Making a Commitment : Haro Embraces Father Role, Matures as Quartz Hill Quarterback

The land behind Jake Haro’s modest, middle-class home in Quartz Hill is arid and open. Desert land, good for solitary strolls and introspection.

Lately, Haro has headed into the high-desert emptiness for long walks.

For the past month, Quartz Hill High’s starting quarterback has had much on his mind. Thoughts of tonight’s Golden League opener against Canyon have weighed on the 18-year-old senior. Last year, Quartz Hill’s win over Canyon propelled the team to its best season, its first Golden League championship and a berth in the Southern Section Division I title game.

The pressure of topping, or even equaling, that performance has gripped Haro. But there is more on Haro’s mind than just football. There is also fatherhood.

At 12:27 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 8, Jake Haro and his fiancee Donna Sanders, also a Quartz Hill senior, became parents of a seven-pound, eight-ounce girl, Chasitty Nicole Haro.

Five days later, Haro suited up for Quartz Hill’s opener against Lompoc. Haro had a sub-par performance, completing two of six passes for 35 yards.

The next week, Haro played his worst game on the varsity. He completed just two of 13 for 47 yards and threw two crucial interceptions. Redlands upset Quartz Hill, 13-7.

The following week brought more of the same. Quartz Hill lost to Hesperia, 20-7, and Haro threw two more interceptions. The Rebels fell to 1-2.

Players and coaches, all of whom knew that Haro was a father, suggested that Haro’s mind was not entirely on football.

“I didn’t believe them,” Haro said. “I just thought everything was fine. But then I thought about it.

“I was thinking about playing football, but I was also wondering how my daughter was. I wasn’t thinking about doing things for me. So I took long walks, and I thought a lot.”

Invariably, his thoughts returned to his daughter. Eventually, Haro realized that he had to learn to separate parenthood from football.

“Maybe I was overjoyed. Maybe I wanted to be with my daughter a little more. I needed a little time,” he said. “Now, I think about football and afterward I worry about her.”

For Haro and the Rebels, matters improved after those long walks. In the fourth week, Quartz Hill defeated highly regarded San Gorgonio, 20-7, and 4-week-old Chasitty Nicole was in the stands for her first Quartz Hill football game.

Donna Sanders, 17, and Jake Haro have dated for 13 months. They met in a world-history class at Quartz Hill, and, as Haro says, “We just started liking each other.”

That was in Haro’s junior year, at the start of a football season in which the 5-foot-9, 165-pound quarterback earned All-Golden League honors.

Sanders’ pregnancy was not planned, but Haro and Sanders never wavered on their decision to keep the child.

“There were no second thoughts,” Haro said.

But the announcement from Jake, an only child, surprised Betty and Richard Haro. There was initial shock, and, as all parties concede, disappointment.

“When they first let us know, it was a big surprise,” Betty Haro said. “But you get adjusted to surprises and you go on with life. They’re still your kids and they’re family and family is important. You don’t give up on kids because they made one mistake.”

Both families, in fact, help the young couple financially. Haro and Sanders still live at their respective parents’ homes, although Sanders’ is in Littlerock, about 25 miles east of Quartz Hill.

Sanders keeps their daughter with her during the week, when her sister, her mother and a baby-sitter--the same baby-sitter who watched over Donna as an infant--help watch.

Haro, meanwhile, drives out two or three nights a week after practice to see mother and daughter. On weekends, however, Donna and Chasitty come to Quartz Hill to spend nights at the Haro household.

Acceptance grew after the announcement. Haro and Sanders stayed together and planned to raise their baby as husband and wife. Both say the marriage might not come for three or four years, until Haro is either out of college or established in a four-year school. In the meantime, Haro’s football teammates remained, for the most part, silent.

“Everybody knew it, but nobody mentioned it,” Quartz Hill Coach John Albee said.

Chasitty’s first name was chosen by Sanders, part of a deal between Jake and Donna that if the baby was a girl, Donna would pick the name, and if the baby was a boy, Jake would choose.

Haro witnessed the birth firsthand. “I thought it was gonna be sick or something,” Haro said sheepishly. “But it wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing.”

Haro could not wait to tell the world about it. He called Erik Thomas from the hospital, and informed the Quartz Hill tailback that his goddaughter had arrived. “I was happy,” Thomas said of his selection as godfather. “It’s something that I can do for him.”

But then came the difficult part for Haro. After missing school the two days after Chasitty’s birth, he returned to the classroom and his preparations for a football game that Friday. Things were happening fast.

In those first few weeks, Haro would get home from practice, do homework to keep up his 3.5 grade-point average and drive the half-hour each way to see mother and daughter. “He was kind of grumpy,” Sanders said. “He would stay until 10 p.m. (on school nights) and I figure he was bushed.”

Then came the team’s--and Haro’s--slow start. Pressures mounted.

Haro wanted to go out for pizza on a Saturday afternoon with a football coach, but Sanders insisted he baby-sit Chasitty. Haro’s frustration grew. The two didn’t go out to movies on Friday nights after games like they did the previous year. Instead, they gave Chasitty to Haro’s mom and escaped for quick dinners out together before returning to the baby.

“I didn’t get enough rest, and I wasn’t into it,” Haro admitted.

His mother saw it too.

“I think he was trying too hard,” she said. “When you have a brand-new baby, you are on cloud nine. And there is all the added excitement of seeing the baby and being with the baby. All of a sudden, you have somebody who is part of you.”

Something had to give.

So Haro headed into the desert. He thought about football and how simple it had been for him. After all, he had led the freshman, sophomore and varsity teams to league titles his first three seasons.

Rival coaches had admired his play from afar.

“I really love that kid,” Canyon Coach Harry Welch said. “I love his attitude. He is a winner and he lifts the kids around him. He could play on my team every year.”

On his walks, Haro tried to separate Jake Haro, the quarterback, from Jake Haro, the father.

He walked and he thought and he figured it was time to grow up. There would have to be a time for Chasitty, and a time for football.

Said Haro: “I was thinking about what I have to do . . . what I have to do for myself .”

The team helped matters. On Haro’s 18th birthday on Sept. 21, about 15 teammates helped Haro celebrate. The players coddled the baby.

“Yeah, we threw her around a little bit,” lineman Ralph Gutierrez said. “Well, not exactly threw her around, but you know what I mean.”

The laughter was needed and therapeutic.

Then came the win over San Gorgonio with Chasitty in attendance. Last Friday, Quartz Hill improved to 3-2 with a 21-20 win over Hart, a team the Rebels had not beaten since 1980. Haro directed two key scoring drives in the second half.

And so Haro heads into the Canyon game tonight, in what could be the biggest league game of the year, knowing full well what is at stake, knowing full well that his fiancee, his family and his daughter will be on hand to see the game.

A win, certainly, would be nice. Then one day, Haro can tell his daughter about the October night at Quartz Hill when she was too young to remember daddy helping his team win the big game against Canyon.

And if not? Haro and Sanders will take Chasitty out in her stroller for walks at the mall and still give her baths and try and do everything together as a family. Well, almost everything.

Said Sanders, with a laugh: “Jake’s not much for dirty diapers.”