When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition

by Neil Hayes

  Danny’s physical development hints at what his father once looked like. He is naturally thin but filling out, ropy muscles running down his arms and back. His face is thinner, sharper, his cheeks more hollow than his father’s ever were.

  He’s built more like a track athlete than a gridiron standout, but is determined to play football, just as his dad was. Like his dad, he is the fastest player on his team.

  Bob never pushed his son to play football, even though the boy grew up around the game. Danny took it up in sixth grade at the suggestion of a friend. After that, he began to understand and appreciate how good his father’s teams were.

  One player in particular caught his eye. Anthony Vontoure was the best athlete on the team during the 1996 season and had Division-I recruiters flocking to his games. Anthony played cornerback, just like Danny did for his youth team. Not only that, but the Vontoures lived right around the corner from the Ladouceurs in San Ramon. Danny would ride his skateboard over to Anthony’s house. The all-state football player was always glad to see him.

  “He was a real genuine person,” Danny says. “He was always nice to me, and not because of my dad. That’s the kind of person he was.”

  Danny got an idea on the way to the cemetery after his father delivered the eulogy at Anthony Vontoure’s funeral. He wanted to wear Anthony’s number twenty-three during his sophomore season. Anthony wore number twenty-three because it was his brother’s number, even though the school had retired it after Chris’s death.

  Ladouceur thought Danny’s request would be a fitting tribute, but told his son he would have to get Emma Vontoure’s permission first. The woman who had buried two of her three sons was touched by the gesture. She thought it was a way to keep her sons’ legacies alive.

  “Every touchdown was better than touchdowns from previous seasons because it was for Anthony,” Danny said about wearing the number twenty-three jersey. “I really felt his presence; felt like he was watching me. It’s making my season so much more meaningful for me.”

  Monday’s practice is held at Diablo Valley College, where De La Salle will host a first-round playoff game. Players carry their helmets and shoulder pads across the field and sit on the track that frames the artificial turf of Viking Field.

  “I remember getting hit so hard when I was a sophomore playing varsity that I wanted to cry,” Chris Mulvanny says just loud enough for Danny and Zac to hear, a broad smile spreading across the senior’s face. “It wasn’t fun, but it was.”

  Cole Smith retells the tale of Andy Briner blocking him onto the track when he was first called up to the varsity as a sophomore. Zac and Danny swallow hard, focusing intently on pulling their jerseys over their shoulder pads and tying their shoelaces, pretending not to hear.

  “Little Lad will take some shots just because of his last name,” whispers one former player.

  Bob Ladouceur already warned his players against abusing the junior varsity call-ups unnecessarily. They are here to learn, he explained, not to be tackling dummies for more physically mature and experienced players. This isn’t a father fearing for his son’s safety. He remembers what it was like being a scout-team player at Utah. Ladouceur makes the same speech every year, and every year varsity players listen respectfully and then exchange knowing smiles.

  De La Salle’s upperclassmen spend a lot of time mentoring underclassmen during the off-season when they train together. Tradition calls for varsity players to make sure their eventual replacements know what is required, and what the coaches expect.

  “During the summer they took my son under their wing,” Zac’s dad, Frank McNally, a junior varsity assistant coach, says of several senior linemen. “That meant a lot to me as a parent. These guys are seniors and there’s an age difference, but they taught him what it’s like to be a varsity player here. They do that for a lot of kids. The kids are so mature here.”

  That doesn’t mean they won’t try to knock the screws out of the sophomore’s helmets once practice begins, however. That’s as much a part of the tradition as the head coach’s annual plea for restraint. When the sophomores are seniors, they’ll do the same.

  Ladouceur trudges across the field cradling a ripped cardboard box overflowing with scouting reports.

  He watched film for eleven hours Sunday to prepare the scouting report for Antioch, De La Salle’s first-round playoff opponent.

  “This is one of the reasons why we’re so good,” secondary coach Terrell Ward says, leafing through the thirty-page stapled document. The second page lists Antioch’s tendencies. When the Panthers line up in an unbalanced formation, for example, they run a sweep ninety-five percent of the time. When a receiver goes in deep motion, the defense can expect a misdirection play. When one of four receivers goes in motion, it’s always a run with one exception—the halfback pass.

  “These guys have so many tendencies, if I was playing against them I’d have twenty-five tackles,” Ladouceur tells Eidson.

  “You’d pull a hamstring,” Eidson says.

  “Then I’d just stand where they’re going to run and misdirect them,” Ladouceur says, sitting down on an aluminum bench.

  De La Salle is a top seed in the North Coast Section playoffs for the nineteenth straight year, but Sunday’s seeding meeting was like no other.

  Usually coaches talk up their teams, hoping to get the highest seed possible. James Logan High School coach Neil Fromson took the opposite tack, purposely pointing out his team’s flaws to the seeding committee with hopes of receiving a lower seed and therefore avoiding the possibility of meeting De La Salle in a semifinal game for the third straight year.

  Despite having won his league’s title and owning an 8–2 record, Fromson was granted his wish. His team could’ve been seeded as high as fourth, but his reverse lobbying resulted in the sixth seed. The only way the Colts can meet De La Salle is in the finals.

  “I guess he got sick of hitting us in the second round,” Ladouceur says. “He may have trouble getting through the first round. I guess he likes his chances better that way.”

  The Spartans will open the playoffs against Antioch, whose win-loss record fell to 6–4 after a 31–21 season-ending defeat by archrival Pittsburg in what has long been called the Big Little Game. First-year Pitt coach Vic Galli led his team to the program’s first outright league title since 1980, and the team is rewarded with the seventh seed in the NCS 4A playoff bracket.

  Ladouceur says he doesn’t care who the Spartans play, even though he and Aliotti have been doping playoff scenarios for the past week.

  “What else do we have to do?” he explains innocently. “It’s not like we have an outside life this time of year. It’s hard to talk about the world’s problems when you don’t even know what they are.”

  Low-flying planes constantly buzz overhead, en route to a nearby airport.

  “Against Pittsburg these guys came upfield hard,” Ladouceur tells his linemen. “They’re not hitting and reading, they just get off and come upfield. They make a lot of tackles for losses against teams that miss blocks. You should all watch last year’s film to see how we blocked them. Watch their film from this year, too.”

  Zac McNally is a powerfully built linebacker whose frame is only beginning to fill out. He lines up as the scout team’s middle linebacker and hits Cole Smith with such force on the first play of team work that the brawny senior center is knocked to the ground. The collision snaps the laces of Zac’s shoulder pads. He hustles off the field to replace them.

  Later, Zac drops quarterback Britt Cecil for no gain. Willie Glasper blindsides Zac on the next play, knocking him off his feet.

  Danny lines up opposite Cameron Colvin, and when Cecil’s pass is underthrown he makes the easy interception. He’s not sure how to react. He takes a couple half-hearted steps toward the opposite end zone before stopping and tossing the ball back to the offense.

  “Hey, JV, we don’t walk when we get interceptions up here!” Jenkins scolds before his attention is diverted to t
he middle of the field, where Zac and Erik Sandie are shoving each other.

  ★ ★ ★

  The package was on Ladouceur’s desk on Thanksgiving morning. Players and coaches regarded the brown box curiously. “To the De La Salle coaches” was written on one side; below it, the words “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  Inside was a framed letter from former De La Salle player Jonathan Kirkham, along with the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal he had recently been awarded.

  “Oh, my God,” Eidson says. “He gave us his medal. He didn’t tell us he got a medal, the little shit.”

  “Throughout my playing days in college and most recently my advancement in the Marine Corps, the life lessons you taught me have continued to lead me in doing what is right, just and selfless,” Kirkham wrote. “Being placed in a position of leadership, I fall back more and more to the model you presented me as coaches than any military lessons I have been taught. If I maintain half the integrity, discipline and tenacity that you men represent I’ll consider myself a success.

  “So on this day of giving thanks I thank you with a by-product of your guiding hand in my life and the success it has brought me. I present this to you for your role in my life and the effect of your guidance beyond the field of play.”

  Eidson, Blasquez, and Ladouceur examine the green and orange ribbon and the shiny gold medal with Navy anchor in stunned silence.

  “That makes it all worthwhile,” Blasquez finally comments.

  “Everybody talks about our victories,” Ladouceur says. “Well, we got a victory today.”

  ★ ★ ★

  Parents laugh and talk while they clean up after the team dinner, all the while wondering what goes on behind that closed door.

  They know very little about what takes place in the garages after they have organized and prepared the meal. The door to the garage is locked during team meetings.

  If a player or coach has to excuse himself to go to the bathroom, the meeting stops until the door is closed and locked once again.

  Some parents have peered in windows and tried to listen through the cracks in the door, but even that provides precious few clues.

  “We don’t understand,” says Brian Garrett, a bank president who has had two sons play for Ladouceur. “We don’t know what goes on in there. We don’t know. We almost don’t want to know.”

  Parents held their own prayer service in the school chapel the week before. They took turns standing and talking about how the program has impacted their sons. Men who haven’t cried in years were too emotional to speak. Garrett said it was one of the most moving experiences of his life.

  The players bond, and so do their parents.

  “I’ve been though it four times now,” says Sue Ottoboni. “Every parent talks and it gets very emotional. By the end of the night it seems like everybody is crying.”

  Ladouceur is even more of an enigma to them than he is to their sons. He deftly navigates the crowd at these dinners, always polite and friendly but never engaging in anything other than small talk, and avoiding even that whenever possible.

  There’s a trust factor there. There has to be, because parents are entrusting their sons to a man they hardly know.

  “I don’t have any relationship with Lad,” says Jess Pittore, whose son Mike has developed into a standout defensive lineman.

  “There’s not a lot of fluff to him,” says Mike Chan, a retired police officer whose son John has played for Ladouceur for three years. “When I talk to him we never talk about John’s playing ability.”

  “Ninety percent of the conversations I’ve had with him during the past eight years have been non-football-related,” says Garrett, whose son Brad is a backup center on the 2002 team.

  Ladouceur wants it that way. He tells players that he doesn’t want their parents around when he’s talking to them. It’s not because he might swear or chew them out, but because he’s evaluating their performance and he considers that confidential information.

  The parents aren’t there for all the off-season workouts, the practices, the chapel services, and the team meetings. If they only hear bits and pieces they might misunderstand. As he told players after a summer-league passing tournament: this is your experience, not theirs.

  “I’m pretty aloof around the parents,” Ladouceur says. “A lot of them want information about their kids, and I don’t want to share any of that. I don’t want to constantly tell them that his feet are slow, he needs to get stronger in the upper body, he drops his shoulder, his steps are all wrong. They don’t understand that. They’ll think I’m down on their kids. They don’t always understand that it’s a process.”

  Parents often feel like outsiders. Their friends and colleagues ask them how Ladouceur does it, how his teams win season after season. They’re often struggling to understand it themselves. They watch their sons compete against larger players from St. Louis and Long Beach and they have no explanation for what they see.

  “I’m not a religious person, but maybe this is Bob’s destiny,” Garrett says. “Maybe he has some sort of spiritual power to enable kids to play beyond themselves, because there’s no way our kids should be doing this. There’s no way this team should be doing this.”

  Ladouceur organizes a parent meeting at the beginning of each season. He outlines team rules and how the use of alcohol and drugs is prohibited year-round. He tells them that even if their son never plays a down in a football game that’s reason enough for him to participate.

  Coaches often complain about meddlesome parents, and Ladouceur has endured a few, but his record eliminates most of the second-guessing that other coaches are often subjected to.

  “I’m dealing with your son, not you,” Ladouceur tells parents at the meeting. “If your son comes home and complains, don’t call me and fight his battles for him. Make him stand up and be heard. That’s part of growing up. If he does that and there are still things I need to know, then by all means call me.”

  It’s their sons who ultimately sell them on the program. Mike Chan was boasting to coworkers about De La Salle’s success when his son pulled him aside and admonished him for it.

  “It sounds like you’re bragging and that’s not what we’re about,” John told his dad, who later realized that his son was right.

  Jess Pittore asked his son Mike why he was playing defensive tackle instead of his more natural position, defensive end. Mike told him that he played in the middle because he was needed in the middle. It wasn’t about playing a position. It was about playing for your friends.

  “That blew me away,” Jess says. “It sure shut me up.”

  Parents are grateful. Their kids don’t tell them much about the program, but they see the end result. When the boys do have free time, which isn’t often considering the time and effort they pour into the program, they choose to spend it together.

  They gather at each other’s houses before games, after games. They organize camping trips and caravans to Southern California to watch teammates participate in all-star games.

  “These kids go on their overnight trips and oftentimes they get in trouble with authorities who can’t believe forty unchaperoned high school kids aren’t going to get in some sort of trouble,” says Jack Weir, whose son Drew is a backup linebacker. “The seniors handle it calmly, confidently, and the juniors see that.”

  Then the parents see their sons on the football field, doing things they can’t believe are possible, and what goes on the behind the closed door becomes even more mysterious.

  “The parents can’t explain it and the kids won’t tell us,” Brian Garrett says. “It’s almost like they become supernatural. They get calmer as the game gets closer. We don’t understand how it happens.”

  ★ ★ ★

  It’s so quiet players can hear the lights buzzing when they take the field at Diablo Valley College for early warm-ups before their first-round playoff game. There are only twenty-five fans in the stands when they begin to stretch.

  A
ntioch head coach Ferris Anthony is a former professional wrestler who was dubbed “Earthquake Anthony” by promoters. His signature move for the five years he toured the nation and Europe was “The Ferris Wheel,” a variation of the airplane spin, where he put an opponent on his shoulders and spun in circles before landing on top of him.

  He quit the circuit when he got his first coaching job, which led to the job he currently holds at the school where he once played.

  Anthony is a huge, jowly man with small eyes, unruly brown curls, and an avalanche for a stomach. He wears a black-and-yellow Antioch football jacket and black sweatpants as his offense takes the field for the first possession of the game.

  His two star players are running back Brent Casteel, who enters the game with six touchdown runs of 55 yards or more, and quarterback Joey Luoma, who led the area in passer efficiency rating.

  Luoma threw only two interceptions during the regular season. Spartan Willie Glasper doubles that total after intercepting Luoma’s first two passes of the game. The interceptions are the fifth and sixth of the season for Glasper, who was starting cornerback as a sophomore in 2001. Teammate Damon Jenkins had been an all-state cornerback, so opposing quarterbacks picked on Glasper all season. He held his own, even being named an all-state underclassman by one magazine.

  This year—2002—has been his breakout season. Glasper helped contain the potent offenses run by St. Louis and Long Beach Poly. Now he is leading the team in interceptions. No one else is even close.

  Maurice Drew scores on a 9-yard run to put De La Salle up 7–0 after Glasper’s first interception. The second touchdown is bizarre.

  Britt Cecil rolls to his right and completes a 14-yard pass to De’Montae Fitzgerald at the Antioch 7. Fitzgerald is heading toward the right pylon when he is hit from behind and fumbles. The ball bounces off the turf and into the hands of Cameron Colvin, who tiptoes across the goal line like a ballerina.

  Anthony is as demonstrative on the field as he once was in the wrestling ring. After he throws his hat to the ground for the third time while protesting an official’s call, it’s obvious it is just a prop.