When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition

by Neil Hayes

  “I thought that team grew substantially overnight,” De La Salle basketball coach Frank Allocco said before the game. “You could sense a big difference in their confidence this morning. They were coming together. They were accepting responsibility. That was the difference.”

  Crusaders’ coach Tengan sticks with his running game on the second series and gains two yards before George throws another incompletion on third down. Drew snatches the ensuing punt out of the air and shoots up the sideline before being tripped up. He comes limping off the field. Bates, who can’t seem to pick up his feet, gains seven yards on the next play. Cecil throws a six-yard completion to De’Montae Fitzgerald while an assistant trainer rewraps Drew’s ankle on the bench. Later, on yet another third and long, Cecil deftly sidesteps a defender and flings the ball toward Colvin.

  A St. Louis defensive back will make a clean interception, or at least it appears that way until Colvin leaps up and knocks the ball out of his hands, making an acrobatic catch of the deflection and falling in a heap at the 1. The 35-yard gain leads to a touchdown that makes the score 14–0 as the first quarter expires.

  This is indeed Cameron Colvin’s coming-out party, just as he predicted the night before.

  Ladouceur had Colvin and Fitzgerald switch positions earlier in the week. Colvin’s size coupled with his leaping ability allows him to make plays downfield on the deep patterns that had been Fitzgerald’s domain. Fitzgerald wasn’t thrilled with the idea of becoming more of a possession receiver. He felt he was being punished for his dropped passes against Mitty. He knew he could get open deep, but they had only played one game. He didn’t feel as if he had been given an opportunity.

  “Look, some things he does better than you, and some things you do better than him,” Ladouceur told Fitzgerald. “You’ll get your chances.”

  The Spartans have 94 yards rushing and 87 passing at the end of the first quarter. St. Louis, with the most potent passing attack De La Salle has ever faced, has yet to complete a pass and has gained just two yards on the ground. The St. Louis strategy of running the ball down De La Salle’s throat is backfiring. Tengan’s team is facing the very situation he hoped to avoid. Now, like so many of De La Salle’s opponents before them, the Crusaders find themselves behind early in the game.

  In the second quarter, Cecil pitches the ball to Bates, who fires a pass to Fitzgerald for a 32-yard gain that would’ve been a 75-yard touchdown had the ball not been underthrown.

  “I guarantee you I’m going to run that halfback pass tomorrow night,” Ladouceur warned players in the team meeting the night before. “If those safeties are flying up and the corners are hanging out I’m going to run it and it’s going to go for a score. That’s a touchdown, a home run play. You guys run that right and it will be six.”

  Three plays later, Drew bursts off right tackle and limps untouched into the end zone. The silence in the stadium is deafening as De La Salle players celebrate their third score and a 21–0 lead.

  “That offense puts you in a predicament,” Tengan said later. “If you load up in the box they’ll throw it over you. They attack you all over the field.”

  Former ESPN SportsCenter anchor Larry Beil is the play-by-play announcer for Fox Sports. The broadcast will draw a larger local share of the television audience than the three stations reporting Democratic primary results combined. Beil tells the home viewing audience what has become obvious in the hush that envelops the stadium after Drew’s touchdown.

  “It’s absolutely imperative that St. Louis do something positive with the football here,” he says as another Binswanger kickoff sails out of the end zone.

  St. Louis fans rise to their feet when George throws deep to Shane Butcher, who is being escorted down the field by Bates and Willie Glasper. The senior receiver makes a leaping catch despite double coverage and gains 47 yards to the De La Salle 13. Three plays later George rolls to his right and tucks the ball under his arm as if he is going to run for the pylon. When defensive backs Chris Wilhelmy and Bates abandon their receiver in the end zone to come up and meet him, he flips a soft pass over their heads and into Rivers’s waiting arms for a touchdown.

  De La Salle senior captain Cole Smith is sitting on the bench, sobbing. He has suffered a concussion—when and how he has no idea. He can’t remember anything past the first two series. Blasquez notices him stumbling off the field and removes him from the game. Smith doesn’t know who or where he is but keeps trying to convince the coaches he can play.

  Players unaware of his condition see him on the bench and urge him to get back on the field, prompting more sobs. In his confused mind, he has let his teammates down.

  Bates admits at halftime that his shoes are two sizes too big, which explains why it appears like he is running on ice. De La Salle has a contract with Nike that allows players to purchase shoes at discounted prices. Bates had been sent size 13 turf shoes instead of 11. He didn’t think it would be a big deal but it is. “The turf is tackling me more than St. Louis is,” he admits. Ladouceur stares at him in disbelief.

  Drew is definitely not himself. They never would’ve caught him on the second play of the game if he had been one hundred percent. He felt the pain in his foot again while returning a punt in the first quarter and is limping all the time now. He still has eight carries for 88 yards. Cecil has completed six of eight passes for 148 yards.

  De La Salle dominated the first half, but St. Louis proved it could score in a hurry. With Drew hobbled, there is reason for optimism in the St. Louis locker room.

  Eidson picked up a tendency while watching film of the St. Louis offense over the summer. The Crusaders almost always run out of the shotgun formation and almost always throw to the side of the field where the running back is lined up. Eidson has his entire secondary rotate toward that side of the field on the snap of the ball.

  This is proving to be an effective defensive strategy in the second half, even as Rivers makes a leaping, twisting catch over Jenkins for a 29-yard gain. George throws to his slot back in the left flat later in the drive, and Jenkins, a three-year starter at cornerback, delivers a crushing blow. The St. Louis player fumbles but one of his teammates recovers. The slot back redeems himself with a spinning, leaping touchdown run to cut the lead to 10 with less than two minutes left in the third period.

  “We’ve got a football game, everybody,” Beil says in the broadcast booth.

  De La Salle’s special teams continue to dominate. Jenkins returns the kickoff 37 yards. Instead of sending Binswanger on the field for another field goal attempt, Ladouceur goes for it on fourth-and-2 at the St. Louis 14. Drew limps off right tackle for six yards, setting up Gino Ottoboni’s 1-yard touchdown run. When Willie Glasper intercepts a St. Louis pass, victory number 127 is all but assured.

  A St. Louis receiver gets behind the secondary for a 65-yard touchdown in the waning moments that prompts more sideline hysterics from Eidson. Even Lee, the winningest coach in Hawaiian history, is forced to admit that the 31–21 final score is deceiving.

  “It hurts when you lose,” he says. “A lot of people think 31–21 is a good game, but if you were there you knew they had it under control.”

  Defensive lineman Tolifili Liufau, the fifth-year senior Eidson had convinced Ladouceur to allow to play, finishes with seven tackles, including two for loss. For St. Louis there are no excuses.

  Tengan and the St. Louis players and coaches leave before talking with reporters. Ladouceur patiently answers questions at midfield as players celebrate with the approximately six hundred De La Salle parents and fans who made the trip. “We’re not counting wins,” Ladouceur says. “We’re counting on them improving every week and that’s how we have always approached it. We try to find a ceiling for these kids. Some of them reach it and a lot of them don’t. We just work day to day and keep plugging away. Wins are the outcomes. We really don’t harp on wins.”

  Veronica Colvin spoke often before her death about how much she was looking forward to the trip to Hawaii to
watch her son play. Cameron has been thinking about her all week and even taped a picture of himself and his mother to his locker before the game. He is overcome by fatigue, emotion, and the knowledge that she is not here to share his breakout performance. He sits by himself on the bench, sobbing.

  Promoter Keith Amemiya spends the night trying to conceal his nervous energy. His worst-case scenario was to have both local teams blown out, and although the St. Louis–De La Salle game was not as lopsided as the Long Beach Poly–Kahuku outcome, it was decisive.

  He insists that the doubleheader has been a success despite the final scores. Most people leave more impressed with De La Salle’s performance than disappointed in St. Louis’s, although some grumble about Tengan’s conservative game plan.

  “In all my years I had never seen a program like that,” says Don Botelho, who has coached football in Hawaii for forty-two years. “Their execution is outstanding. They’re not very big, and they’re not all great athletes, but they’re all good football players. It was the best-coached football team I’ve ever seen.”

  Ladouceur can’t remember ever having a team that improved so much in one week, but the shadow of Poly is already looming. They have made a significant step, players agree, but they will have to take many more steps to have any chance of beating Long Beach.

  Pizza is waiting back at the hotel. That’s when several players approach Eidson. The ocean has tempted them all week. How can they spend five days overlooking Waikiki without testing the water? Cameron accompanies his teammates to the beach but is too sad to swim. He returns to his hotel room alone, and when he crawls into bed and closes his eyes he can see his mother and father in the stands in Aloha Stadium next to Uncle George and Saimone. He can see how proud they are and can imagine what it would feel like to have hugged them in his moment of triumph, the way he had seen his teammates embrace their parents. He can see it all so clearly, it’s almost as if it really happened, which only makes him feel more empty inside.

  That’s how Cameron Colvin’s night ends. For everybody else, it ends with a joyous midnight swim in the warm salt water, Diamondhead shining in the moonlight.

  9

  1979 INAUGURATION

  One of the first things Ladouceur did after he was hired at De La Salle was order jerseys with the school name printed across the chest. The jerseys had previously been generic. He saw that as another example of how the school didn’t embrace the football program, and the football program didn’t embrace the school.

  Football was offered so administrators could tell parents and prospective students that yes, there was a football program. It wasn’t initially something the school took pride in. Athletes avoided wearing their varsity jackets for fear of ridicule. Students from neighboring schools screamed profanities at the players as they drove past the campus. That was the first thing Ladouceur wanted to change. He wanted his players to be proud of where they went to school and the team they played for. He wanted the name-calling to stop.

  It was one thing he would never accomplish. The name-calling would continue unabated for the next twenty-five years, although it would later result from the team’s dominance instead of its irrelevance.

  “Football was something outside the school,” Ladouceur says of that era. “It was Ed Hall’s thing. I loved the school and wanted to bring them both together. I wanted the school to be proud of the football team. The game doesn’t sustain itself. Something else has to be attached to it to make it great.”

  His first team had more characters than any team he has coached since, and many of them remain his friends today. Back then they had little grasp of the type of discipline Ladouceur would require.

  It was a group that liked to have a good time on and off the field. Ladouceur had to suspend two players for smoking marijuana in the days leading up to the first game.

  “We had some jocks, some stoners, and some bookish types,” former linebacker Chris Crespi recalls. “It was an interesting team.”

  Players realized something else as they began preparing for the 1979 season. The offense was no longer an afterthought. Ladouceur believed that a ball-control offense that kept the defense off the field was the key to success. He believed in attacking offensively and continuing to attack until the outcome was decided.

  That excited players learning the new veer offense. His philosophy toward pre-season practice also was a welcome change. Instead of two weeks of three-a-day practices, as they had endured under Hall, Ladouceur scheduled one week of two-a-days.

  “I always thought two-a-days were counterproductive,” he said. “They turn into a survival test instead of a teaching opportunity. So much of the game is learning how to hit and move people. It’s physical pad work, and you can only do so much of that.”

  Ladouceur set out to teach players the game once practices began. He didn’t believe his players had enough passion and dedication. The losing mentality was difficult to shake. They weren’t tough enough. They didn’t know how to win. They didn’t even know how to prepare.

  He was attempting to install a new offense and a new attitude. He had a young, hands-on staff that wasn’t afraid to get in a stance or deliver a blow to a blocking dummy or even suit up and scrimmage. Having coaches suit up was good for morale and it helped Ladouceur and his assistants better simulate the opposing team’s offense and defense.

  “It was what we looked forward to more than anything,” Keith Schuler said, who was a linebacker on Ladouceur’s first team. “If you were pissed off at Bob, you had a chance to get in a pop or two. Guys were flying all over the place trying to hit him.”

  Ladouceur grimaces at the memory.

  “I’m lucky nobody got hurt,” he said. “I’ve had coaches propose that lately. I tell them there’s no way they’re touching the kids.”

  Blair Thomas’s knowledge of the veer offense from the year he spent under Bill Yeoman at Houston made him a natural offensive coordinator.

  “I remember calling kids gutless,” Ladouceur says. “ ‘You chickened out of that hit.’ ‘You gave up on that run, that drill.’ So much of it was negative feedback. I don’t make those comments today because our kids give so much. Coming in, there was not only a tremendous lack of pride but also a lack of understanding about what it took.”

  His quarterback fumbled the first two snaps from center in the regular-season opener against Sacred Heart of San Francisco. Ladouceur had told numerous reporters that he would open up the offense, and here his team couldn’t even execute a simple snap.

  His quarterback finally settled down and the offense began to move. De La Salle trailed 7–6 in the third quarter before scoring three quick touchdowns for a 26–13 win. The 326 offensive yards were quite an accomplishment for a team that had been shut out four times and had scored only sixty-five points in nine games the year before. When they followed that by defeating Benicia 14–0 on a day when temperatures spiked into triple digits, the Spartans had won as many games in two weeks as they had during the entire 1978 season. With lowly California High and Half Moon Bay left on the non-league schedule, the Spartans had a chance to enter conference play undefeated.

  “I remember sitting in the locker room not knowing what to do when we were 2–0,” linebacker Keith Schuler said. “We expected to win. Before, we wanted to win but we didn’t expect it. The mentality was changing.”

  California High is in San Ramon, which made the Spartans’ third game of the season a homecoming of sorts for Ladouceur. He was going back to play against a team from the same league as Monte Vista, where he had worked the year before, and San Ramon, where he had starred for Fred Houston. The rookie coach wanted to win this game badly; it was a reasonable expectation considering the competition.

  The Spartans were actually considered favorites against a team that had lost nine straight. No one could remember the last time De La Salle had been favored against any team.

  It seemed like an omen when Schuler broke his finger on the third play of the game. The veer wa
s failing miserably. The game was scoreless with 2:34 to play when Ladouceur’s team committed its eighth turnover of the game. The Grizzlies won on a last-second field goal.

  “That was a huge ego game for me,” Ladouceur said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back I’m embarrassed by it. I was taking a team that was all mine back to the league I had come from, and we were so horrid. It was a humbling experience. I blamed the kids. I told them they were shit and garbage. I have a lot of regrets as a young coach, and that was definitely one of them.”

  Ladouceur had to find a way to get the offense back on track and reduce penalties. De La Salle bounced back and routed hapless Half Moon Bay 35–0, accumulating 401 total yards. The Spartans were 3–1 heading into conference play but still were not considered a threat to established teams such as St. Mary’s and powerhouse Salesian.

  ★ ★ ★

  Regardless of the ups and downs on the football field, Ladouceur was reassured by the fact that he had joined a close-knit school community as dedicated to helping kids as he was. De La Salle has always been innovative, with a liberal view of education. There has never been a dress code, for example. It was one of the first schools in the U.S. to initiate block scheduling, which is practiced nationwide today. Some within the Christian Brothers community referred to it as the “free school.”

  “The spirit at that school from its very founding was marked by a sense of community and care and respectful nurturing of the individual student,” Brother Jerome Gallegos says. “Everybody was on the alert to take the freest view to the rules and guidelines so the individual could be served. The person was more important than the rules. The human aspect was prominent. Everything was flexible. Rigidity was not a key in determining the course of action at De La Salle. Bob attached himself to that as he got exposure to it. He naturally became a leader in that manner of educating kids.”