For Copeland, Family Matters

Guardians Cedric and Wanda Boatman have enabled LaTanya Copeland, above, to stabilize a turbulent life, and become a standout player and much-improved student at Gaithersburg. (Toni L. Sandys - The Washington Post)

But Copeland was distracted, and in her freshman year at Bullis she played in less than half of the team's games because of an assortment of injuries and continued difficulties with school. Despite her relationship with Boatman, Copeland craved a new start.

"I wasn't feeling the atmosphere," she said of Bullis. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciated everything people were doing for me there. Bullis was a good school. But it wasn't a good school for me."

Ferrell tried to convince Copeland to stick it out at Bullis. The school's administration even provided her with extra tutoring.

Copeland convinced her grandmother to allow her to transfer to Gaithersburg in the fall of 2003 on the promise that she would improve her grades. Five months later, Copeland heard a knock on her bedroom door on an early Saturday morning in January 2004. She opened it to find her grandmother, who was complaining of a shortness of breath. She died several hours later at Montgomery General Hospital.

"I thought to myself, 'Where do I go?' I'm 16," Copeland recalled. "I'm lost. I wasn't so much worried about me. I was worried about my brother. It was crazy. I felt like there was nobody there."

Boatman, Ferrell and longtime AAU Coach Luis Hawkins, along with her mother's brothers and wives, assembled at the hospital and began searching for a solution to Copeland's sudden homelessness.

Copeland and her brother ended up moving in with relatives, but the arrangement lasted less than a month. Copeland had a difficult time and decided she wanted to live with the Boatmans.

"People wonder how I could live with him, because he's so big that they think he's mean," Copeland said. "He's definitely a teddy bear. People don't realize his outside life and home life are totally different. He's really nice and will do anything for you. I took notice of that."

Said Boatman: "I was on my way to a Bullis game, and I get this call from the attorney handling her grandmother's estate saying that we need to come get the kids. I called my wife, who said, 'We'll bring the kids home and take it day-by-day.' "

A month later, the Boatmans received judicial approval for permanent guardianship. "I was a little nervous," Copeland said of the court proceedings. "But I was ready for them to be my guardians. . . . I felt like I was done with all the moving. I had felt like a nomad. But now I'm stable."

Wanda Boatman said her husband has a knack for connecting with kids. "He relates to them, and has a huge heart," she said. "I think he listened to her [Copeland] at a time when people were talking at her rather than listening to her. And as always, he always fights for the underdog."

Although the adjustment to living with the Boatmans has gone relatively smoothly, there have been some bumps. Cedric built another bedroom in the basement of their Silver Spring home after it became clear that his 15-year-old son, Corey, and 12-year-old Trevor just couldn't co-exist in the same room.

Copeland, who was so used to disciplining her little brother, has reluctantly learned to cede that responsibility to the Boatmans. When they first moved in, she would either leave the room or scowl at Boatman when he would punish Trevor, Boatman said. "It's taken a year to get through that," he said. "She was so much of a mother to him. It had been natural for her. But I need her to be a teenager."

Copeland also learned that poor grades were unacceptable, and if she failed to keep up with her studies, she would no longer be able to stay at Gaithersburg. "We decided to keep her at Gaithersburg because she was comfortable and didn't need more disruption," said Boatman, whose four children all attend different schools.

Last fall, Copeland made the dean's list for the first time at Gaithersburg, and barely missed it -- "with one too many Cs," as she puts it -- this semester. "Nobody in this house has bad grades. If you live here, you better have good grades," she said.

She has finally grown to appreciate what her mother had told her all along: that basketball could be a way for her to go to college for free. Copeland, who is being recruited by Maryland, Pittsburgh and Wake Forest among other schools, has an opportunity to lead the Trojans deep into the Maryland state tournament with the possibility of reaching their first final since 1992.

"It is so nice that she was finally here playing for Gaithersburg where she belonged," said Herb Tolbert, a Gaithersburg counselor and her mother's former coach. "Her mom was a star here and now she is a star here . . . For her to deal with what she has gone through is amazing. She has that kind of intestinal fortitude. More importantly, the turnaround she has made academically has just been great. She is happy here, and people here care about her."

Living with the Boatmans also has freed Copeland to be more like other teenagers; she no longer has to take her brother with her on dates or to the movies because there is no one else to watch him.

With security and stability, she also has become more comfortable talking about her life and its travails. In the past, she would change the subject when classmates asked questions. She revealed little to her closest friends about the sadness that she felt about losing two important figures in her life. But now, she occasionally brings friends into Tolbert's office to peer at the pictures on the wall of her mother as a Gaithersburg basketball star.

"I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me," Copeland said. "I have huge support. Everywhere I turn around I have got someone who is willing to help. My mother and grandmother were strong people. I know that they wouldn't want me sitting around and feeling sorry for myself. I know I have to stay strong."