It was late, around 10 p.m. this past May, that Southern Miss men’s basketball coach Jay Ladner had already decided to hire Juan Cardona as his assistant coach.
After a few minutes of a conversation over the phone, Ladner couldn’t help but notice that it sounded like Cardona was driving. It struck him as odd to be driving so late, especially in Miami.
Finally, Ladner asked, “Where are y’all going to stay tonight?”
As Ladner learned, Cardona had been living in his car with his wife and four children. In the last two months, Cardona drove until all of his children fell asleep in the car and finally parked and locked the car inside Miami Christian High School’s gated parking lot to provide protection. Once Cardona’s children woke up the following day, he would tell them each night that they had stayed at a hotel but couldn’t remember since they were asleep when they arrived.
While to some, it may have seemed like the epitome of unfortunate circumstances, in reality, it was the depiction of a man chasing his dream and passion – to one day be the first Puerto Rican-born Division I college basketball coach, and continue making an impact on people’s lives.
In his first season at Southern Miss, Cardona has been an integral part of helping the 8-0 Golden Eagles turnaround the program that finished 7-26 last season and had gone 24-65 in the last three years. This 8-0 start includes road wins over Vanderbilt, Liberty and a win over Winthrop, which has played for the Big South Championship for the last three years.
Cardona is the team’s “defensive coordinator,” as Ladner puts it, and has helped guide the Golden Eagles into statistically being one of the best defensive teams in the country. If you watch any Southern Miss game, you’ll see and hear Cardona yelling at the top of his lungs on every possession on the Golden Eagles’ bench. USM boasts of having the 12th-best scoring defense (55 per game), is 11th in turnovers forced per game (20.29 per game) and is 10th in steals per game (11.4 per game). Last year, two of those three categories were ranked below 300 nationally, with steals being the highest at 278th.
“He’s an incredible story no matter what, just as a man,” Ladner said. “He’s what people talk about with the American Dream. He’s living it.
“He fights like a dog every day to make sure that we are successful.”
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Cardona’s first love was baseball, which is what brought him stateside during high school in the 1990s. As a catcher, Cardona aspired to play professional baseball and worked out with the New York Mets, Atlanta Braves and the Montreal Expos.
An injury derailed his baseball career, killing his love for the game and forcing him to return to Puerto Rico at 18 years old. It was then that his brother suggested that he get into coaching basketball.
“When I got hurt, everything fell apart in my head,” Cardona said. “I went back to Puerto Rico and hadn’t wanted anything to do with baseball.”
During this time, Cardona began coaching high school basketball for free. His father, who was a music teacher, lent Cardona his van to bring kids to and from practice for three years. Cardona eventually met his future mentor, the now-late Miguel Mercado, who was an influential figure and well-regarded coach of Puerto Rican basketball. Mercado and Cardona coached against each other, with Mercado’s teams always emerging victorious.
Finally, Cardona asked if Mercado would hire him.
“The first time, he said no, and was very short,” Cardona said.
Later during a tournament, one of Cardona’s players had an incident on the court, which forced him to settle the player down, which Mercado noticed. Mercado offered him the chance to coach for a fifth and sixth-grade team that had won just one game the year before.
“I said when do I start?” Cardona said.
Cardona moved in with Mercado so that he could be around the game 24/7. After six months, Mercado told Cardona to coach elsewhere because Mercado did not want to take credit for Cardona’s achievements. At his new school, Cardona coached Walter Hodge, who became a two-time NCAA champion at Florida, and Denis Clemente, who helped lead Kansas State to an appearance in the Elite Eight.
But instead of coaching players for all four years, Cardona would send his best players stateside to get proper exposure. Cardona then subsequently met his other mentor Art Alvarez through Mercado. Alvarez is a basketball figure and coach in Miami who helps local recruiting and ran the AAU Miami Tropics.
“Miguel told me that this is going to be the first Puerto Rican ever to be a head coach in college,” Alvarez said. “He has this great basketball mind, and he’s telling me this when Juan was 18 years old.
“When Miguel died, I think that’s when he began to push to be one of the best coaches in Puerto Rico. He wanted to repay Miguel for what he did.”
Cardona’s new school offered scholarships to players, and his parents, Lizzy and Juan Sr., as well as his late grandmother Alicia Rivera, would house as many as 10 players at 80 years old just so Cardona could have successful teams.
“When you find joy in what you do, and you know you can help people, you just have to keep going,” Cardona said. “My grandma made a lot of things happen, and I owe a lot to her.”
One of those players he housed was a then 15-year-old Neftali Alvarez, who is now a starting guard at Southern Miss. Neftali, more commonly known as Nefta, comes from the “caserio”, which is better known as the hood by most Americans.
Nefta and Cardona barely spoke to each other, and their dislike for one another was mutual. But Cardona saw the talent Nefta had and never relented in pushing him to be better.
“I didn’t go to practice sometimes because I didn’t want to see his face,” Nefta said. “I even asked him a couple of times to fight.
“I knew if I wanted to play, I had to deal with him. He’s a coach that will push you no matter what; even if you are good at something, then he’ll put more pressure on you because he knows you can do better.”
MOVE TO MIAMI
Cardona then coached in international professional leagues and, during the summer, coached with Alvarez in Miami.
“I told him that whenever you have an opportunity for me, hit me up and I will leave whatever I’m doing,” Cardona said. “I want you to guide my career in the States just like you have done for all those kids, but I had that conversation with him when I was 18. He called me at 38.”
Alvarez called Cardona on Sunday and said he needed him first thing in the morning. Without hesitation, Cardona resigned from his coaching job with his professional team in Puerto Rico. Cardona arrived in Miami at 6 a.m. and signed to coach at Miami Christian by 9 a.m.
In three years at Miami Christian, Cardona helped guide the school to two state championships as well as met the current starting forward for Southern Miss, Felipe Haase. Haase, a Chilean national who had been living in Los Angeles and was recruited by Cardona to play his senior year of high school in Miami. Also playing under Cardona at Miami Christian was now current key Southern Miss bench player Marcelo Perez.
Haase also became roommates with Nefta, who at this point lived with Cardona for three years. The apartment they shared was a two-room, two-bathroom apartment that had just plastic chairs and plastic tables. Haase soon bonded with Cardona and Nefta, along with Cardona’s wife and kids. Haase even keeps a photo of Juan’s oldest son, known as Little Juan. The photo was a gift from Little Juan to Haase as it reads, “To Felipe, my older brother. I love you so much.”
“He had so much confidence in me that I had never experienced from anybody else,” Haase said. “He’s the first one and probably the only one that made me believe in myself seriously.”
DEPARTURE AT MERCER
After his success at Miami Christian, Cardona had finally broken through in collegiate basketball and was reunited with Haase and Nefta at Mercer. However, Mercer was just not the right fit for Cardona.
Cardona spent two seasons at Mercer and was overwhelmed with guilt that he was leaving Haase and Nefta.
“He coaches every possession,” Alvarez said. “When I say every possession, it’s not you get up, and you sit, and you kind of walk the sideline. He’s coaching every single possession. He doesn’t stand still. He’s a madman.
“With Juan, you need to let him participate because that’s when he is at his best.”
But at Mercer, Cardona’s role was limited; while he has respect for the Mercer program, the lack of involvement was frustrating. Even his own players could see it.
“I knew he was unhappy,” Haase said.
Cardona returned to Miami to work with Art and coached at Miami Prep.
Then this past spring, his luck took an unexpected turn as his family had a deal on a house but unexpectedly fell through and didn’t have the down payment for the house. After another failed attempt to get a house, Cardona and his family began living in a hotel room for eight months, and then for two months, to save expenses, Cardona lived in his family car with his four children; Juan Jr., 8, Joaliz, 5, Lizaida, 3, and Angel, 1, and his wife. Not to mention, Cardona also has two other children from a previous marriage Mariliz, 21, and Johanna, 19, that were living in Puerto Rico.
“We were desperate,” Cardona’s wife Rosaida said. “It was driving me crazy. Imagine six people in a little room in a hotel for eight months. We had two kids in one bed and two kids on an air mattress.
“Cooking, we had a little stove in the room, and it only had two burners. I tried to do everything on there.”
It was a situation that both Haase and Nefta became aware of as they spoke regularly with Cardona during this time period. The situation frustrated both young college players, who hated that their adoptive family was living in a car. During this time, Cardona had received offers to coach professionally again, but he turned them down with the hope of returning to collegiate basketball. The situation frustrated Nefta so much that he refused to talk to Cardona for a month.
“It made me sad because they are literally like my little brothers and sisters,” Nefta said. “I told him 50 or 100 times to take a job in Puerto Rico, offering a lot of money.
“Now he’s one of the best assistants in the nation. He’s making his dream a reality. That shows me it doesn’t matter what I’m going through, if it’s bad or not, to never give up.”
JOINING SOUTHERN MISS
Ironically, Ladner had tried to hire Cardona two previous times. The duo first met when Ladner was recruiting one of Cardona’s players at Miami Christian.
Ladner planned to attend their 6 a.m. practice. However, Ladner couldn’t figure out how to get into the school because of the perimeter fences. After making numerous circles around the campus, Ladner found a maintenance man but was late to practice. As Ladner approached the gym door, he could hear Spanish being yelled from players and coaching.
“I thought one of two things, either there is a brawl going on because of the intensity of what going on, or there is somebody coaching their ass off,” Ladner said. “It was one of the most impressive high school practices that I have ever seen.”
Ladner didn’t land the player, but the duo hit off and made what is now considered to be a historic trip to Hooters that sparked a basketball friendship and comradery.
“We are connected because we come from the bottom,” Cardona said. “When I met him, I told him that I wanted to be his right hand.
“He looked at me like I was crazy.”
Ladner tried to hire Cardona at Southeastern Louisiana, which Cardona turned down due to low money. The second time Ladner tried to hire Cardona was just after he took the job at Southern Miss, but just days earlier, Cardona accepted his position at Mercer, and so out of principle, he turned Ladner down again.
Yet what has made Ladner and Cardona a perfect coaching marriage is that they bring two different aspects and backgrounds to basketball. Ladner brings an old-school style from the 80s, with the bulk of his experience coming from high school and college, while Cardona brings in the European style, with his experience largely being made up of the Puerto Rican professional league that he coached in for 11 years that has so far created a perfect storm of brilliance.
“He brings a European, professional basketball approach,” Ladner said. “I needed to evolve.
“What we have taken is the best of all of it and our own experiences in what we call La Familia.”
As Cardona looks back on the trials and tribulations of his career, he is reminded of the determination he has to fulfill his dream of collegiate coaching and honor all those who have helped along the way. That drive has carried over in wanting to help Ladner and the rest of the staff achieve their goals and dreams for the program.
“You have to honor the sacrifices,” Cardona said. “The way I attack my days, I just want him to reach history so that everybody can reach their dreams.”
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