Donminic’s Drive Nears High Gear WSU’s Ellison Says Injury As Youth Shifted Goals From Football To Basketball

Donminic Ellison never saw it coming.

Like any well-schooled, midget-league football star, he had been taught to concentrate on the ball and nothing else when catching a pass. He had been told to not worry about getting hit. The hit would come catch or no catch, his coaches had preached.

So make the catch.

What those coaches never warned Ellison, however, was that the hit might come from a speeding automobile.

And that’s exactly where it came from, back when Ellison was a 10-year-old tossing the football around with some friends near his home in Inglewood, Calif.

“It was right after a Pop Warner League football championship,” Ellison recalled of the grisly incident that could have cost him his life and permanently altered the path of his athletic pursuits. “I still had my uniform on and was trying to be a hero in front of some friends who were throwing the football out on the street.”

Ellison, who was still dreaming of becoming an NFL quarterback at the time, darted off the curb to catch a pass and was struck by a passing car. The impact snapped his left shin bone in half and shattered his right forearm.

Ellison spent almost seven months in casts and decided during his rehabilitation that he needed to find a different sport.

“The car accident sort of switched me,” he admitted. “I wanted to go to more of a non-contact sport. I didn’t want to be running into any more Chevrolets.”

It was a painful, yet defining, moment in Ellison’s life. When he recovered from his injuries, he turned to basketball as his new ticket out of South Central Los Angeles, where the streets have turned even meaner than they seemed to Ellison on that illfated autumn day back in 1986.

Today, Ellison is the starting point guard for Washington State’s men’s basketball team, which puts its 2-0 Pacific-10 Conference record and share of the league lead on the line tonight when it faces Southern California at 7 in the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

The 5-foot-10 sophomore is coming off a career weekend in which he registered 38 points, 15 assists and four steals while turning the ball over only four times in upset wins over California and Stanford.

Ellison’s effort, which earned him the Pac-10’s player of the week award, was sweetened by the presence of his divorced parents, who flew up separately from L.A. to watch their son play.

“Actually, I wasn’t even going to come,” said Carmen Ellison, who made the same trip several times last season when Donminic was fighting for playing time as a freshman. “But then Don said, ‘Mom, you’ve got to come. These are big games for us and I want you there.’

“I hadn’t seen him in almost six months, and when I got here I noticed a big change in him. His grades are getting better, he’s maturing and he’s playing really well. I’m very proud.”

With good reason. Her youngest of two sons, who is still only 18, went through his own mental hell to resurrect a basketball career that had lost all direction over the summer.

When Ellison left school last spring, he was academically ineligible. His freshman year, although productive on the basketball court, had been a bust in the classroom. He had even been suspended near the end of the season by then-Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson for cutting classes.

Ellison returned to Inglewood and enrolled in summer school at a junior college, hoping to regain his eligibility. But shortly after starting class, he received word that Sampson had resigned to become the head coach at Oklahoma.

Ellison first heard of Sampson’s decision from his father, Donnie, who has remained close to his son despite divorcing his mother when Donminic was only 8 years old.

“My head just dropped. I was, like, ‘Oh God,”’ Ellison said. “There were a lot of things going through my mind. I was struggling in summer school, I was thinking my college career might be over and I was wondering how well I might fit in at another program if I decided to transfer.”

“That was an ordeal for me, too,” said Carmen, “because I felt like there wasn’t anyone there for Don anymore. It was like they (Sampson and his staff) had all just left - left my baby in the cold.”

After Sampson’s departure, Carmen Ellison’s only reliable contacts at WSU were Dan Ruiz, the team’s trainer, and Jackie Mraz, Sampson’s former secretary, who is now program coordinator.

Both gave her good reviews on the hire of Kevin Eastman, who signed on to replace Sampson. And when Eastman flew to L.A. to meet personally with Ellison and his family shortly after taking the WSU job, Carmen was sold.

“When he came into my home and talked to Don and me about going back (to WSU), I felt good about him,” she recalled. “I got good vibes from him, and so did Don.”

Ellison was immediately impressed with Eastman’s direct and simple approach - and his message that he and his staff would stand behind him for as long as it took for him to clean up his academic act.

Ellison went on to pass both of his second-semester JC classes and regain his eligibility.

“There were a lot of doubts that I would ever make it back to Wazzu,” Ellison admitted. “But I can’t blame people for thinking that. I had flunked the first session of summer school and things looked glum at the time.

“But I liked the way that (Eastman and his staff) never gave up on me. They never went out and recruited another point guard or threw me out the window. They gave me a chance to come back and prove myself and I can’t ask for anything else.”

Since returning to WSU, Ellison has caught up academically for the first time since he arrived on campus as a 17-yearold. He is playing with a renewed sense of confidence, averaging 12.3 points and 6.7 assists per game. His assists-to-turnover ratio is better than 2-to-1.

Eastman, however, continues to exhibit extreme caution about Ellison’s improvements on the court and in the classroom.

“His development has been good in both areas,” he said. “But we’re still trying to get him to the point where it’s really, really good.

“Academically, he had a good (fall) semester, but we still want him to get better, knowing that sometimes what happens is that once someone tastes some success in a given area, then that person wants a little more.”

There is still a lot of the big city in Donminic Ellison, but he has learned to appreciate WSU.

“There are no distractions and no confusion about what you’re going to do,” he said. “You’re going to go to school.

“And the basketball environment is great. I have no regrets about any decisions I’ve made.”

Especially that one he made eight years ago after being blind-sided by a Chevrolet.