DAILY PILOT HIGH SCHOOL MALE ATHLETE OF THE WEEK:Mesa’s Puente breaks through

COSTA MESA —

Moving from apartment to apartment as a child, Costa Mesa High’s Larry Puente Jr. didn’t know where his next home would be.

Too young to understand why his mother and father weren’t together, Puente yearned for stability.

He found it on the basketball court, and much of that had to do with his father, Larry Puente Sr., getting custody of his son.

“I was with my mom [Linda] and he took me away from her. She had problems,” said the son, who along with his younger sister, Jazmine, moved in with their father before he turned 7. “She just had too much partying [in her life], and hanging around the wrong crowd. My dad didn’t really want me around that stuff.

“We didn’t really have a stable home.”

Basketball allowed father and son to immediately bond. With no woman in the picture to nurture the younger Puente, dad showed him a basketball. Right away he grabbed it, holding onto it like a child would a mom. Tightly.

Junior never let go. He couldn’t.

Not after seeing his father, a former prep standout at St. Anthony’s in New Jersey in 1980-81, play in a men’s recreational league in town. His dad scored a lot, using his 6-foot-4 frame and 30-inch vertical to his advantage.

He wanted to be like dad, who dunked on everyone.

Puente Jr. has grown since then. He’s 6-4 like dad, and at 185 pounds a lot skinnier than his 43-year-old father. But dad’s watching his son make the same kind of slashing offensive moves he did when he played.

Costa Mesa’s benefiting. The senior forward is averaging 22.2 points, 12 rebounds, five assists and three blocks per game as the Mustangs are off to a 4-0 start.

Unimaginable numbers to dad, who still remembers his 8-year-old son at the time asking him, “How does this basketball thing work?”

As easy as dad could put it, he told him, “You have to make it in the basket.”

Junior did a lot of that in helping Costa Mesa win the La Quinta Tournament in Westminster Saturday. In the semifinals, Puente Jr. poured in a career-best 39 points to go along with 15 rebounds, five blocks and four assists to lead Costa Mesa past Tustin, 66-52, and into the finals.

Then complacency set in with the team. Players came out flat against Katella. The new coach, Jeff McDaniel, observed. Waiting for someone to jump-start a team trailing 24-16 at halftime, Puente Jr. could hear his dad.

Senior’s yelled it repeatedly for the last 10 years while coaching his son’s AAU and city league teams.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?”

Puente Jr. just laughed, never turning toward the stands to find his dad. He knew he needed to pick up his team, and the all-tournament MVP did.

With Katella collapsing on him, Puente Jr. still finished with 21 points. But his ability to kick the ball out to shooters like Moses Titus in traffic only makes Costa Mesa tougher to contain.

Titus, a senior, hit four three-pointers, giving him 13 for the tournament and the Mustangs won 59-51.

“(My dad) comes to every game. I like to see him out there because sometimes he gives me good advice,” said Puente of his dad’s constant reminders of getting his teammates involved. “He’ll tell me to keep my head up.”

Puente Jr. can’t have it any other way. Not one to hang his head about his childhood and not speaking with his mother since the third grade, he stays positive.

On the court, Titus hasn’t seen Puente Jr., a three-year varsity player, succumb to pressure.

“I’m not impressed by how this guy does it,” Titus said, “because he does it every day.”

Nothing can knock Puente Jr. off course. Maybe a wave, but he loves those, even if they thump him off his surfboard or boogie board.

The ocean has been where he can forget about everything, and literally let loose.

Three to four times a week you can find him around 5:30 a.m. riding waves at Huntington Beach or Newport Beach until as he put it, he “can’t really move anymore.”

Spending too much time in the water has gotten him in trouble with his dad.

Dad taught him how to surf, maybe too well.

During the summer, when dad assisted Costa Mesa’s team and also ran an AAU team called Old School Academy, Puente Jr. hit the beach despite some games starting at 9 a.m.

“I didn’t know, but he’d be out there for a couple of hours before the game, and sometimes we’d be scheduled to play two or three games in the morning, and then two or three later in the day,” said the dad. “When I found out, he’d be like, ‘I didn’t want you to get mad.’”

Dad couldn’t. Not at the kid, who this summer reminded him of himself as a teenager.

Junior, now wearing a clean-cut hairdo to make a good first impression on his new coach, wore his hair past his shoulders and sported a headband. At first, dad couldn’t figure out the odd look until his new wife, Michelle, browsed through photos of her husband during his high school days.

“She was like, ‘That is you! He has Vans like you, the same kind of clothes as you, and the same surfer hair as you,” dad said. “She was right, and now I’m just hoping he’ll get to play in college.”

The opportunities to play at the next level could be there for Puente Jr.

His coach, who played on Concordia University’s 2002-03 NAIA Division I championship team, said he’ll do whatever he can to find his premier athlete a team to play for next year.

“I know enough people and I’ll get him somewhere,” McDaniel said.

If Puente Jr. doesn’t find the opportunity to continue his playing career, he plans to pursue something his father couldn’t.

“He’s pretty much the reason I want to go to college. I want to go for him,” said the son, whose father said he enlisted in the Army after blowing out a knee as a member of Iowa State’s football team in 1981. “I didn’t really understand [why he took us in]. He said it was the best for us.

“He’s pretty much the reason why I live a better life.”