The name lives on

2004-06-05

By Tom Shanahan, San Diego Hall of Champions

Twenty years have passed since the Padres made their first World Series appearance as 1984 National League champions. The franchise has changed uniform styles many times and switched venues, leaving behind Mission Valley’s Qualcomm Stadium for downtown’s Petco Park in 2004.

But for the San Diego sports fan--ones who love all levels of competition--a familiar surname still echoes across the San Diego sports landscape from that milestone 1984 baseball season.

Candice Wiggins is the daughter of the late Alan Wiggins. Alan was the catalyst of the Padres’ 1984 team as a leadoff batter and second baseman who set a club record with 70 stolen bases. Candice, as a La Jolla Country Day senior in the 2003-04 high school season, finished one of the most accomplished careers of any San Diegan in girls basketball and as an All-America bound for Stanford.

But long before Wiggins appeared on the San Diego sports scene, two traumatic events could have scarred her for life. They happened within months between the ages of three and four.

The first left a physical scar. An automobile backing out of a driveway struck Wiggins and nearly ripped off her face. The scar that remains starts above her left eye and sweeps down in an arc to her cheekbone.

The second event, her father’s death, could have left an emotional scar, but a close look doesn’t reveal it as easily as her physical scar.

You couldn’t find it in the relentless way the 5-foot-11 guard/forward played as one of the nation’s most highly recruited players, bound for Stanford with a 3.7 grade-point average.

You couldn’t find it dulling an engaging personality that classmates say would have made her a popular figure on campus even if she wasn’t considered the best multi-sport female athlete in the nation by Student Sports, a national prep magazine, for her abilities in volleyball, basketball and track.

And not even when someone mentions her father, who died in 1991 at age 32 from AIDS complications that followed his battle with drug abuse, can you find an emotional scar.

People tip-toe around speaking to Candice about her father, but they don’t need to. She loves to hear about her dad and the magical season of the Padres’ first championship.

“I was in the airport coming back from a club volleyball tournament one time when someone recognized me,” Candice says, breaking into a bright smile. “The guy told me about how he remembered my dad and the 1984 team. He talked about my dad’s season and then went through all the players on the team. I was just smiling whole the time, enjoying listening to him.”

Wiggins was a Division I recruit in both basketball and volleyball. She will start her Stanford career in basketball this year. After a year of adjusting to college, she will add volleyball in the fall of 2005, making her a two-sport college athlete.

If Wiggins’ basketball or volleyball careers develop as many project to the Olympic team or to the WNBA, she wants to use any future status she gains as a platform for an anti-drug message.

“I see it as a natural thing to do,” Wiggins said. “I would approach it as something to do in my father’s memory. A lot of kids find themselves in a bad household or a bad situation. But you can get out of a bad situation by making the right decisions. You don’t have to take the hard way.”

Wiggins is one of only four San Diegans to top 3,000 career points, finishing third on the CIF-San Diego Section list with 3,252. For her career she averaged 28.0 points, 11.6 rebounds, 6.7 steals, 4.4 assists and 1.8 blocked shots.

Wiggins led LJCD to four straight CIF-San Diego Section titles, four straight Southern California Regional titles and two CIF State titles. The Torreys won state Division V titles her freshman and sophomore years and were state Division IV runners-up her junior and senior years.

She was named to the most prestigious high school All-American teams as chosen by McDonald’s, Parade and USA Today.

CalHiSports.com bestowed upon her its top award as the State Girls Athlete of the Year after earlier naming her California’s Ms. Basketball. Her senior year, which included a career-high 50-point game, she posted averages of 30.8 points, 11.5 rebounds, 6.3 steals and 3.8 assists. She had only 42 turnovers in 24 games.

Wiggins played all positions offensively and defensively for the Torreys, but her college position will be at point or shooting guard. Some observers project she will be better in college than high school because she’ll be able to play her natural position at guard instead of often forced to play inside.

“Candice has a will win to win, and I think she’ll have the same impact on games in college she had in high school,” said LJCD coach Terri Bamford. “She’s a slasher on offense. Anytime we needed a matchup on defense, we could play her on a point guard, a wing or the post.”

Wiggins’ mother, Angela, and her father had a relationship that dated to their days as high school sweethearts at Muir High in Pasadena. Angela believes Alan’s downward spiral began with a 1985 trade to the Baltimore Orioles, but she kept most of her thoughts to herself while raising three children as a single mother.

The family has lived in the same home in a Poway gated community that Alan bought in the early 1980s. Cassandra, the oldest, attends New York University. Alan Jr. played basketball on scholarship as a freshman at USF last season.

Candice, who has few memories of her father, says the message from her mother and older siblings has always been that her dad was a good husband and father.

“My sister and brother tell me a story about how one night my dad asked them what they wanted to do,” Candice said. “They said they wanted to go to Disneyland. They left that night, stayed at a hotel and went to Disneyland in the morning.”

Candice’s mother also hasn’t made talking about Alan’s drug problem a taboo subject in the family.

“Drugs are a problem everywhere in the U.S.,” Angela said. “If something good can come from this, it’s that God may be using Candice so that other children can learn about the drug problem in this country.”

At La Jolla Country Day, Wiggins’ classmates don’t identify her as the daughter of a “disgraced Padre,” as Candice once heard her father described in an ESPN “Outside the Lines” feature in December.

They know her as the girl who gave her CIF Sportsmanship medal that she was awarded at the CIF state basketball finals as a freshman in 2001 to the mother of Kenner Michael, a classmate who was one of the team’s biggest fans. Michael had died in an auto accident while returning from the state championship game in Sacramento.

“A lot of people tell me what a nice thing I did,” Candice said, “but I saw it as the right thing to do.”

When the State CIF office heard of Wiggins’ kindness, it made a new copy of the Sportsmanship medal to award to her.

Wiggins also says attending LJCD, an elite school with challenging academics, would have fulfilled her father’s dream. Wiggins’ home is in Poway, but oddly enough to reach the house you must turn off Country Day Road.

“There have been a lot of signs like that in my life,” Wiggins said. “My mom says when they would drive by the school, my dad would say he hoped someday I would go there.”

LJCD senior Mike Hirshman, the school’s Associated Student Body president in 2003-04, tells a story about meeting Wiggins when she came to LJCD, a K-through-12 school, as an eighth grader. Hirshman was assigned to Wiggins in the “buddy” program, one designed to help new students adjust to the school.

“I remember we talked about how we liked basketball, and I also told her I liked tennis,” Hirshman said. “It wasn’t until her freshman year on the high school team that I found out what a great basketball player she is. I had no clue from talking to her.”

Tragedy may have interrupted Candice Wiggins’ life, but she hasn’t allowed the wounds to scar her. Not when you watch her play. Not when you mention her surname, still recognizable on the San Diego sports landscape.

And certainly not when you ask her about her father, who helped the Padres to their first championship. She loves to hear about Alan Wiggins and the 1984 Padres.