JJ SAYS: A coach and a player to remember

This season’s Brett Callan Memorial Tournament, being played Thursday through Saturday at Casa Grande High School, is the 13th presentation of some of the best high school basketball played in the North Bay.

It will also be the first of the annual events I’ve missed. I have a previous family obligation to visit my sister and her family, who used the hurt of last year’s Sonoma County fire to migrate to a state where property values are reasonable, traffic congestion is imagined and governmental regulations are sensible.

I will greatly miss the Callan Tournament. It is not only an outstanding sporting event, but also an opportunity to meet with good friends and share the camaraderie of people who truly love the sport of basketball.

It is also a reminder of what the tournament is all about.

It is a reminder of the good things - who Brett Callan was and his enthusiasm, zest for life and deep love for the game of basketball.

It is a reminder of his coach, James Forni, who started the tournament as a tribute to his player and kindred spirit.

It is a reminder of the sadness all who knew them share because they are no longer with us.

Forni died in 2015 at age 35. The cause of death was cancer, but the disease never really beat the effervescent coach. Like his basketball teams, he battled not until he was beaten, but just until he ran out of time.

Callan was killed in a traffic crash in 2004. He was 16 and about to start his junior season playing basketball for coach Forni.

Each year, I write about the player and his tournament. As always, I write not to dredge up old hurts but in an effort to keep the memory of Brett Callan alive. To remind people who didn’t know him that Brett Callan isn’t just the name of a basketball tournament, but that he was a very real and very special human being, and that the tournament is the legacy of him and a very real and very special coach.

Another reason for telling the Brett Callan story is to once again remind drivers, especially young drivers, that they are not invincible. We all slide by with thousands of bad decisions in our lifetime, but the one that bites us can be devastating. It can be not only life changing but life ending.

Callan wasn’t driving when the crash ended his life before it had hardly begun, but he paid a price.

His story is a reminder that driving is serious business, and that speeding (as was in the case Callan’s tragedy), impaired driving or, as too often happens today, distracted driving, can have serious consequences.

Brett Callan’s father, L.J.; mother, Julie; and sister, Heather, will be as they are every year, on hand for the tournament.

They will be there because they love Casa Grande basketball, and they will be there to tell a sad story that never grows old.

It is a story that needs to be told over and over again. If telling the Brett Callan story, either through these words, or, more forcefully, through the family’s words saves one life or one injury, it is well worth the telling.

(Contact John Jackson at johnie.jackson@arguscourier.com)