Daily Pilot High School Football Player of the Week: Le shows strength drawn from family

A couple of weeks ago, TaeVeon Le boarded a charter bus with his Corona del Mar High football team. The Sea Kings traveled 388 miles north to play a game in Los Gatos.

Any out-of-town trip is a special one for players. For Le, the trip was more than a game.

Twenty minutes away from the site of the game was a place Le considers his home. He and his mother, An, had a rough start when Le was young and they both spent a lot of time in San Jose with the help of the Drew family.

At 17, Le returned to that same place. It was the day after CdM’s game. He didn’t remember what it was like to live in San Jose, but he has heard the stories and seen the pictures about what the area meant for him and his mom.

“[We had] a roof over our heads,” Le said. “For that, I’m thankful.”

The Drew family treated a young An and Le, and later, An’s younger daughter, Tiana, as family. An said the Drews owned two houses right next to each other on the same street and everybody took care of Le while she put herself through law school at the University of San Francisco.

There was Amy Drew, An’s friend and Le’s godmother, Amy’s sisters, Kimberly and Tiffany, and Amy’s parents, Judy and Kenneth. Without their help, An isn’t sure how she would have been able to get by.

The Drew family and the Le family have remained close throughout the years. Most of the Drews saw TaeVeon and Tiana on Sept. 3, the day after CdM beat Los Gatos, 31-13.

“There were a lot of tears,” An said during a barbeque the Drew family held for the Les in San Jose. “For them to see how the children have grown up and how they’re emotionally healthy [was great].”

Le said he owes his development to his mother. The sacrifices An made as a single mom for her family are ones Le has not forgotten.

He knows he wouldn’t be where he’s at without his mom. He calls her an Asian Tiger mom. She’s proud of the title. She’s quite demanding of Le off the field.

While Le is coming off last week’s 234-yard receiving effort, a CdM single-game record, An expects her son to produce in the classroom. As many yards as Le and Cal-bound quarterback Chase Garbers hooked up for in the Sea Kings’ 42-13 win against El Toro at Jim Scott Stadium, what stands out more to An is her son’s 4.2 weighted grade-point average.

The grades and Le’s abilities on the field have the Ivy League schools interested in the 6-foot-4, 225-pound wide receiver. Le said Yale has offered him, and Utah, a Pacific-12 Conference school is recruiting him as well.

Le’s college guidance counselor at CdM is Mary Russell. He refers to her as “Momma Mary” as do many students do at CdM. Le said Russell is a Utah graduate, and she’s trying to talk him into seriously looking at the school in Salt Lake City.

An isn’t too sure about letting her son go that far.

“I’m not ready to cut that umbilical cord,” An joked, “but I want Tae to go to the best school for him.”

An has always wanted the best for Le.

After living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the family headed to Orange County, to Westminster, where An had family. There the conditions started to improve.

“We all lived in a room, and for a year we basically all ate out of a microwave and a mini fridge,” said An, adding that when she earned a job as a paralegal she moved the family to its own apartment in Huntington Beach. “We had no furniture. We slept on the floor. But we were happy as hell.”

Le said he remembers the struggle. He had to grow up fast.

There were the late nights his mother worked, the times An left him with the babysitter or a family friend. It was all for the future of An’s kids, her pursuing her law degree, which she earned in 2003.

Le understood why she wasn’t around.

“I told Tae, ‘I’ve been working since I was 16,’” An said. “My first job was working at the Chinese fast food restaurant [in Fairfax, Va., where I grew up], picking up the phone and saying, ‘Chinese Chopstick House, how can I help you?’” An said. “I said, ‘You don’t have to work. You have no excuse not to bring home straight A’s, and the world is not any easier when you get out.’”

An would know how hard life is. When she was 1, An said she and her family came to the U.S. as refugees from Vietnam during the Vietnam War in 1975. She said the family resettled in Fairfax, Va., which is home to a large Vietnamese community like the one in Westminster.

One family member who moved to Orange County from Virginia was Vic Vo. An said Vo is her cousin, but Le calls him “Uncle Vic” because he has been a father figure to him, from working out with him to teaching him how to be a man.

Vo, a nurse practitioner, and An always attend Le’s games. In the previous one, Le finished with nine receptions, three went for touchdowns.

Seeing a player of Le’s size break away from defenders looks unreal. His 40-yard dash time is 4.6 seconds. Kevin Hettig, CdM’s offensive coordinator since 2011, said Le is the most unique receiver the Sea Kings have had during his time at the school.

“When he caught that [pass on the sideline midway through the fourth quarter] and took off, he had a corner just try to knock him out of bounds and Tae’s hips didn’t even move. The guy just bounces off and Tae goes [82 yards for a touchdown],” Hettig said. “He’s got really underrated speed. It’s deceptive how fast he his. His two big [touchdowns, the other was a 68-yarder], he’s outrunning the secondary.”

Le isn’t the only member in his family who performs under the lights. His sister, a freshman at CdM, acts.

Tiana plays Dayniece, a recurring guest star in the upcoming HBO comedy show “Insecure.” An said her daughter plays a biracial student in the series, Tiana is half African-American and half Vietnamese like Le.

Both of An’s kids have to do a lot of memorizing, Le the CdM (2-1) playbook for the Battle of the Bay game against rival Newport Harbor (2-0) at Orange Coast College on Friday and Tiana her lines for future work. The acting takes up a lot of Tiana’s time, and Le stands in as an actor at their home in the Eastbluff neighborhood when she’s rehearsing her lines.

“Once her show airs [on Oct. 9], I’m sure she’ll be super popular and I’ll just be the little scrub,” said Le, who went into this week leading the county in receptions (28) and receiving yards (444). “We debate about [what’s harder, acting or playing football]. She says it’s harder to memorize 1,001 lines and I say it’s harder to memorize 1,001 plays. She says it’s harder to drive [from Newport Beach] to [Los Angeles] and go back and forth, and I told her it’s harder to run sprints back and forth.”

All the running around is possible because of one woman, their mom.

TaeVeon Le

Born: May 13, 1999

Hometown: Oakland

Height: 6-foot-4

Weight: 225 pounds

Sport: Football

Year: Junior

Coach: Dan O’Shea

Favorite food: Pho

Favorite movie: “The Lord of the Rings Trilogy”

Favorite athletic moment: “[Scoring] my first touchdown on varsity against Dana Hills last year.”

Week in review: Le finished with nine receptions for 234 yards and three touchdowns in the Sea Kings’ 42-13 win against El Toro at Jim Scott Stadium.