by Neil Hayes
Brother Laurence Allen was the most influential teacher on campus. He was young, handsome, and stood apart from the other Brothers. He skydived and rode a motorcycle to Mexico. He and some students once filmed themselves skateboarding down the twisting S curves of Lombard Street in San Francisco. He loved the outdoors, especially rafting.
Brother Laurence was identified by his superiors as a brilliant educator early in his career and was on the fast track to becoming a principal. He was a gifted counselor, especially when dealing with drug- and alcohol-related issues. The druggies and stoners, as they were known, were Brother Larry’s boys. As dean of students, he meted out punishments that even the perpetrators believed were appropriate for the crime.
“He had a different relationship with everybody,” said Jack Henderson, who was close to Brother Laurence. “He would kick guys out of school and they would come back and ask him for advice. They understood why they were booted out, but they were still friends.”
Ed Hall had given Ladouceur one piece of advice after the rookie coach approached him at a clinic earlier that summer: befriend Brother Laurence. It was something Hall had been unable to do.
Ladouceur gained Brother Laurence’s approval without knowing it. He was amusing himself with the athletic department’s public-address system that summer. “Time for the medication, boys,” Ladouceur said, repeating the famous line from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, not realizing that his words echoed throughout campus.
Brother Laurence was in the main quad and he almost doubled over with laughter. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was his favorite movie.
The young Brother took an active interest in Ladouceur and the football program from that moment forward, easing the new teacher’s transition into the classroom. Later, after learning how important weights were to the program Ladouceur hoped to establish, Brother Laurence gave his new friend a personal check for $1,000, which was a lot of money for someone who had taken a vow of poverty and was paid accordingly.
“I don’t know where he got the money, but there was any number of people he could’ve asked who would’ve spit it up for him,” said Brother Robb Wallace, who was also a close friend of Brother Laurence’s. He had that kind of power.
There was only one condition. Brother Laurence wanted to keep his contribution confidential. Ladouceur kept the secret for twenty-three years.
★ ★ ★
De La Salle players and coaches stood watching, mouths agape, when the Bishop O’Dowd Dragons took the field for the first Catholic Athletic League game of the 1979 season. “Mean Machine” was spelled out in yellow letters across their black jerseys, a reference to the prison football team quarterbacked by Burt Reynolds in the 1974 movie The Longest Yard. They wore rain capes despite the ninety-degree heat, and players had painted their faces to resemble warriors from some distant tribe.
The Bishop O’Dowd players stood menacingly in the middle of the field, staring down the Spartans in an obvious attempt to intimidate a program struggling for respect.
“No one will admit it, but we were all scared to death before that game,” Crespi recalls.
The teams that were supposed to beat De La Salle did, which was one of the reasons why the program garnered so little respect. But against Bishop O’Dowd players competed as fiercely as any De La Salle team before or since. The game was deadlocked 7–7 at halftime.
The Spartans were playing with newfound intensity. Blair Thomas remembers watching Crespi register one of the most crushing blows he has ever seen on a football field—high school, college, or pro.
“He knocked a guy six feet back and then he turned around and had a look of pure glee on his face,” Thomas said. “That was when we first started to punish people play after play after play.”
Bishop O’Dowd led 13–7 and was driving for what appeared to be the game-clinching touchdown when a De La Salle defensive back intercepted a tipped pass in the end zone and returned it 104 yards for the game-winning score.
“They should’ve creamed us,” Ladouceur said. “They had so much more talent. Those guys fought their asses off. That was the first game where I felt guys played like Spartans. It was real impressive.”
De La Salle had never before been ranked in East Bay polls but was an honorable mention selection based on its 4–1 record and upset of Bishop O’Dowd.
“The Spartans will be hard pressed to improve their status,” an accompanying article in the Contra Costa Times warned. “They meet fourth-ranked St. Mary’s and ninth-ranked Moreau in the next three weeks.”
★ ★ ★
St. Mary’s had won five of six games and were 21-point favorites over De La Salle, but when the two teams met in 1979 it was the Spartans who bolted to a 21-point lead.
It was a rough and tumble game, filled with questionable calls and pushing and shoving by players on both teams. St. Mary’s scored a token touchdown on the rain-soaked field with less than two minutes left. When the final gun sounded, the Spartans were tied with top-ranked Salesian for first place in the Catholic Athletic League, and the school community was rallying around the team.
“For the first time we had uniforms with something other than the number on it,” Schuler recalls. “We started having pep rallies, and players were required to wear their jerseys on game days. People started showing up for games, people who hadn’t been there in previous years. Nothing like that had ever happened at that school before.”
The mighty Salesian Chieftains and their legendary coach Dan Shaughnessy were slated to host the upstart Spartans the following week in what was shaping up as the biggest game in De La Salle history. The Spartans had leaped to a number eight ranking in the 2A prep poll, and the winner of this game would have the inside track at winning the league championship.
“De La Salle a football power? You gotta be kidding!” was how one local sportswriter began his column that week.
Shaughnessy’s teams were hard-nosed and physical, and he was famous for always having a trick play or four up his sleeve. His undefeated Chieftains were the defending CAL champion and a regional power who had outscored opponents 198–6 the year before.
“The aura and mystique around Shaughnessy and Salesian back then was pretty damned intimidating,” Crespi remembers.
The junior varsity game dragged on forever as adrenaline leaked out of De La Salle’s varsity players with each additional minute they were forced to wait. Ladouceur was confident until he addressed his players in the tiny locker room minutes before the game.
“I could see fear in their eyes,” he said. “It was the most obvious feeling I’ve ever gotten from a group of guys. I knew right then we weren’t going to win. They were looking at me like I was going to give them something they needed. I didn’t have anything.”
Salesian returned the opening kickoff 97 yards for a touchdown and the rout was on. When Salesian returned an interception for a touchdown moments later, the game was essentially over.
Salesian led 24–0 and was driving with less than two minutes left when Shaughnessy called a time-out to stop the clock. His team eventually added a fourth touchdown against demoralized De La Salle and rubbed it in with a fourth 2-point conversion for a resounding 32–0 triumph.
“We weren’t ready for the big boys yet, obviously,” De La Salle quarterback Kevin Heaney said.
It was a deflating defeat but there was still plenty to play for, especially with Moreau the next team on the schedule. Players had been talking about their “rivalry” with the Catholic school in Hayward ever since Ladouceur arrived at De La Salle.
“They’re not your rival if they kick your ass every year,” Ladouceur told them. “They can’t be your rival until you beat them.”
De La Salle led Moreau 17–7 early in the third quarter, but Moreau answered with scoring passes of 74 and 80 yards. The Spartans regained the lead only to watch Moreau score the game-winning touchdown on a 45-yard run with 3:34 left in the fourth quarter.
The 26–24 defeat dropped D
e La Salle out of the prep poll before ending Ladouceur’s inaugural season with a 42–7 win over St. Patrick’s of Vallejo. The Spartans finished with a 6–3 record, which was the first winning season in school history and good for second in the CAL. They played for the league title, and had an unprecedented six players receive post-season honors.
“We had no athletes on that team,” Crespi recalls. “Looking back on that year, I don’t know how we won as many games as we did.”
10
ONE STEP UP TWO STEPS BACK
The St. Francis High School campus is similar to De La Salle’s. An ancient oak tree shades the northwest corner of Ron Calcagno Stadium, which lights up like a birthday cake when the sun disappears behind the distant hills.
It’s an intimate setting for a high school football game, far removed from the pageantry and hype of Aloha Stadium the week before. This non-conference game will be televised, but on a local cable access channel. The panel van doubling as the satellite truck looks like it might have once delivered bread.
Nobody in the visitors’ locker room complains when they have to take turns getting dressed in the cramped conditions. These facilities are more typical of the high school football experience than were the spacious accommodations at Aloha Stadium. Victorious De La Salle players returned from Hawaii exhausted and sleep-deprived just as a heat wave gripped the East Bay. They slogged through a week of practice every bit as uninspired as the workouts leading up to the season opener against Mitty. The feeling of urgency that fueled one of the toughest practice weeks in school history had been left behind in Honolulu.
“I don’t have a good feeling about tonight,” Ladouceur said while picking at his lunch at a deli. “They do enough to keep the ball away from us. They hit well. They always play good defense. They know us. That coaching staff has been around forever. They have a lot going for them. Plus, whenever you play a Catholic school they have more fight in them, they’re more disciplined. They just seem more courageous in a lot of ways. I don’t know why that is but that’s how it appears to me. They don’t give up as easily.”
The St. Francis Lancers have one of the most storied programs in the Bay Area. The school won thirteen West Catholic Athletic League titles and eleven Central Coast Section championships in the twenty-four years that Ron Calcagno headed the program. Longtime assistant Mike Mitchell took over in 1996 and won three of the next four section titles. The Lancers won only six games in 2000–01, but they always play De La Salle tough.
St. Francis’ willingness to schedule De La Salle every season makes it one of the greatest threats to The Streak. Ladouceur told his players early in the week about how the Spartans’ 1998 team traveled to Mountain View after a 28–21 victory over Mater Dei, the biggest win in school history at that point. The Spartans came out flat and led 7–0 at halftime before prevailing 21–0.
“They can devise a game plan that’s very dangerous to us if you come out tomorrow flat and not ready to play,” Ladouceur told his team at its Thursday night meeting, his voice echoing through the garage. “If that happens I believe in my heart of hearts that this team has an excellent opportunity to beat you.”
Center Cole Smith is still recovering from a concussion. Maurice Drew’s ankle has improved steadily since the St. Louis game, but he will not play against St. Francis, not with the matchup with powerful Long Beach Poly just two weeks away. Ladouceur is curious to see how the team will respond without him, which means expanded roles for Gino Ottoboni, Jackie Bates, and even Willie Glasper, the talented junior cornerback who has been longing to run the ball.
None of that seems to matter when Ottoboni runs for 20 yards on the opening play of the game. The senior is similar to Drew in that he makes up for his lack of size with quickness and power. He lacks Drew’s game-breaking speed and elusiveness, but he would star for most other teams.
Bates might have scored on the next play if he hadn’t dropped a perfect pass from quarterback Britt Cecil. The Spartans punted only once against St. Louis, and that was late in the game when they wanted to milk the clock instead of attempting a field goal. Another incompletion against St. Francis brings the punt team onto the field after the first drive.
Ladouceur’s jaw muscles flex and relax in gum-chewing cadence. It’s impossible to tell how his team is faring on the field by the expression on his face. He says little, often communicating with a nod or a frown. Sometimes he gets lost in the crowd, which is in stark contrast to Eidson, who is always easily found. A veteran Contra Costa Times photographer spent years photographing Eidson before realizing that Ladouceur was the head coach. It’s a common mistake.
“If you didn’t know who he was, you would wonder what he was doing on the sideline,” said St. Francis coach Mike Mitchell.
Joe Aliotti paces the sideline, a blur of motion, sometimes walking 10 yards out onto the field to shout instructions to players or to plead his case with officials. Ever the traffic cop, Aliotti is in charge of substitutions, waving players on and off the field and relaying the information Ladouceur needs to make decisions.
Mark Panella’s eyes never leave the quarterback. He meets Cecil as soon as he comes off the field in his dual role of tutor and cheerleader. Mike Blasquez watches for injuries. Eidson signals in plays when De La Salle is on defense and offers mostly unwanted advice when Ladouceur’s offense is on the field.
Ladouceur’s success has been attributed to many different things, and rightly so, but he’s a gifted play caller. Don’t tell him what play to call. Tell him what you see. That’s the rule on the sideline. Perhaps it’s that gift of spatial awareness. Ladouceur has an uncanny ability to sense open spaces on the field, and he finds a way to get the ball into that space.
He wears khaki slacks, black cross-trainers, and a Spartans green windbreaker, but no headphones or even a hat. There’s no eye in the sky offering advice from above. He considers input but relies mostly on his own intuition.
“He always seems to have an answer,” Mitchell said with a sigh. “I don’t know if I’d say he’s always a step ahead of you, but he’s close to it.”
On rare nights such as this, it doesn’t seem to matter what he calls.
The six-foot, 235-pound St. Francis running back has worried Ladouceur all week. He is the type of punishing runner that can allow the opposition to control the ball and keep the explosive De La Salle offense off the field.
“You’ve got to gang-tackle him and hammer him,” Ladouceur told players reviewing their checklist the night before. “Lay some hurt on that guy. Get him going sideways, that’s when he’s in trouble. If he’s going straight up the field with a head of steam, good luck.”
Cameron Colvin throws a reverse pass to De’Montae Fitzgerald for a 37-yard gain on the second play of De La Salle’s ensuing drive. Cecil fumbles on the next play, however, giving the ball back to the Lancers. Colvin catches a punt after the defense holds, shakes a tackler on the far sideline, and gracefully outruns would-be tacklers back across the field before being tripped up at the St. Francis 40. But the scoreless quarter comes to a close with a busted play and a near interception that foretells more mistakes to come.
Colvin is developing into a big-time player, reminding some longtime observers of former De La Salle great Amani Toomer, who went on to Michigan and then the New York Giants. He has a knack for keeping his body between the defender and the ball. He wants to play major college football at a university far away, where nobody will know about his tragic family history. Then he wants to play in the NFL.
Every catch brings him closer to that reality. That’s how he thinks of it, anyway. Every time he runs downfield, sees the ball in the air, and hears the defensive back laboring to catch up, whenever he feels that ball fall out of the sky and into his waiting hands, he inches closer to his goals.
He stretches out parallel to the ground to make another spectacular catch for a 41-yard gain. An unblocked defensive end hits Cecil on the next play, resulting in a fumble and a loss of nine yards. Ceci
l completes a pass to emerging tight end Terrance Kelly over the middle for a 26-yard gain; Kelly fumbles the ball away after a stiff hit from behind.
De La Salle often benefits from short punts because opposing coaches instruct their punter to kick the ball out of bounds rather than risk a long return. High school punters aren’t asked to do this often, and the result can be a shanked punt that glances off the side of their foot, giving the Spartans the kind of field position the coach hoped to avoid in the first place.
That’s what happens after St. Francis’ next possession. A 14-yard punt gives De La Salle a first down at the St. Francis 34-yard line. Cecil hits Fitzgerald for a 19-yard gain and Bates, sure-footed in his size elevens, eventually scores on a 2-yard run for a 7–0 lead with 5:10 left in the second quarter.
It’s not uncommon for an opponent to play tough for a quarter before a De La Salle touchdown opens the floodgates for more scoring. The Lancers buck this trend with a slow, sustained drive that is kept alive when linebacker Parker Hanks jumps offside on fourth-and-2. On the sideline, Eidson looks as if he might spontaneously combust.
Facing a third-and-long at De La Salle’s 33-yard line, the St. Francis quarterback avoids the rush and fires a perfect pass that sails through his receiver’s hands in the end zone. The collective groan from the home crowd gives way to silence as the receiver lies motionless in the end zone, his hands on his helmet, knowing that a rare chance to tie De La Salle has just slipped through his fingers.
The Spartans go into the locker room leading 7–0. The game is unfolding just as Ladouceur has predicted. It is 1998 all over again.
The coaching staff has seen this coming since early in the week. They tried to shake the players out of their doldrums on Thursday night. By then, of course, it was too late. The week had already been wasted.
“Playing one good game against St. Louis of Honolulu in front of 30,000 people, that’s not Spartan football,” assistant coach Justin Alumbaugh said. “Coming back the next week when you’re hurt, when you’re not feeling good, and beating a team that wants to knock your dick off, now that’s Spartan football. That’s a big game.
