When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition

by Neil Hayes

  An eerie silence fell over a crowd that expected to see the Spartans’ romp. Sixty-seven percent of respondents to a Seattle Times online poll predicted that Bellevue would “get crushed.” Bellevue players and coaches were the only ones who believed.

  When Bellevue scored again on the first drive of the second half, the game was essentially over. The De La Salle offense failed to score in the second half. They played better defensively, allowing just three second-half field goals, but the damage had already been done. Hasty rushed for 271 of Bellevue’s whopping 463 rushing yards, by far the highest individual and team total during Ladouceur’s tenure at the school.

  Logic said De La Salle would eventually lose but nobody expected this. The dominance was stunningly complete. Bellevue didn’t attempt one pass. Not once were they forced to punt.

  De La Salle players were learning what it was like to be a De La Salle opponent.

  “With a minute left I looked at the clock and knew we’d lost The Streak,” said linebacker Zac McNally. “It was like a bad dream.”

  The final score was 39–20 but it wasn’t that close. It was the second worst loss in Ladouceur’s career and the most points allowed by a Ladouceur-coached team.

  He called his players together on the sideline in the final moments. “Act like gentlemen,” he said.

  The Bellevue sideline erupted in celebration when the final seconds ticked away and one of the greatest streaks in sports history came to a surreal end. Players threw their helmets in the air and embraced. Tears of joy were mixed with tears of exhaustion.

  “Great job,” Ladouceur told Goncharoff when they met at midfield. “You guys handed it to us.” He then shook the hand of every Bellevue player.

  It was the longest walk in the young lives of the De La Salle players, returning to the locker room while Bellevue players celebrated all around them. Hot tears of frustration filled their eyes as they entered the cramped locker room.

  Some players stripped off gloves and shoulder pads while others collapsed on chairs or the locker room floor, sweat plastering their hair to their heads. One player tossed his helmet. “We don’t throw helmets here,” Alumbaugh reminded him.

  Ladouceur was disappointed and embarrassed about what he would later call the worst performance in his program’s history, but he didn’t give The Streak ending a second thought. He was too busy thinking about what he would say to his team now that it had finally lost. How would a team that never loses handle losing?

  “I always worried about how the kids would react,” he said. “They are so emotional. They can do stupid things. I was concerned. I didn’t think anybody was going to kill themselves but I always worried about it. I worried about it coming down to one player who didn’t make a play. I worried about everything. That’s why I had a heart attack.”

  Finally, when the last player had entered the room Ladouceur took off his glasses, rested a foot on a bench, and broke a silence twelve years in the making.

  There’s a few things I want to cover before you think another thought. This loss, we’ll all share in it together, coaches too. There’s not one person responsible for losing this game. Those guys were just better than us tonight. I’m not saying we couldn’t beat them this year. In fact, I think we can. But we need a lot of work. We need to do a lot of work in order to beat that team. Tonight, they were a better football team and that had nothing to do with luck. They just took it to us. They took it to us big-time. Hey, that’s the game of football.

  Keep that in perspective, too. This is a game and you’re high school kids.… Life is full of all sorts of setbacks and twists and turns and disappointments. The character of this team will be how well you will come back from this letdown, this defeat. You could still be a great team and you can still accomplish great things as football players but it’s going to take a real resolve to do it. We’re just not all that good right now and we kind of knew that going in. They just took it to us physically, too, which surprised me. It really did surprise me. I didn’t think we were going to get beat that badly physically.

  As for The Streak, forget about that crap. It really is almost a relief that it’s done so it doesn’t hang over your head, so it doesn’t hang over our heads. It was a phenomenon for high school sports. That’s not your responsibility. It’s really not. And it shouldn’t fall on you like that. That’s bullshit. I want you guys to play this season and go out like Spartans—and you have an opportunity to do that, to be a very good football team. So keep that in mind. You didn’t let anybody down. You let yourselves down. We all did. We let ourselves down. But sometimes we have to step back and say, “That guy is better than me, that team is better than us,” and give them their credit. They were better than us tonight.

  I don’t want to see any tears. I don’t want you to have any crazy thoughts or feelings about this. I want to see a resolve. A resolve is a dedication to say we’re going to get better. We’re going to play a hell of a lot better than we played tonight. And I don’t want to see anybody out on that practice field going through the motions, saying, “Oh, gee, we’re not that good.” There are a lot of guys on this team that can be very good. You just need to work at it and get yourself coached up. You’re going to have to work harder. You’re going to have to concentrate more. We’re going to watch the film and you’re going to see a shitload of mistakes. When we do that you have to learn from it. You have to take it and say, “OK, I can’t do that anymore.…”

  Ladouceur was winding down. Eidson had been standing nearby, sometimes with his hands on his hips and sometimes pacing back and forth, rubbing his neck, waiting for his turn when it finally came.

  …You have to be honest here. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do to change it. It’s over. It’s done with. That’s it. There’s no point dwelling on it. We’re not going to change that score. You’re never going to change that score as long as you live. Accept it. This game is about getting our best out of every season, and this is only game one. Down the road this will be a distant memory.… That’s life. We’ve faced a lot of setbacks in this program and in this school. That’s the way it goes.

  Pizza and sodas were waiting back at the hotel. Bed check would be in less than an hour. Did anyone have anything else to say?

  Rashad Floyd was a standout defensive back for the Spartans in the mid-1990s and now plays in the Arena Football League. He was one of several former players who came to Seattle to root for his alma mater. Few players could see him because he was standing near the locker room entrance, but his strained voice carried throughout the room.

  “Don’t be known as the team that lost the first game in a long time,” Floyd told them. “Be known as the first team to recover from that. Nobody has dealt with a loss for a long time. Recover from it. Prove the true heart of De La Salle.… Be that team.…”

  “I’ve had teams that have lost early in the season like that come back and win the North Coast Section championship, and that’s our goal, to do the same thing,” Ladouceur added when Floyd was through. “That’s always been our goal. Our goal has never been to be the number one team in the nation. That was never a goal. Our goal every year always includes winning the North Coast Section championship. That is a goal.”

  Bob Ladouceur and his wife, Beverly, walked their dogs while Bob recovered from the severe heart attack he suffered on New Year’s Eve, 2003.

  Bob Ladouceur moved Terrance Kelly from tight end to running back during the third game of the 2003 season.

  Terrance Kelly played a key role in De La Salle’s 27–10 nationally televised victory over eight-time Louisiana state champion Evangel Christian in 2003.

  Landrin Kelly (center, head down) sits next to his mother, Bevelyn, during the three-hour funeral that celebrated Terrance’s life.

  The jersey that Terrance Kelly would have worn at the University of Oregon was displayed at his funeral.

  Cameron Colvin (in black) hugs Jackie Bates at Terrance’s funeral while Willie Glasper looks on. They had
planned to play at Oregon together.

  Bob Ladouceur’s emotionally packed eulogy prompted three standing ovations in the packed church. “Bring peace to Richmond,” he said in closing.

  De La Salle players practiced at Qwest Field in Seattle the day before they opened the 2004 season against three-time defending Washington state champion Bellevue.

  Danny Ladouceur tries to make a catch against Bellevue.

  De La Salle players wore stickers on their helmets during the 2004 season in memory of Terrance Kelly.

  Eduardo Lopez splits two defenders en route to a 45-yard touchdown that gave De La Salle a 7–0 lead against Bellevue at Qwest Field in Seattle.

  Danny Ladouceur is hit hard by Bellevue’s Ryan Roster in De La Salle’s streak-ending loss in the Emerald City Classic.

  Disappointed De La Salle fans watch the Spartans’ national-record 151-game winning streak slip away.

  Anthony Gutierrez walks back to the locker room while Bellevue celebrates its historic victory.

  Bellevue’s Steve Schilling (left) and Mark Farney embrace during the post-game revelry.

  De La Salle player Cody Meyerhoff looks stunned as he walks off the bus that brought players back to campus after the Bellevue game.

  De La Salle assistant coaches (left to right: Nate Geldermann, Justin Alumbaugh, and Joe Aliotti) celebrate a goal-line stand during the 2004 section championship game.

  This banner was displayed at the section championship game at the University of California’s Memorial Stadium. “Le Homme De Foi” means “Man of Faith.”

  Zac McNally celebrates after the Spartans turned tragedy into triumph by winning their 13th straight section championship and 20th under Ladouceur.

  “And to be the best team we can be,” Eidson interrupted.

  “Coach, can I say something?” asked Frank Allocco, who was standing with his back against the white cinderblock wall. No answer was required. The De La Salle basketball coach had long ago earned the respect of players and coaches.

  “The Streak, obviously, has been one of the most amazing things in the history of sport and it was accomplished by fifteen-, sixteen-, and seventeen-year-old boys,” he said. “I’ve often told people that the greatness of this football program will emerge when The Streak ends. I hope you will all live up to that. It’s all numbers. It’s nothing. It’s not what we’re about. It’s not what this school represents. I just hope in the next week you live up to that. Let your greatness shine now even more so. Let people see the reality of what we’re about. It’s not about win streaks. It’s about the way we conduct ourselves in victory and in defeat. Let’s all try to live up to that.”

  “I’m not going to lie to you,” Eidson said. “You’re going to have to deal with this stuff now. I’ve always known this. This was part of the burden of playing at De La Salle. I always knew it. The team that eventually loses will hear shit from people. That’s part of the ball game. That’s just the way it goes. You’re going to go back to school and people are going to say, ‘You lost? What?’ Not razzing, just ‘What happened?’

  “Just say, ‘They were better,’ and leave it like that. Don’t make excuses. They were a better team. We lost to a better team. I always scheduled it that way and I did it on purpose. I always put tough teams on the schedule because I knew the day was going to come. I knew we were going to lose, and I wanted to lose to a really good team. You did. That was a good team.… They worked extremely hard. You worked extremely hard. I told Coach, ‘Somebody is going to be sorely disappointed after this game because both teams invested a lot of time.’ That’s the way it goes.”

  The game-day adrenaline was wearing off, exhaustion setting in. Ladouceur pulled off his green windbreaker before he and Eidson walked down the hallway to the press conference. This was major news. Sixty-three media credentials had been issued for the event. Reports about The Streak ending had already been transmitted from coast to coast.

  It was fitting that Ladouceur and Eidson, the two men most responsible for The Streak, stood shoulder to shoulder to explain how and why it had ended.

  “I just thought they confused us with their fronts real well and got off the ball quick,” Ladouceur said in response to a question. “They were just more physical than us. Their backs were running over us. They faked us out pretty good. I’ve got to hand it to [their] coach. He put a good game plan together, too. He ran a lot of things we hadn’t seen before on the film they gave us. It looked like he’d been working on this game a long time. He gave a lot of false reads to our defenders and slipped guys underneath them. He did a good job, real good.”

  “It seems like Bellevue took your playbook for how to build a team and used it to build their team,” was the next question. “Is there any irony in that for you guys?”

  “No,” Ladouceur said. “I’m all for everybody playing good football. If Bellevue got better because we were on their schedule, I think that’s great. That’s the way it should be. I think there should be a lot of Kings of the Mountain. Not just one. They elevated their program and I think that’s wonderful for high school sports and their state. They represented their state well tonight.”

  Reporters crowded around the podium holding their notebooks, tape recorders, and microphones. They talked in hushed tones, as if they were covering a wake. When someone asked what the Spartans needed to work on defensively, Eidson burst out laughing.

  “Everything,” Ladouceur said, chuckling as well. “We didn’t stop them.”

  Ladouceur always expects the opposing team to rise up and play with the kind of heart, passion, and effort that has been his team’s signature. He has almost always been disappointed. He wasn’t disappointed this night.

  “When I saw film of them this summer, I felt confident we could beat them,” he said. “But the team we saw on tape wasn’t the team we played out there. To their credit, they put in a lot of new stuff we weren’t ready for.”

  Then Ladouceur, recognizing the irony, smiled at Eidson.

  “That’s funny because that’s what we’ve always heard other coaches say about us,” Eidson explained.

  They answered every question until there was nothing left to say or ask.

  “We’re 151–1,” Eidson said at one point. “How disappointed can you be? It’s been a heck of a run.… I give them a lot of credit. Good for them.”

  Finally, Eidson put the entire event into perspective:

  “I feel sorry for the kids that lost, but after what happened to Terrance you have to keep things in perspective. This is still a high school football game.”

  Offensive and defensive line coaches Alumbaugh and Nate Geldermann were waiting at the end of the hallway when the press conference ended. All week long they had gotten teased. If they lost it would be because they had gotten outplayed along the offensive and defensive lines. Therefore they would be to blame for The Streak’s demise.

  They had twisted their windbreakers into makeshift nooses. They held the phony nooses around their necks and stuck their tongues out, as if they had hung themselves. It was one of many laughs coaches shared that night, but it was also an example of the pressure that accompanied The Streak. It had always lurked in the corners, the elephant in the room, even if nobody acknowledged it.

  One hundred fifty-one games, more than twice the previous record of seventy-two. It’s unlikely the record will be broken, in part because of De La Salle’s willingness to compete against the best teams in the state and nation. By scheduling Mater Dei, Long Beach Poly, and Evangel Christian, by traveling to Hawaii and Seattle, they helped popularize regional and national showdowns between high school powerhouses that would make it virtually impossible for a team to match their accomplishment.

  “I don’t think it can be done, not when you’re playing teams like we played in recent years,” Ladouceur would later say. “The strange thing is I always had the right kids at the right times. Some real average teams kept that streak alive, and when we played tougher teams I always had the right ki
ds to take those teams out. Everything just fell into place for twelve years. There was a certain amount of karma that went with it.”

  The Streak was over but the season had only begun. That was the message Ladouceur delivered to his players after the excruciating process of watching film of their streak-ending loss. This was a fragile team and it was even more fragile now.

  They would lose their next game to Clovis West–Fresno, ranked tenth in the western region in one poll, fulfilling the prediction Ladouceur made midway through the third quarter of the Bellevue game. “We’re going to lose next week, too,” he told an assistant. It was the first time since his first year in 1979 that his team had lost back-to-back games.

  They tied Palma-Salinas, ranked twelfth in the state, the following week, prompting Ladouceur to tell his team something he had never told it before.

  “We just need a win,” he said.

  They went back to the basics. They rebuilt the offensive line, calling up sophomores to replace seniors who wouldn’t or couldn’t do what was necessary to improve. They cleaned out the playbook, eliminating all but the most basic plays. They changed everything, including how players dress for practice, and Ladouceur found coaching outside the shadow of The Streak more enjoyable than ever.

  “We went way back to the building blocks and it was a relief,” Ladouceur said. “It’s still a very basic game. No matter how many schemes you have, you win with technique.”

  “Hopefully, it will be another rebirth for our program,” Eidson said. “That has been our history. It’s a new start, a new, fresh beginning.”