When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition

by Neil Hayes

  Or, as another of his former players would later say: “You always respect and remember the first person who treated you like an adult.”

  He has thought about quitting. He has never seriously considered accepting one of the numerous offers he has had to move up to the college ranks. “I don’t know if I like football that much,” he says. In other ways he is a hostage of The Streak. It’s difficult to walk away from something like that, if for no other reason than pity for the poor man who inherits the albatross.

  So, he soldiers on, even if there’s often someplace he’d rather be, something he’d rather do. But when all eleven of his players are playing as one, and not for themselves but for the person next to them, and when they’re firing off the ball and playing with passion and every ounce of effort they can summon, it can become a symphony of male adolescence. That’s when he feels truly inspired.

  That’s what amazes him about The Streak. It has been accomplished by teenagers and indicates what they are capable of doing.

  “I felt I was called to do this,” Ladouceur says. “This is what I should be doing. As crazy as that may seem to some people—maybe they can’t even understand what the heck it means—but I’m not alone. A lot of teachers at this school feel they have been called. This isn’t just a job. This is a life mission.”

  His is the most publicized high school football team in the country. But Ladouceur has never read or seen anything that he felt encapsulates his program or begins to define it.

  “If someone truly wants to understand, they have to be on the other side of the oleanders,” said former De La Salle principal Brother Michael Meister. “They have to go and see. They have to look and feel.”

  2

  BEHIND THE OLEANDERS

  People describe De La Salle’s head football coach as mysterious, probably because his face is impossible to read. His mouth is perpetually frozen between a smile and a frown. Deep crow’s feet frame his eyes, and his brow appears to extend when he gives somebody “The Look.”

  Everyone who has played football for De La Salle knows “The Look.” Bob Ladouceur rarely raises his voice. His message is instantly conveyed when his jaw muscles tighten and his lips, which are thin to begin with, disappear altogether.

  It’s the eyes that everybody remembers most. Those “criminal eyes,” as assistant coach Terry Eidson calls them. Players swear he can peer straight into their souls.

  “Fear slowly gives way to respect during your four years here,” said former player and assistant coach Justin Alumbaugh.

  ★ ★ ★

  Eidson pushes balls into a machine that fires hissing spirals to receivers during the first practice of the 2002 season. As the school’s athletic director and the football team’s defensive coordinator and special teams coach, he is both Ladouceur’s superior and subordinate. It might be an awkward arrangement if these two old friends had bigger egos or if they hadn’t realized long ago that their personalities interlock like puzzle pieces.

  Eidson looks more like the theology teacher he is by day than the football coach he becomes in the afternoon. His beard is slowly turning gray, and his wire-rimmed glasses lend him a scholarly appearance. While Ladouceur often appears weary, Eidson has boundless energy.

  Eidson is the dreamer in the program. He’s the front man, media contact, and promoter. His father owned stakes in several racehorses. He grew up along the backstretch at Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows. He remains a handicapper in life, always convinced he’s right, always ready to double his bet.

  Eidson’s voice leaves his mouth in a raspy whisper that is easily carried away by the wind or drowned out by the sound of metal cleats on a cement floor. He screams to be heard on the practice field, or above the screaming guitars of the heavy-metal music he favors, or above the squeals of his two young daughters.

  He lives in a perpetual state of exasperation. He stands on the sideline, chewing on his lanyard, until a defensive player fails to properly execute an assignment or lines up in the wrong spot. Then he starts convulsing, as if a puppeteer were jerking his strings from above. Players have grown so used to these outbursts that often they wink at one another while Eidson stomps around.

  “He honestly thinks our kids are loud because of me,” says his wife, Aggie, shaking her head in disbelief. “I find that so comical.”

  Calling Eidson Ladouceur’s assistant isn’t accurate. Partner is more like it. As the defensive coordinator and special teams coach Eidson controls two-thirds of the game—the most critical two parts, in his opinion.

  In his role as athletic director, he is in charge of scheduling for all sports, including football. As a result, De La Salle has played in front of as many as 30,000 fans in some of the most anticipated high school football games in history. The 2002 schedule may be the most difficult yet. The Spartans will open against defending Central Coast Section runner-up Archbishop Mitty of San Jose before traveling to Honolulu to meet 14-time Hawaii state champion St. Louis in a game that promoters are hopeful will draw as many as 40,000 fans to Aloha Stadium.

  Three weeks later comes a rematch with Southern California superpower Long Beach Poly, a program that has sent more players to the NFL (39) than any other high school in the nation and poses the greatest threat to The Streak.

  The opponents don’t worry Ladouceur as much as the timing. Instead of playing the toughest opponents at the end of the season, like most teams, his Spartans will play two of the top programs in the nation in the first five weeks. This lends a sense of urgency to the first day of practice.

  The 48 varsity players scattered across the cramped practice field come from 23 different public high school districts throughout Contra Costa County.

  This group already has impressed the coaching staff with its work ethic during summer workouts presided over by head trainer and strength coach Mike Blasquez. Ex-players claim that De La Salle’s off-season regimen is more demanding than anything they have encountered while playing in college or the NFL. A senior on the 2001 team kept track of the hours he and his teammates worked out during the off-season. The final number was 995 hours.

  “If I didn’t show up, they would run that program and work just as hard or harder knowing I wasn’t there because they believe wholeheartedly in what we do,” Blasquez said. “They know what they’re doing is the absolute right way to do it. They believe they need to work as hard as they do.”

  The 2002 team is markedly different than its immediate predecessors. In recent seasons seniors have embraced leadership roles and made the coaches’ jobs easy. There are no leaders on the 2002 team, at least not yet. Hopefully, leaders will emerge.

  This team has talent. De La Salle always has talent, regardless of whether the athletes are recruited to the campus, drawn like a moth to a flame, or created through the sweat and science of the strength and speed programs.

  Running back Maurice Drew was compared to Barry Sanders after his breakout four-touchdown performance against Long Beach Poly in 2001.

  Drew is five-foot-seven, 190 pounds, and can bench-press 330 pounds, squat 515, and run the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds. He’s a human ricochet with a football under his arm, bounding around the field at wild angles, would-be tacklers never sure where his next step will take him.

  He is a typical De La Salle student who spends as much as an hour on traffic-clogged freeways each morning. He attended public elementary school in nearby Antioch. One day his mother fed his key chain through his belt loop so he wouldn’t lose it. When school officials informed her that it was a gang sign, Andrea Drew immediately enrolled her son in the nearest Catholic grammar school.

  He was a youth football legend. After watching De La Salle dismantle his hometown team, young Maurice knew which high school he would attend. What he didn’t know was that his mother had already arrived at the same decision.

  It required sacrifice. His parents were divorced and his mother traveled on business. He moved in with his grandparents in Pinole, thirty miles away, so hi
s retired grandfather could drive him back and forth to school every day.

  “I knew it was a disciplined environment that would allow him to grow up and be a mature adult,” Andrea said. “I didn’t know he would develop this kind of friendship with the football players. They do everything together.”

  ★ ★ ★

  Attention to detail is one of the things that separates De La Salle from the competition. Ladouceur and his staff give players vigilant feedback. Not even the slightest misstep or hesitation goes unnoticed. He has been known to spend forty-five minutes during a spring practice teaching the importance of his offensive linemen’s splits. Every player’s technique, whether he is an offensive lineman or a wide receiver, is constantly being refined.

  “He brings tremendous focus to every practice,” former junior varsity coach Pat Hayes said. “I don’t know how he does it, because sometimes he absolutely hates it. But these guys will not get cheated out of one minute. They are being taught every moment of every day until the end of the season. He will not let them down.”

  Other coaches often say they want to copy De La Salle’s practice plan.

  “No, you don’t,” Eidson quickly replies. That’s because there is no practice plan, or at least no set daily schedule that is distributed to the coaching staff, as is commonplace in most programs. They wing it, mostly. The staff has been together for so long that each coach knows his role. There are no egos here.

  Joe Aliotti is a former star high school and college quarterback from nearby Pittsburg (California) who devised the game plan that defeated De La Salle in 1991. He might be a successful head coach himself if he hadn’t left a political morass at Pittsburg High to become De La Salle’s dean of students in 1998.

  Aliotti is in charge of discipline and patrols the campus like a beat cop. He refers to his role as “quality control,” which includes quarterbacking the scout team in a shirt, tie, and loafers.

  Mark Panella is a mortgage broker. He was Ladouceur’s starting quarterback in 1984. Except for four years spent as an assistant at St. Mary’s College in the early 1990s, he has mentored De La Salle quarterbacks ever since. If Ladouceur is the stern father figure, Panella is the empathetic older brother who invites quarterbacks to his house for a home-cooked meal and a film session on Wednesday nights. He stands deep in the backfield during practices, with his hat pulled low and snuff packed into his bottom lip, seeing the field through his quarterback’s eyes.

  Justin Alumbaugh coaches the linebackers and helps Ladouceur with the offensive linemen. He played offense and defense on the 1997 De La Salle team that broke Hudson, Michigan’s, national record of 72 straight wins. Players love Alumbaugh. He only recently graduated from UCLA but is already being groomed as Ladouceur’s eventual replacement, prompting other coaches to jokingly refer to him as “The Chosen One.”

  Mike Blasquez’s physique is the best advertisement for his training techniques. He is a former body builder who originally came to the school as an athletic trainer. He later assumed strength-and-conditioning duties and has lifted the football program to new heights by combining Ladouceur’s philosophy with his science. Because his off-season workouts are so comprehensive, Blasquez spends more time with the players than anyone else on the staff.

  “He has put us at a level where we could compete with elite teams,” Ladouceur said. “Without him, forget it. We just couldn’t have done it.”

  Nate Geldermann and his twin brother, Jason, were the twin terrors of their grammar school, bullying other students and creating havoc in the hallways. That destructive energy was channeled into football when they came to De La Salle. They became two of the fiercest, most dominating players in school history. Nate is as intense a coach as he was a player.

  The staff is fueled by pessimism and obsessed with preparation. Strengths are overlooked, weaknesses magnified. Despite the presence of Drew, they consider this one of their weaker teams. Inexperience at quarterback and a lack of returning starters on the lines could have streak-ending implications.

  The quarterback situation is the result of a dilemma that Ladouceur faced at the beginning of the 2001 season. It was Matt Gutierrez’s team—no dilemma there. He was a three-year starter and the best pure passer the program had ever produced. Senior Brian Callahan, son of then–Oakland Raiders offensive coordinator Bill Callahan, was one of the hardest-working and most respected players on the team. Everybody knew that junior Britt Cecil was the future, but Ladouceur couldn’t deny Callahan the backup job during 2001.

  Thus, Cecil entered his senior season having not started a game since his sophomore year, and having never thrown a pass at the varsity level. He had the tools to be an effective runner and passer, but you could see the doubt swimming in his powder-blue eyes.

  Panella tapped his index finger against his temple in explanation.

  It’s all in Cecil’s head.

  “I don’t want to pay attention to how he’s doing,” Panella said. “I want to see how he’s doing it. He’s got to trust himself and believe he’s doing the right thing. If he believes he’s doing the right thing, it will become apparent to the rest of the team. He has a lot of self-doubt. That will be his biggest obstacle.”

  The speed, precision, and execution of the offensive line have always been the signature of the program. It’s five players in complete synchrony, firing off the ball as one, like a wave crashing on a beach. No team gets off the ball quicker or holds blocks longer. This advantage allows De La Salle’s linemen to successfully compete against larger opponents. The only way to neutralize the Spartans’ get-off is to beat them across the line of scrimmage. No opponent ever has.

  Three starters return on the offensive line. It’s the other two spots that worry Ladouceur most. “Who are my right tackle candidates?” he asked during a pre-season meeting. The question was answered with blank stares.

  “We’re so in trouble on the line,” Geldermann said, summing up the mood.

  Three television camera crews, including ESPN, film the first day of full-contact practice, when Ladouceur hopes linemen will start catching his eye. Players are so used to the media attention they are oblivious to the cameras.

  One player stands out because of his potential. Chris Biller is a five-foot-ten, 205-pound ball of explosive power, a permanent grin masking a mean streak. He dominated at the JV level last season but has never played in a varsity game.

  Biller feels a tingling sensation after blocking Erik Sandie on the first day in pads. Twenty-four hours later, he is unable to raise his arms to snap his chinstrap and is sent to a specialist for tests.

  An MRI reveals no fractures or herniated discs but detects spinal stenosis, a non-football-related narrowing of the spinal canal. Dr. John Wilhelmy makes the diagnosis. He has served as a team doctor for various high school football programs in the East Bay since the early 1970s. He consults two cervical spine specialists who conclude that it is unsafe for anyone with Biller’s condition to play contact sports.

  Ladouceur’s cautious instincts are heightened. He has always been sensitive about injuries because he suffered so many himself. He won’t even consider allowing Biller back on the field unless the doctors and his parents are convinced there will be no long-term risks.

  Biller is devastated. He didn’t come to De La Salle for the college preparatory classes. He was a ball boy when his older brother was an offensive lineman for the Spartans. He wants nothing more than the same for himself.

  “I don’t blame them if they say they don’t want me to play,” he said. “I might come to the same decision if I was in their shoes. But in my mind I’ve played before. I want use of my body, but every sixteen-year-old kid thinks the same thing: It won’t happen to me. My spine won’t break. I’m just praying they say ‘The canals are pretty small, it’s dangerous but it’s your decision.’ Then I’d play. I’d play in a second. My mom has a lot of trust in me. I’m a pretty mature kid. I think she’d go along with it. At least I hope she would.”

&nb
sp; He stands on the sideline during practices, watching disconsolately as the collisions continue, day after day, with no linemen rising above the rest. Even the three returning starters, Erik Sandie, John Chan, and Cole Smith, struggle to get off the ball and to strike with the speed and ferocity Ladouceur demands.

  “I feel like burning this tape it’s so bad,” Ladouceur says after pointing out the same incorrect first step again and again.

  “If they want to play like shit, I don’t care,” Eidson says, shrugging.

  After two weeks in pads, Ladouceur doesn’t know anything more about his team than he did on Day 1. Cecil is still performing like a junior varsity quarterback. The offensive line lacks the aggression and intensity that always has been a trademark of Lad’s teams.

  This team is shaping up to be the most vulnerable since The Streak began, and it must navigate the most difficult schedule in school history. De La Salle has finished undefeated for ten straight years, but there’s a strong feeling among Ladouceur and his staff that this could be the year The Streak ends.

  That doesn’t stop USA Today from publishing its pre-season Super 25 Football rankings. De La Salle, winner of three of the past four USA Today national championships, is ranked number one. Long Beach Poly is fourth, and St. Louis of Honolulu is twenty-first. Below an action photo of Maurice Drew running away from a Poly defender in his four-touchdown performance last season is the headline:

  “125 and counting.”

  ★ ★ ★

  Eidson steers the white van out of the parking lot and toward the highway, his favorite heavy-metal CD reverberating through overmatched factory speakers. Archbishop Mitty scouting reports litter the floor.

  “That’s the difference between me and Lad,” Eidson says, shouting above the ear-bleeding music. “I like chaos. I like music that goes in four different directions. He likes things all laid out and mellow. He thinks Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits is the greatest album ever made.”