When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition

by Neil Hayes

  At noon on Wednesday a woman spotted a body near the second bridge, less than two miles from where Brother Laurence had last been seen. Their worst fears were realized. Students and teachers were devastated. Classes were canceled.

  “I’ve never seen such a dramatic change on campus,” linebacker Bob Guelld says. “People were wandering all over trying to find a quiet place. Teachers were trying to help, but they were in the same place we were.”

  The prayer service planned for Brother Laurence instead became his memorial service. The church was packed. Ladouceur remembers being as nervous as he has ever been before speaking at Brother Laurence’s funeral that day.

  “He was my mentor for just about everything,” Ladouceur says. “He believed in me without even knowing me that well. The school lost a great educator and I lost someone who believed in me and helped me from the very start.”

  Brother Robb Wallace delivered the eulogy. He talked about how much Laurence cared for and worried about the kids, how he believed that students must be allowed to arrive at their own conclusions. He spoke of his humor, his near-photographic memory, and his spirituality.

  “When Laurence’s dad died a few years ago, I wrote him a letter. He answered, and one line was classic Laurence Allen. It began, ‘It seems to me loss is not the point. The point is the experience.’

  “And the point here is not the loss of Laurence, it’s the experience of Laurence. And I don’t mean simply the experience we had of Laurence—the memories. I mean the experience now as we try to make sense of his death, as we try to understand the message of his life, as we rely on one another for strength, for comfort, for counsel.…”

  As the senior class moderator, Brother Laurence had been in charge of graduation. His desk was notoriously messy, which made the seniors all the more surprised when they entered his office to take control of graduation ceremonies.

  Every detail involved with the ceremony was spelled out. There was a to-do list. There was a schedule for when the songs would be sung, and reminders to pick up programs and trophies. It was all so out of character, so predetermined that some students were spooked.

  The seniors had been rehearsing those songs for months with no improvement. The first time they practiced together after the funeral they stood in teary silence when they realized they had hit every note. Brother Jerome told them it had been like listening to the voices of angels. It was one in a series of powerful events in the wake of the seemingly innocent outing that would forever shape the lives of the participants.

  “Right before we hit the wave he told me to stay in the center, but if I drifted to the side not to worry. The water would bring me back to the middle,” Henderson said. “I’ve taken it as a life lesson. If I start to drift I don’t worry. I know I’ll go back to the center. It’s the last thing he said to me, and it has been the guide to my life.”

  Students refused graduation help offered by various faculty members. They had planned this ceremony with Brother Laurence. Now that he was gone they would do it themselves. Only one adult would be allowed to participate. They needed someone to hand out the diplomas.

  Those who attended said it was one of the most impressive graduation ceremonies ever staged at the school. It was the first time Ladouceur saw the spirit of empowerment and accountability that Brother Laurence helped instill in his students. The ceremony was executed just as Brother Laurence planned it, except for the tears. Ladouceur was so impressed that he became determined to create that same spirit within his football program.

  The school wasn’t the same after the loss of Brother Laurence. Students and teachers scattered over the summer. When they returned, the pall remained.

  “That school went through hell for the next few years,” former graduate and longtime teacher Pete Kelly says. “We didn’t know how to grieve, so we started focusing on winning football games.”

  12

  THE POWER OF COMMITMENT

  “Has anyone told Chris Biller he can’t play?” Justin Alumbaugh asks in the upstairs office after a preseason practice.

  His question is met with silence. It had been three weeks since Chris Biller felt a tingling sensation in his arms after a collision in the first full-contact practice. He was subsequently diagnosed as having spinal stenosis. Biller remained hopeful that he would be able to play, but there was no way Ladouceur would let the junior offensive lineman back on the field unless he had full medical clearance and his parents’ approval. And two cervical spine specialists had recommended that Biller not be allowed to play contact sports.

  Chris Biller felt as if he’d been ambushed. All he had wanted his whole life was to play football at De La Salle like his older brother. His identity was wrapped up in the game. He was even counting on a small-school scholarship to help him afford college.

  He had worked hard during the off-season to pack muscle onto his stocky frame. He was confident he would get a chance to play, perhaps even start as a junior. Then, after his first full-contact practice as a varsity player, when he was so close to realizing his dream, he was faced with the possibility of never putting on a helmet again.

  Yet after a few days he felt fine. His narrow spinal canal hadn’t been an issue in previous seasons. Why was it an issue now? He was as strong as anybody in the junior class. His short arms and legs rippled with muscles. He was in the best shape of his life, but all he could do was watch longingly from the sidelines.

  Biller’s teammates would look enviously at him while running gassers after practice, as if he were the lucky one, when all he wanted was to join them. It didn’t matter how often his friends tried to include him—he didn’t feel like part of the team because he wasn’t playing.

  Biller had begun to accept his fate. He told his mother he was glad it was his career that was ending, and that this nightmare wasn’t happening to someone who might have a better chance at a Division-I scholarship.

  “It may force him to grow in another direction,” Ladouceur said matter-of-factly. “It could turn into a positive for him.”

  Dr. Wilhelmy and trainer Mike Blasquez hadn’t given up, but they didn’t want to give Biller false hope, either. They consulted with numerous experts, including a Los Angeles–based spine specialist.

  Dr. Wilhelmy found an exhaustive study of college and NFL football players that concluded that players with spinal stenosis ran a greater risk of quadriplegic-type injuries, only in the specific case of spinal fractures. But the study also found that spinal fractures did not occur more frequently in players with spinal stenosis.

  In other words, Biller might be more prone to the type of temporary symptoms he experienced after the collision on the first day of practice. If MRIs revealed no new injuries, however, he could safely return to the field after a sufficient recovery period.

  “It’s a situation where you have to ask yourself, ‘What are the risks?’ ” Dr. Wilhelmy said. “A boy who has spinal stenosis definitely is at a greater risk for temporary nerve palsy, but he’s not at a greater risk for a quadriplegic-type injury unless he has a spinal fracture. The study of six years shows that the chance of him getting a spinal fracture is no greater than anybody else’s in a football uniform.”

  Dr. Wilhelmy forwarded his findings to the leading specialists employed by Biller’s health care provider. After reviewing the available data, the specialists agreed with Dr. Wilhelmy’s opinion.

  Biller was watching films at lunch in the days leading up to the game against La Costa Canyon when assistant coach Joe Aliotti walked into the room wearing a smile on his face and holding a medical clearance form in his hand. Chris Biller was a football player again.

  “I was blown out of the water,” his mother, Sue Biller, said. “I couldn’t believe it. They took so much interest in him and went to such lengths to meet with the best doctors and experts. I was utterly amazed.”

  Biller’s athletic rebirth came at an opportune time. The offensive line had taken another step back against St. Francis, although turnovers an
d penalties played an even more prominent role in the substandard offensive output.

  John Chan and Erik Sandie had been so offended by the offensive line’s lackluster performance in the season-opening win over Archbishop Mitty that they had a late-night phone conversation a few days later. How could this be happening during their senior year? They spoke for more than an hour and were both in tears when they finally hung up the phone.

  They thought they had put the first game behind them with a solid performance in Hawaii. But after the St. Francis game, Ladouceur was harping on the same things he had harped on during the preseason, and the linemen knew he was right. They didn’t understand what it took to play at the highest level. They weren’t aggressive enough. They were making too many mental mistakes. They sometimes played as if the game were a burden. Where was the joy? Where was their passion?

  “It was so sad because we worked so hard during the off-season but we couldn’t put it together,” Chan said. “The aggressiveness wasn’t always there. We weren’t hitting, and that had never happened before.”

  Biller returned to practice on Wednesday before the La Costa Canyon game, filled with six weeks of pent-up frustration. At five-foot-nine, 205 pounds, he epitomizes the type of offensive lineman that has long served as the foundation for the De La Salle program. He is strong and quick with a low center of gravity. No one takes more pride in planting a defender flat on his back.

  Biller fires off the ball with such ferocity on his first play back at practice that an opposing player’s spit drips off his facemask. He knocks down another teammate a few plays later.

  “Biller has the most heart of anybody on that line,” Chan said. “He gets it from somewhere and I wish I had it.”

  Biller can’t wait to get back in his stance for the next play. His enthusiasm is contagious. His linemates are breaking the huddle and racing up to the line. They are firing off the ball more quickly, holding blocks longer, and punishing the scout team. The offense is suddenly alive.

  It’s the best practice of the season, and Biller is the sparkplug.

  “He wanted to play so much,” Sandie said. “He reminded everybody of what we were playing for. It wasn’t about the coaches making us do it. It was about us wanting to do it.”

  ★ ★ ★

  Nobody has contributed so much to De La Salle football in such a short amount of time as Steve Alexakos.

  The former NFL offensive lineman wears a beard and a menacing stare and has a deep, guttural voice that seems to emanate from deep within.

  He is a businessman, but first and foremost considers himself a mentor to young men. He began coaching his sons in youth football and followed them to De La Salle before leaving the program in 1994 to become the line coach at his alma mater, San Jose State.

  Alexakos spent just four years as Ladouceur’s assistant, but his legacy remains very much alive. He refined techniques and introduced the counting system that simplified blocking assignments and allows linemen to perform at increasingly higher levels.

  Ladouceur believes that a coach has to spend as much time teaching technique to each individual lineman as he would with the quarterback. Coaching the offensive line was too important a job to trust to anyone else. That’s why Alexakos spent his final summer at the school teaching Ladouceur everything he knew. From that point on, Ladouceur would coach the line himself.

  Alexakos was the junior varsity line coach in 1991 when Ladouceur called him up to the varsity staff. Alexakos initially refused the promotion.

  He had made a commitment to his current players, he said, and he wasn’t going to leave them in midseason. Finally Ladouceur spoke directly to the JV linemen, explaining how much Alexakos was needed on the varsity staff. They were the ones who urged Alexakos to do what was best for the program. He reluctantly agreed.

  “When he came [onto the varsity staff] I realized how much I’d let these guys slide accountability-wise,” Ladouceur recalls. “I wasn’t even holding my coaches accountable. He was a breath of fresh air. He came in and said, ‘Are we going to do this right or are we going to accept mediocrity?’ ”

  The team was running gassers after practice one day when Ladouceur’s new line coach told him that some of the players were cruising toward the finish line instead of running hard through the line as instructed.

  Gassers are the most dreaded conditioning drill. Players run back and forth across the field four times within a prescribed time. Coaches tell players to run hard through the sideline but they often ease up, especially if they’re finishing well ahead of the time allotted.

  What was Ladouceur prepared to do about it? That’s what Alexakos wanted to know. Was he going to accept that?

  “He called me on everything and really made me think,” Ladouceur says in retrospect. “It was good for me.”

  Alexakos’s greatest contribution came in the form of the white index cards that De La Salle players carry. The commitment cards Alexakos introduced became a staple of the program.

  Ladouceur was accustomed to setting team and offensive and defensive goals, but it was Alexakos who demanded that each of his linemen set individual goals before every game.

  The new varsity assistant arrived at his second team dinner when Ladouceur asked him to lead the team meeting that night. “I knew he was very capable and had a presence about him and the kids would listen,” Ladouceur says. “At that point of the season I felt the rest of the staff, me included, had lost the kids a little bit. They needed to hear from somebody different.”

  Point by point he took them through the game plan and scouting report. Then Alexakos talked about the importance of individual goal-setting.

  “I wanted them to put some pressure on themselves,” Alexakos said. “If you do it in public it’s conceited. But if you do it to an intimate friend it’s a commitment, and the power of commitment is bonding.”

  One of his offensive linemen stood up that night and promised a friend that he would execute a seal block that was critical to the success of one of their most basic plays. His friend vowed to critique his performance during the game and hold him to his promise.

  “Lad couldn’t believe the power in it,” Alexakos recalls.

  Ladouceur expanded the concept until every player was required to make at least one weight-lifting goal, one practice goal, and one game goal, which are then written on index cards. Players give the cards to a teammate or coach who is responsible for determining whether the goals have been fulfilled. The findings are reported to the team the next week.

  “I added the practice and lifting goals so kids who don’t get in the game could still participate and improve themselves and measure their progress,” Ladouceur said. “I wanted them to be striving for something, too.”

  Commitment cards fit Ladouceur’s program perfectly. They teach goal-setting and accountability and keep nonstarters from giving up on their seasons. Players have taken the concept to another level, making life commitments to one another. Ladouceur remembers when a former player showed up at practice one day to inquire about former teammate Anthony Vontoure, who had recently been suspended from the University of Washington football team. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a wrinkled commitment card with Anthony’s handwriting on it.

  Anthony had committed to being the best person he could be. His friend wanted to mail him the card to remind him of that commitment.

  “I said, ‘Whoa,’ ” Ladouceur said, smiling at the memory. “He said he had saved every one of his commitment cards. I’ve asked other kids if they kept their commitment cards and they all say they have.”

  Now, at the team dinner on the eve of the 2002 La Costa game, Ladouceur calls into question his players’ commitment to their commitment cards. He lists their unrealized offensive goals from the previous game. They had been lofty—300 yards rushing, no sacks, no punts—but they were unrealistic because they hadn’t practiced well enough during the week to expect that kind of production.

  No punts? That might be
a worthwhile goal for an offense that is hitting on all cylinders and that has practiced well, but not for a team that had slogged through practice all week without its best player. De La Salle had been forced to punt on its first drive against St. Francis.

  “I don’t know what to tell you guys,” Ladouceur says. “I don’t want to set your goals for you, but obviously you have a deluded sense of what you’ve prepared for and what you’re capable of doing. It doesn’t match up. It borders on saber-rattling to me.”

  Senior running back Gino Ottoboni stands up to read quarterback Britt Cecil’s commitment card. Cecil’s goals for the St. Francis game included one hundred percent ball security, making the correct run reads ninety-five percent of the time, and a sixty-five percent completion rate.

  A lineman’s goal had been to take the proper first step on every play. Ladouceur noticed after watching the film that he hadn’t taken the proper step even once. Another of his linemen says that his present goal is to work on his technique off the ball. “I don’t want that goal,” Ladouceur interrupts. “What the hell is that? Does that mean you’re going to keep your head up? Your ass down? I want to hear specifics. That goal means nothing.”

  Ladouceur hadn’t planned on addressing the team that night. He was going to let Eidson speak instead. But now he has something to say, which is how it usually works. He never prepares notes for his Thursday night lectures, although he sometimes polls assistants to find out what they think needs to be said. Mostly he articulates what has been rattling around his head all week, as is the case now:

  What I have to say to you relates to tomorrow night and the rest of the season, and it stems from the goal cards. My piece of advice to you is this: stop living off De La Salle’s lore and reputation and carve a niche for yourself. You guys want to live this De La Salle dream of bad-ass football but you haven’t put the grittiness in to do it yourself, and that starts with goal cards. Lifting goals are great. They’re good. But let me tell you something, they’re the easiest ones to get. You can work faster to get an extra set in or add another five pounds. The next easiest are your practice goals, because that’s when you have to step out there and slam into people and that’s when it starts getting gritty and uncomfortable. The next step is the game goals. As you noticed, nobody is getting their game goals—very few. Practice goals? Some. Then most everybody is getting their lifting goals.