strong for everyone else but there was no shoulder for me. I was taking my aggression about everything else out on basketball.

“But I learned. Things that used to get on my nerves and make me furious, now I say, ‘It’s not worth it.’ I used to just go off. Not now. I’ve matured so much, it’s like night and last week.”

That was Comeback No. 3.

USC was playing rival Cal State Long Beach in Long Beach last month and Cooper was playing despite having the flu. She didn’t tell Sharp about her 104-degree temperature or the vomiting. “It was (Long) Beach, you know I’m going to play,” Cooper said.

In the game, Cooper leaped, batted the ball away from Long Beach’s Faye Paige, took the steal and raced down court. Paige hustled back and, along with another Long Beach player, waited for Cooper to drive in with the layup. Cooper saw them and pulled up and passed to Windham who set the offense. Two years ago, Cooper would have tried for the spectacular shot, fouls be damned.

“Cynthia’s game has improved so much,” Windham said. “She should have been an All-American a long time ago.”

Indeed, it is widely believed among coaches that if Cooper were on any other team (that is, out of the shadow of Cheryl Miller) she would be back in her former firmament--a star.

“I think she’s an excellent basketball player, she gives Southern Cal an extra dimension,” Andy Landers, coach of No. 2 Georgia said. USC is the only team to have beaten the Bulldogs this season.

Coach Jody Conradt at No. 1 Texas makes this observation: “When Cooper is in the lineup for USC, they are a better team. She is the catalyst.”

Sharp says Cooper has been her most consistent player this season, and the team’s most consistent leader. It’s Cooper’s audacity and confidence that endears her to her teammates and eventually wins crowds. When she was introduced to the fans in Austin for the game against Texas, 11,000 fans howled as they watched Cooper run to the center of the floor, arms over her head, chanting “Coop, Coop, Coop!”

Cooper thrives on the pressures of the game; pressures she has come to understand and with emotions she has learned to harness. Mary Cobbs said she didn’t raise her children to fold when the going got tough. Cooper says her days of running from her problems are over.

“My big thing is life accomplishment,” Cooper said. “So many times I have started to take the easy way out. I just said, ‘Forget it.’ So many things were bad. Now, it’s, ‘Can you make it?’ That’s how it’s been all my life. In my neighborhood, since I was born, it’s ‘Only the strong survive.’ ”

Cooper’s family has lent part of the strength, her own will has made up the rest. At the moment, her mind is set on the near future--a successful basketball season, and the not so near future--graduation.

“I told (Cynthia) Lynne when she went to USC, ‘If you go and play basketball for them for four years, and you don’t get a degree, you have been used,’ ” Mary Cobbs said. “I’ll feel good when Lynne graduates because that means she’s made it; when the odds were against it.”

Sharp is firm about it. Cooper will graduate. “I want to see her graduate,” Sharp said. “To me, if Cynthia graduates, it’ll be a dream come true. She’s had a difficult life. She’s had to work, nothing has come easy. I’m going to her graduation with bells on.”

Windham will be there, too. She’s sure Cooper will graduate.

“She’s going to get it,” Windham said. “She can be here 1,000 years but she’ll get her diploma. Knowing Cooper, she’ll probably wear it around campus as a necklace.”

That would be Comeback No. 4.