by Neil Hayes
“Don’t you think this Cobra shit has gone far enough?” Aggie Eidson asked her husband later that night.
“What?” Terry asked, innocently. “It’s somehow my fault?”
14
JUDGMENT DAY
The scene stunned Bob Ladouceur. He knew his team was tired. He admitted as much during a quick television interview at halftime of the 2001 De La Salle–Long Beach Poly game. But he wasn’t prepared for what greeted him in the locker room. He had wanted to make mid-game adjustments but now he wondered if his team could even finish the game.
Maurice Drew, the unexpected star of the first half, had to be carried into the locker room. Several other players had shed their pads and were lying on the floor in pools of sweat, chests heaving. Trainers twisted towels soaked with ice water over the heads of overheated athletes. Ice was being packed under the arms and knees of All-American lineman Derek Landri to cool him down. Two other players needed intravenous fluids.
The visitors’ locker room at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach, California, was no place to put an overheated football team. There was no ventilation inside the small and steamy locker room. Ice hadn’t been provided for the visiting team. De La Salle assistant trainers had been forced to dash to a convenience store before the game. Now their supply was dwindling.
Outside more than 17,000 fans packed the grandstands from rail to rail, waving green and gold pom-poms and banging yellow Thunderstix. Those without seats stood six-deep in the end zones. Thousands milled outside the gates trying to gain admittance. Streams of headlights could be seen in both directions even after the crowd had swelled beyond the stadium’s capacity.
Ladouceur had never felt so helpless. He wanted to talk to Mike Blasquez but the trainer was too busy tending to exhausted players, a group that seemed to include everyone. De La Salle led 21–15, but all of a sudden the score seemed irrelevant. Ladouceur didn’t know how many of his players he could reasonably expect to play in the second half.
The game was announced nine months earlier, when The Streak stood at 113. Long Beach Poly boasted one of the most storied football programs in the country. It had sent thirty-nine players to the NFL, more than any other high school team. Its prestigious list of alumni includes former San Francisco 49ers star Gene Washington, former Dallas Cowboys receiver Tony Hill, and former NFL players Mark Carrier, Willie McGinest, Marquez Pope, and Omar Stoutmire. (Actress Cameron Diaz and rapper Snoop Dogg also are alums.)
The Jackrabbits had won thirteen Southern Section championships and had the second-highest number of wins (589) in state history. Having won or shared the past four Southern Section large-school titles, they had supplanted Mater Dei as the dominant team in the region. Being the dominant team in talent-rich Southern California means you are one of the elite teams in the nation. Poly boasted a thirty-one-game unbeaten streak of its own at one point, and it had lost only once in its previous fifty-nine games before meeting De La Salle.
The game was billed as the most anticipated high school football game in history and included every imaginable story line. It was the first time in history that the top two teams in USA Today’s Super 25 Poll had met—Poly was ranked number one, De La Salle number 2. The schools were flip-flopped in another national poll.
The matchup pitted a large public school with an enrollment of 4,600 against a small private school with 1,050 students. Poly, located in a dilapidated neighborhood in Long Beach, surrounded by liquor stores and faded hotel signs blinking vacancy, resembles an urban inner-city school. De La Salle is surrounded by $700,000 homes in a comfortable suburb. It was the discipline of De La Salle vs. the athleticism of Poly. It was first-year Long Beach Poly coach Raul Lara vs. a twenty-four-year head-coaching veteran who already had been inducted into the National Federation of High School Sports Hall of Fame.
More than 120 credentials had been distributed to organizations as diverse as the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and ABC’s World News Tonight. NFL Films cameras were rolling on the sideline. Fox Sports Net was televising the game live and anticipated its highest Nielson ratings ever. Highlights would be shown during numerous college broadcasts and on ESPN’s SportsCenter.
Rumors on the Long Beach campus had the Jackrabbits gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated if they snapped The Streak.
“You have to consider it a national championship game,” television analyst Mike Lamb told his audience prior to kickoff. “You’re talking about a school with the longest win streak in history and the school that has sent more players to the NFL than any other school in history. So if this isn’t a national championship game for high school football, I don’t know how you can put one together.”
De La Salle had already proved it could compete against Southern California’s elite teams, having defeated Mater Dei four years running. Now it seemed the Spartans had to prove it all over again. Poly was not only considered the top team in the nation and state, but perhaps one of the most awesome collections of high school talent ever assembled.
It was the first prep football team to have five players rated among the nation’s top 100 college prospects by major recruiting services. The so-called “Fab Five” referred to safety Darnell Bing, running back Hershel Dennis, offensive lineman Winston Justice, tight end Mercedes Lewis, and defensive tackle Manuel Wright. Twenty-four of the Poly players on the field that night would eventually land a Division-I college scholarship.
Long Beach Poly co-principal Mel Collins had marked the date on his calendar with a red felt-tip marker: The Streak Ends. His confidence reflected sentiment throughout the community. They were calling it “Judgment Day” in Long Beach. Placards bearing those words were posted all over town. The Spartans, despite The Streak and a star-studded lineup of their own—including quarterback Matt Gutierrez and All-American lineman Derek Landri—were considered underdogs.
The headline above a column in the Long Beach Press Telegram summed up local sentiment: “Spartan streak will end tonight.”
“They haven’t played any teams near our talent level,” the six-foot-seven, 315-pound Manuel Wright told the Los Angeles Times. “I think they’re in for a big surprise.”
They were surprised, all right. Frank Allocco and Ladouceur went for one of their traditional pregame runs around the stadium and watched in awe as Poly players filed into the locker room in their muscle shirts.
Poly always has had skilled position players. “There’s speed and then there’s Poly speed” is how one college recruiter puts it. But they never had the size and strength along the offensive and defensive lines that they had in 2001. That’s why many Poly insiders considered this the best team in the program’s eighty-two-year history.
Long Beach’s five offensive linemen averaged 275 pounds compared to 236 pounds for De La Salle’s defensive line. The Spartans’ offensive line averaged 231 pounds compared to 280 for Poly’s defensive front.
“Bob and I were covering our mouths and saying, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” Allocco remembers. “It was the biggest football team I had ever seen, college or pro. It was unbelievable. Bob goes, ‘Frankie, I’m scared.’ We were both absolutely shocked at how big they were.”
The game began as so many other De La Salle games do. Maurice Drew returned the opening kickoff 33 yards, then ripped off another 12 yards on the first play from scrimmage. Senior quarterback Matt Gutierrez led a six-play drive before being faced with third-and-8 at Poly’s 25-yard line. He rolled left and threw a screen pass to Drew in the right flat. The junior dipped under two tacklers and somersaulted into the end zone to score the first touchdown Poly had allowed all season.
Drew had made a promise to teammates Nate Kenyon and Alijah Bradley the night before. They were watching a college game in their hotel room when a punt returner had his legs taken out from under him and flipped into the end zone. If any of them scored the first touchdown, it was decided, they had to promise to do the same.
Drew was flagged for an excessive celebration penalty. Ladouceur later put
him on “celebration probation,” which meant he didn’t dare try something like that again.
“The coaches didn’t say anything then,” Drew said. “They were too into the game. But when we got home Coach Lad told me never to do that again. He told me we were not a celebrating team.”
Poly coaches had been concerned about Drew, but as a defensive player, not as an offensive threat. They geared up to stop Bradley, who was averaging 12 yards per carry, and Kenyon. Drew, an unheralded junior who had excelled as a linebacker, had only rushed ten times for 140 yards in De La Salle’s first three games, but it was quickly becoming apparent that he would be the featured back against Poly.
Quarterback Brandon Brooks threw a bomb to sophomore Derrick Jones on the Jackrabbits’ first play. Jones was a sophomore speed-burner whom Eidson had been intent on stopping. On this play he was wide open at the 25. The potential game-tying touchdown slipped through his fingers, however, prompting a groan from the partisan crowd.
“You know why he dropped that pass?” a De La Salle player yelled to his teammates on the sideline. “Because he wasn’t pulling tires all summer like we were! That’s why he didn’t make the play!”
Regardless of what Jones and the Jackrabbits had or had not done that summer, the dropped pass bolstered the Spartans’ confidence. They believed they made plays when other teams didn’t because they worked harder. The mindset was that they deserved to win because they wanted it more.
It was fourth-and-4 near the end of the first quarter when Gutierrez faked a handoff to Drew and dropped back to pass. He looked quickly to his right and then immediately turned back to Drew, who was wide open down the left sideline. The play unfolded just as assistant coach Mark Panella had predicted after watching a Poly defender overpursue a few moments earlier. Drew had his defender beat by two steps, and Gutierrez hit him with a 29-yard rainbow to give the Spartans a 14–3 advantage. The lead swelled to 21–9 after Drew caught another 17-yard scoring pass late in the first half.
Drew hadn’t practiced well that week and was surprised when Ladouceur told him that he would be a big part of the game plan. Still, he hadn’t planned on this. Nobody had. Gutierrez knew the offense so well that he had been given free rein to call plays at the line of scrimmage. The quarterback was calling Drew’s number more and more.
“We were waiting for him to break out,” Panella said of Drew. “We were waiting for him his sophomore year, too. He needed a game like that to believe in himself. We knew he could do it, but he didn’t know it. After that game he didn’t have any doubts about himself.”
A troubling trend was developing, however. De La Salle had the lead, but the momentum had swung to Poly. De La Salle didn’t have an answer for running back Herschel Dennis, whose combination of speed and bruising power made him one of the top backs in the country. They had prevented him from ripping off huge chunks of yardage, but he was gaining 5 and 10 yards almost at will behind his huge wall of blockers. Spartans defenders hit him with everything they had, but it usually took a second or even a third tackler to bring the USC-bound running back to the ground.
De La Salle was wearing down, just as experts predicted a team with so many key two-way players must. The Spartans couldn’t stop Long Beach Poly as they marched methodically downfield and pulled to within 21–15 on a 12-yard touchdown pass to Lewis with less than a minute remaining in the first half.
First-year Long Beach coach Raul Lara called Spartan Derek Landri the best lineman he had ever seen on film. Landri had eighty tackles, seventeen sacks, and had knocked down twelve passes during a dominating junior year. Now a senior, the six-foot-four 280-pounder was breathing heavily and had to push himself to his feet after ranging downfield to tackle Herschel Dennis from behind on the final drive. He was going head to head with six-foot-seven, 300-pound tackle Winston Justice on offense, and with six-foot-seven, 315-pound end Manuel Wright on defense. Both were considered among the top prep linemen in the country.
“Television doesn’t do justice to the size of these [Poly] guys,” broadcaster Mike Lamb told the television audience late in the first half.
Landri was all over the field, splitting double teams, collapsing the pocket, and chasing Dennis from sideline to sideline. He was in the midst of a performance that would play a key role in his selection as the state player of the year.
He wasn’t the only one feeling the pace. Drew had been almost as effective on defense as on offense, registering several big hits and even recording a sack, but his mouth hung open and he was sweating as if an internal sprinkler system were trying to douse a fire. Andy Briner, another standout two-way lineman, also was on the brink of collapse.
Ladouceur huddled with assistants Joe Aliotti and Mark Panella in the locker room in an attempt to solidify the offensive line. John Chan suffered a knee injury in the first half and was out. They didn’t know if Landri and Briner would recover in time to play the third quarter, which meant that they needed to find replacements at three offensive line positions. Defensive tackle Javier Carlos was dehydrated and being given intravenous fluids. Since Briner and Landri also started on defense, they would need three backups along the defensive line as well.
They still hadn’t plugged all the holes when it was time to take the field for the second half.
“I just remember sitting in the locker room with wet towels over my head trying to drink as much water as I could,” Landri says. “I couldn’t comprehend what Coach Ladouceur was saying because I was so beat. I don’t even really remember what happened at halftime.”
Allocco took it all in. He heard Ladouceur tell the backups to be ready. They were going to play. This was their night. This reminded the former Notre Dame quarterback of when USC scored forty-nine points in the second half against his former team in the famed comeback of 1974.
Allocco walked out of the locker room and spotted his longtime assistant coach Brian Sullivan. Allocco felt tears welling up in his eyes when he told Sullivan that The Streak was about to come to an end.
“I told Brian, ‘It’s over. We cannot win this football game,’ ” Allocco recalls. “The momentum had changed. We were done, gassed, and they were coming on. Landri couldn’t go. A lot of kids couldn’t go. They couldn’t even make adjustments at halftime.”
Ladouceur pulled Blasquez aside as they left the locker room. Players refused to come off the field but were pushing themselves to the danger point, and he was concerned. He told Blasquez to handle substitutions in the second half. He could assess players’ physical condition better than Ladouceur could because of his background in sports medicine. Besides, it would allow Ladouceur to focus on his play-calling, regardless of who was on the field.
“I remember walking back to the field thinking, ‘I hope these guys don’t blow us out in the second half,’ ” Ladouceur says.
De La Salle players wearing clean white jerseys ran on and off the field early in the second half, and it showed. Poly controlled the ball for almost the entire third quarter and outgained De La Salle 84–10. It didn’t seem possible at halftime, when several players were on the verge of collapse, but the Spartans played harder in the second half, their sweat-soaked jerseys turning a shade of gray the manufacturers never intended. The backups slowed the Poly offense between the 20-yard lines before Blasquez sent the starters back in. The De La Salle defense held on fourth down twice in the scoreless third quarter.
The Jackrabbits, with their all-American running back, their UCLA-bound tight end, and their massive offensive line, couldn’t score. Dennis would rush for 161 yards but never crossed the goal line.
Briner and Landri eventually recovered and spent more time on the field in the fourth quarter as De La Salle resumed control of the game. Although Poly was still ripping off moderate gains, midway through the fourth quarter, it was the Jackrabbits who appeared to be wearing down.
Drew sealed his place in De La Salle lore by scoring the game-clinching touchdown, his fourth of the night, on a 22-yard run with 6:57 left. He f
inished with 157 yards of total offense and was as active as any De La Salle player, save Landri, on defense.
“We just wanted to lie down on the field and soak it up,” Landri said. “We were glad we won but were too exhausted to celebrate.”
It was a partisan Long Beach Poly crowd, no doubt about it, but there were many curiosity seekers who wanted a firsthand look at the De La Salle team they had heard so much about. When the game ended, fans on both sides rose as one and applauded the effort of both teams.
“I tell people it has to be one of the top three things I’ve ever seen in athletics,” Allocco said. “Bob and I talked afterwards, and he felt the kids pushed themselves to the point where they were in danger physically. I believe that. As a coach you dream of getting kids to that point. We always say you want to be picked up off the field and be able to say you gave everything. Well, nobody ever does that. As humans we always hold something back. There was nothing held back that night.
“If we had played Poly a hundred more times that year we wouldn’t have beaten them again. On that night we found a way. It was an unbelievable thing. It was a marvelous, miraculous win.”
Lara walked off the field convinced that his team should’ve won. De La Salle’s team speed was better than he anticipated. But if the Jackrabbits could have converted those two fourth downs in the third quarter to keep scoring drives alive, if his sophomore receiver had caught even one of the three potential touchdown passes he had dropped.… It was a crushing loss for a young coach and former Poly graduate who had deep roots in the community.
Lara was a starting linebacker for Poly in 1983 and served as the defensive coordinator for longtime Poly coach Jerry Jaso for six years. When Jaso joined the staff at Long Beach City College, he handed the reins to his young assistant. Coaching Poly is a thankless task. When the Jackrabbits win it’s because of their superior athletes. Poly is a magnet school that can draw the best students and athletes from a wide geographical area under the district’s now-revised open-enrollment policy. Some Southern California coaches referred to the program as “The Long Beach All-Stars.”
