A Journey of Grief and Uncertainty

It’s only been two weeks into the new year, and St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School junior Alvin Livingston already can’t wait until 2027. In the last few months alone, he’s dealt with a rollercoaster of emotions — none worse than what happened on Jan. 5.

“It was a morning, and my dad (Grady Livingston) was getting ready to get his new car,” Alvin said. “And then he just fell in the closet.” First responders soon showed up at the Livingston’s house to discover he had a heart attack. Alvin attempted to keep his mom away from them, not wanting her to see Grady with tubes and machines on him while the medics performed CPR.

“My mom looks over at him and starts screeching, screaming, crying, and wailing,” Alvin said. “She’s yelling, ‘This isn’t supposed to happen! He wasn’t supposed to leave. This is not how it was supposed to end.’ I’m just holding her, and the medics are using this machine, trying to get his heart to start again. It’s pumping and pumping and pumping, but there’s no pulse, no movement.”

Grady was pronounced dead at 11:12 a.m. that day. “But I know I can’t cry,” Alvin says. “I can’t show emotion. I have to stay strong for my mom. Later, I let my family go cry together while I walk into a room in the back and see my dad’s body on a tarp, his eyes open but still no life,” Alvin said. “He’s dead. I still don’t cry. No emotion, just … blank.”

Unable to know just how to feel, Alvin knows there is one thing he can do to ease the pain — play basketball. The problem is he can’t. Alvin is one of four St. Pat’s players ruled ineligible for a full year last week.

Transferring from American Canyon

Alvin Livingston previously went to school at American Canyon High School, playing on the varsity basketball team as a sophomore during the 2024-25 season. However, Livingston’s parents decided to move Alvin to St. Pat’s for his junior year after both of them were concerned about some situations on campus, mainly Alvin having a P.E. class with former teacher and coach Brad Rowell, who was charged with 21 felonies for multiple felony sex crimes against a female student.

Alvin’s mom, Robin-Nicole, a retired Probation Manager in Contra Costa, did not want her son around people like Rowell. “I did not want him in that situation,” Robin-Nicole said. “We looked at a few schools, such as Justin-Siena, but its tuition is more expensive than it is at St. Pat’s ($18,000 a year). I also didn’t want Alvin driving over the bridge too far into Richmond or Oakland.”

Alvin enrolled at St. Pat’s for his junior year and was ruled eligible to play basketball by the North Coast Section. Around this time, Robin-Nicole was in the final stages of beating breast cancer. Everything finally seemed right in the world.

St. Pat’s Open Gym

At the start of this school year, four more players transferred to St. Pat’s, although one of them moved to Vallejo after enrolling at nearby Vanden High in Fairfield. The other three transfers were Royce Pennington from Vallejo High, along with former Silas Hightower fro Jesse Bethel, and Oskar Svenson from El Cerrito. Hightower is a sophomore, while Svenson and Pennington are juniors.

St. Pat’s head basketball coach Derek Walker acknowledged that the school has received and lost transfers in the past, but receiving five in one year was the most they’ve ever had. Pennington said his parents also decided to transfer him from one school to another for safety concerns, citing the September 2022 shooting of then-assistant Vallejo High football coach Joe Pastrana, while he was trying to break up a fight on Nebraska Street as the school day was ending. Pastrana was shot in the upper hip by a suspect in a black four-door Audi.

“Vallejo wasn’t really a safe school,” Pennington said on Thursday. “Education there wasn’t right for me either.” Pennington, like Livingston, Suvenson, and Hightower, also enrolled at St. Pat’s starting the current school year, but it’s what they all did in the summer that caught the North Coast Section’s attention.

According to section documents, Xavier Simms and Ronald Rhymes, both students at St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School, played with Pennington and Livingston on the 707 Premier AAU travel team. Hightower, Pennington, Livingston, and Svenson also participated in the school’s open gyms and summer basketball camps.

Open gyms are a scheduled time when gym or community center facilities are available for individuals to work out. It’s not a class, and there is usually no formal instructor. More than anything, they are designed to get kids off the street and into a safe environment.

Ineligible

The North Coast Section, however, took a different view of the transfers competing together under one roof at St. Pat’s gym. Written statements and testimony from Cruickshank detailed the violations of CIF Bylaws 207 and 510. Cruickshank detailed the pre-enrollment contact as well as the evidence that multiple students have transferred or changed schools to participate in a particular athletic program at one school.

“Pat Cruickshank had called my dad (Stuart Pennington) one day (in October) and was asking some questions about Vallejo and why I transferred,” Royce said. “Then, in December, we all got a letter saying we were ruled ineligible. It was around lunchtime. All our parents called us around the same time. We were shocked. It was out of the blue. We then tried to figure out the next steps and how to appeal it.”

Not only were Pennington, Hightower, and Svenson ruled ineligible, but on Dec. 9, Alvin Livingston’s eligibility was reversed. Each of the four players was not allowed to play basketball for a full year with St. Pat’s, although they can practice with the team and cheer their teammates on in games. Pennington will have to sit out 30 days before competing in baseball this year, while Svenson will have to do the same with tennis.

The banning of basketball for a full year has Robin-Nicole Livingston and Walker angry and asking why the punishment wasn’t 30 days for basketball as well.

“It wasn’t an individualized assessment,” Robin-Nicole said. “In my son’s case, he was approved, and the process was complete. There should not have been a retroactive impact. It’s not fair to my son and his journey. I don’t know what the section has with Derek or St. Pat’s, but none of that should have affected Alvin, and it did.”

Walker is also upset. “I was extremely disappointed,” Walker said. “The kids did nothing wrong, the parents did nothing wrong. We were open arms about everything, and we didn’t try to hide anything. They should have gotten a normal sit-out period (30 days), like 98 percent of the kids that transfer. We are really not in the loop, asking the section what’s going on because the section talks with the parents. But each case is supposed to be looked at independently … it’s just so wrong. It’s just so wrong to punish the kids. In the paperwork, they looked at the last three years and how many other transfers have come in. That tells you right there they are not looking at each case independently.”

Two years ago, St. Pat’s had another four transfers, including Tyriq McNeal, formerly of Vallejo High. Walker said he’s heard from others that the school was then “put on the section’s radar.” “How do I deal with it?” Walker asks. “You just deal with it. I wish I had been interviewed, called, and asked what was going on. These kids are coming from a public school to a private school, they pick up an $18,000 bill, and they play basketball. I don’t know why these transfers were looked at differently.”

Coping with Grief

Alvin said that days before Grady’s death, he was “dealing with a lot of stress and a lot of anger, with the majority coming from the ruling at the appeal. ‘We were trying to keep it together before the appeal for everyone,’ Alvin said. ‘But when the news broke, a lot of emotions broke out. You’d be sad and then angry the next moment. But he told me that ‘you can’t focus on just one thing.’ You have to focus on everything. That worked a little before his death, but now? ‘I miss my dad’s presence and being able to talk with him,’ Alvin continued. ‘You know how people say you don’t miss someone until they’re gone? It’s true. I didn’t think that was true before, but I do now.'”

Something unexpected occurred the day of Grady Livingston’s death. Although Walker told Alvin to take a few days off, Alvin showed up anyway. “We were shocked when he showed up, but we’re trying to keep his spirits up,” Pennington said. “Not letting him be alone during tough times and just trying to show our best support for him.”

Robin-Nicole thanks the St. Pat’s community for helping Alvin during this tough time. “They have been a second family for him,” Robin-Nicole said. “They have been there for him, and they care for him. They try to get his energy out in a positive way. His resolve has been unbelievable during this time. My kid deserves more. All the things that have happened to him, one piled on right after another. He shouldn’t have to fight for things all the time.”