A fresh start at Verbum Dei

After canceling season four games into 2024, 'The Verb' gradually rebuilds football plans.

- BY ERIC SONDHEIMER

ERIC SONDHEIMER Los Angeles Times COACH Gary Parks with Verbum Dei's Pfeifer Heard, left, and Adrian Alvarado.

It was as startling as seeing a bear swimming in a backyard pool.

Travis Russell, the 40year-old Jesuit priest who's president at Verbum Dei High, was carrying around a Craftsman tool box as if he were the school's handyman. He pulled out a hammer to demonstrate he knows what he's doing.

"I had to hang up a picture of the new pope," he said.

It's all hands on deck at "The Verb," a beacon of hope for many in South Los Angeles. With an enrollment of 310 students, the all-boys Catholic school in Watts has a tuition of $4,000, with most families paying $1,200 thanks to assistance from a corporate work study program and other Catholic scholarship funds.

Once a powerhouse in basketball in the 1970s with the likes of Raymond Lewis, David Greenwood and Roy Hamilton, the school canceled its football season after four games in 2024 because of a lack of players. It was a decision made by Russell, who believed his school needed to start over.