by Neil Hayes
My opinion of you guys is you don’t want the blood and sweat and grit that goes along with [being] a great football team. That’s the part you want to skip. It’s not going to happen that way. You guys have to get tougher, mentally and physically. Your failure to attend to detail on this team—that’s mental toughness. You totally missed the point of the goal cards as far as what’s going to make us a better team. I can go through every single one of you and tell you exactly what you need to work on, and if you don’t understand it you haven’t been paying attention to what these coaches have been telling you.…
If you want to have De La Salle across your chest—We’re number one—well, I’ve got news for you. You’re not number one. Having you guys sitting at number one in the USA Today poll is a sham. You don’t deserve to be there, and if I ever talked to the guy who does that poll I’d tell him so. I don’t even think you deserve to be in the goddamn poll, to be honest with you. You haven’t earned it. You haven’t lived up to your moniker, your mascot, the Spartan.… We have to take another jump, I’m telling you right now. We have to take a huge jump. I don’t mean to bring you down or throw water on your fire, but if you guys think you’ve got a big fire going right now you’re kidding yourselves. You’re underachieving as a team. Why the hell would I stand up here and tell you that if I didn’t see it? Maybe I’m way off base. Am I way off base?
He turns to his assistant coaches, who sit stone-faced in metal chairs behind him. He isn’t being theatrical. He wants to know. Maybe he’s wrong, maybe he was expecting too much.
Eidson stops chewing on the drawstring of his hooded sweatshirt long enough to laugh silently and shake his head, his answer an obvious no. Blasquez frowns and shakes his head. “No, Coach,” says Aliotti, making it unanimous. Thus reassured, Ladouceur continues:
As far as tomorrow’s game, I really don’t know what you guys are going to do. I don’t even know what to tell you. I really don’t. I don’t know if these guys are going to come out and start knocking you around, making you look like shit. I don’t know if you’re going to come out and do what you have been trained to do and knock those guys around and make them look like shit. I have no idea. I’ll tell you one thing. If you strut around like peacocks—I’m a De La Salle football player—you’re going to struggle. Get that out of your heads. You have to earn that, and you earn it week to week with consistency, mental toughness, focus, the grind and the grittiness of it. I don’t know if you’re earning it or not. We’ll find out in the game.…
That’s where I stand. I’ve told you for the last three, four weeks. Do you want a shot at Poly? Do you want a SHOT to beat them? You guys better get tough quick. Are you guys capable of beating them? I truly in my heart believe yes. It’s not going to be easy, and you’ve got to pay the price. So quit living in a dream. We’re the De La Salle football team. We’re number one in the nation. That’s a joke. Last Friday I bet there were at least two hundred teams that could’ve beaten you.
So forget about De La Salle’s mystique or reputation. I don’t think about that shit. I don’t even think about the winning streak or any of that stuff. I heard somebody in the stands behind me during the St. Francis game mention The Streak. No bullshit. I didn’t give a shit if you guys lost The Streak. I’m focused one hundred percent on you guys as a team. I want you to become what you’re capable of becoming. It has nothing to do with wins.
In so many ways I wish you were the first team we had here. I really do. I wish we had no history whatsoever. That history has served some teams well, but to be honest with you I don’t think it’s serving you well.…
I usually want to hear from you guys personally and emotionally, but I don’t want to hear from any of you right now. It would be like me getting up here and telling you about my Vietnam War experiences. I’ve never been to Vietnam so it wouldn’t mean much. So, I’ll put it to you frankly and plainly: dating back to when we started these meetings, not every meeting, of course, but we’ve had meetings where guys would have tears rolling down their faces as they spoke about playing next to each other and side by side with their friends. That’s how much they were putting into it. It wasn’t phony. For you guys to stand up and say something of meaning you have to go through the wars first, the battles, throughout the whole week, not just in the games, the whole week. We’ll wait until there’s something worth hearing. If when it’s all said and done there’s nothing to hear, this will be a sad season.
★ ★ ★
Darrin Brown always told his players never to be afraid to play the best. The La Costa Canyon coach asked his athletic director to inquire about a game against De La Salle. He was surprised Eidson was interested.
Brown flew to the Bay Area from Southern California after the game was announced to research hotel accommodations, tour Owen Owens Field, and exchange game tapes. He was blown away by what he found.
“I did a lot to prepare the kids,” he said. “I told them it’s not a huge stadium, and that helped a lot. But when we got here there were still kids who were shocked by how small it was. A few of the kids just couldn’t accept it.”
Playing De La Salle had been a controversial decision. Many in Carlsbad, located thirty-one miles north of San Diego, wondered if their coach had lost his mind. His team was scheduled to play nearby Torrey Pines the following week. How would playing the number one team in the country prepare them to beat their archrivals?
La Costa Canyon High School has a student population of approximately 2,600 and has only been in existence since 1996. The Mavericks traveled to Nevada in 2001 and handed Las Vegas High its only loss of the season, but the young team had never played an opponent such as this. As the game approached, however, excitement began to build.
Brown’s team came to Concord sporting a 3–0 record and a number seven ranking in the San Diego Section. Meanwhile, the big story surrounding the Spartans continued to be Maurice Drew.
The running back had returned to the starting lineup, although some thought he’d be better off not risking another injury the week before Long Beach Poly. If De La Salle can’t beat La Costa Canyon without Drew, how can it beat Poly with him?
It makes little difference when De La Salle goes three-and-out on its opening drive for the second straight week.
Biller goes sprinting onto the field like an attack dog unleashed before the next offensive series. The coaching staff is eager to get a look at Biller, especially after his performance in practice. He is sent in to play right tackle, and he has never been so excited. This is the opportunity he has been waiting for, the opportunity he thought he had lost forever. The offensive series begins inauspiciously and goes downhill from there. Drew recovers a fumbled pitch for a loss of 13 yards. On second and long, Cecil throws to Bates in the left flat. The junior sprints 51 yards for a touchdown that is nullified because of an ineligible receiver downfield.
Drew picks up 5 yards on a draw play. Then he collects a Cecil pass in the left flat and flashes down the sideline for another long score. Sandie and Chan are at the 7, mopping up the last defenders, when Drew crosses the goal line.
This time it’s a clipping penalty that brings the play back. It doesn’t take long to determine which De La Salle player is guilty. Biller is shaking his head in disbelief. There is no excuse for the right tackle to be penalized on a screen pass to the left side, and he knows it.
“Oh, my God,” he says on the sideline. “I feel so bad. I feel so bad for Maurice. It’s my first game back and now I’m going to get ripped when we watch films.”
La Costa picks up a first down before a fumble gives the ball back to De La Salle. Ladouceur shakes his head in disgust when Cecil keeps the ball on an option play, attempts to stutter-step a defender, and is dropped for a 2-yard loss.
On the next play Drew disappears between the tackles, blows through the secondary, and scores on a 29-yard run to give De La Salle a 7–0 lead late in the first quarter.
The La Costa Canyon quarterback is six-foot-five, strong-armed
, and is already drawing interest from college programs Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. He has thrown nine touchdowns and one interception in his first three games.
A 30-yard pass early in the second quarter gives the Mavericks the ball on the Spartans’ 6. Their quarterback later scores on a 1-yard sneak to tie the score.
Assistant coach Mark Panella is standing silently on the sideline, his arms crossed, his face registering unfiltered disgust.
“We don’t have that killer instinct,” he says.
Drew may have something to say about that as he fields the ensuing kickoff near the left hash mark and heads toward a wall of blockers forming near the right sideline. He suddenly bolts up the middle to avoid one tackler and then cuts back again. Another tackler bounces off his massive thighs.
Drew cuts back again and is in the middle of a spin move when he is wrapped up from behind by one tackler as another smashes into him from the side. Drew rolls completely over the defender, his legs continuing to churn. He pops up and sprints down the sideline for an improbable, rub-your-eyes, 94-yard touchdown that stuns fans on both sides of Owen Owens Field.
“That kickoff really took the life out of us,” Mavericks’ coach Brown admits later.
Eidson had warned his players about the probability of a shanked punt earlier in the week. “Find the ball and then get out of the way,” he told his return team. Now the La Costa Canyon punter, trying to angle the ball away from Drew, has it slip off the side of his foot and carom out of bounds after eight yards.
Drew blocks two defenders and Gino Ottoboni scores on a 28-yard run to give the Spartans a 21–7 lead with nine minutes remaining in the second quarter. A leaping, twisting catch by Cameron Colvin for a 39-yard gain sets up another score.
There isn’t much strategy to discuss at halftime with De La Salle leading 35–7. It would be 42–7 if it weren’t for the two touchdowns called back on De La Salle’s first drive. Still, Eidson is scolding his defense. The La Costa quarterback keeps rolling out and has had plenty of time to set up and throw, which was precisely what the Spartans had prepared to defend.
“How’s your ankle?” Ladouceur asks Drew, who nods affirmatively. It’s fine. Ladouceur then strolls absentmindedly into the training room, where he spots a carton of fried rice on a desk. He picks it up and sniffs it suspiciously, his raised eyebrow signaling his approval. He reaches into a nearby drawer and finds a plastic fork. Then he sits down and begins to eat. He and Alumbaugh sit together for several minutes, talking about Chinese take-out food.
La Costa Canyon scores on the first possession of the second half on a crisp pass from O’Connell, prompting wild gesticulations from an outraged Eidson. “What did I tell you?!” He screams, indignant. “Watch out for a slant pass in the end zone!”
Joe McCormick stands on the visitors’ sideline, his fingers resting thoughtfully on his chin as he watches De La Salle answer with two quick scores to make it 49–14 in the third quarter. He is an economics teacher at La Costa Canyon who flew to Concord with approximately five hundred other parents, students, and fans of the program.
“I wanted us to be the team that snapped The Streak,” he says, never taking his eyes off the field, “but I’m just enjoying watching their precision.”
The final score is 56–27. Brown leaves his first-string offense on the field until late in the game, resulting in a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns. The headline in the next morning’s San Diego Union Tribune reads: De La Slammed.
“It’s flat-out their offensive line, period,” Brown says. “If you think for a second, they’ve got a touchdown. He puts out the best offensive line I’ve ever seen and that’s the position he coaches, which tells you he’s one hell of a coach. The fact that he can get that much out of his line means we can do better. Maybe he’s God, but somehow we can do better.”
The mood in the post-game locker room is as lighthearted as it has been all season. Smith returned to center after sitting out the St. Francis game with a concussion sustained against St. Louis. Biller played almost the entire second half after being flagged for clipping. The line has followed its best week of practice with its best game performance.
Offensively, the Spartans made early mistakes. But unlike the week before, they bounced back and blew La Costa Canyon away. Players sit around the locker room laughing and talking, waiting for the postgame talk. Eidson speaks first:
Here’s the bottom line: We knew from the very beginning, from the moment we walked off Veterans Stadium last year, that it was going to be Poly. Everything that we’ve done, in the back of our mind, we’ve been like, “Is that going to get it done against Poly?” That’s the bottom line. Up to this point that will be the best competition you will face this year. We all know that. You knew that last January when you got in that weight room, we knew it all summer, and we know it this fall.
The only thing I can say to you about this week, and I’ll only say it one time, so I hope you listen up: You want to do everything in your power as a student-athlete to get ready for this game. When you walk off that field at 4:30 on Saturday you want to be able to say, “I did everything I could to prepare myself and I gave it everything I had.” That’s all you can ask for. But you don’t want to walk off that field and say, “I could’ve done something more. I could’ve prepared better. I was too young. I was too immature.”
You guys who played against them last year or were down there or watched it on TV know that none of the coaches cared what the score was. We knew from the opening gun to the very end that everybody gave it everything they could. We were going to live with it one way or the other. Those guys gave it everything they had. They even gave it everything they had earlier in the week. They watched film. They did everything they could to get ready. If you want to win this game you’re going to have to do the same.
For the first time all year you’re going to be playing a team with better athletes. Across the board they have better athletes. But we’re pretty good, too. We can do some things, but you have to concentrate all week. Against Poly do you think you’re going to be able to have two touchdowns called back? Good luck. Do you think you’ll be able to jump offside in critical situations? Good luck. Do you think you’ll be able to turn the ball over three or four times? We’re still going to make mistakes. But we have to be the best we can be. That’s all there is to it.
This is going to be a grind. This week is one of the most important weeks of your life as a football player.… We’re going to watch film; we’re going to get better.… I just want you to know that’s all I’m thinking of. From this point on, I’m thinking about getting better and I’m thinking about Poly—Poly, school, school, Poly, Poly, school, Poly, Poly, Poly, Poly. This is it. Think about the time you put in. How many kids would love to play a game like this? It’s a chance of a lifetime.
Ladouceur doesn’t have much to add. Besides, he wants to sit down. La Costa Canyon kept throwing the ball in the second half, the game dragged on, and now his legs ache.
The coach is right about next week, and you guys who played last year will remember. There’s a whole different demeanor to this week. It’s total business, effort, and concentration. When we put in new plays, guys have to pick them up quick. That has to happen. We’re not going to be able to come out strong right, strong left, and pound the ball on them. We’re going to have to mix things up and be creative, slick, and savvy. It’s a big week—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Get ready.
You put in a good week of work last week and it paid off. You’re going to need another great week this week, and like Coach said, if you do that and go out and lay it on the line and play with a lot of heart—everything you’ve got—that’s all any of us can ask of each other. You’ll do it. I think you can find a way to win that game, too. I truly believe that.
The Lord’s Prayer is a post-game tradition at De La Salle. Players join hands, bow heads, and recite the prayer in a reverential murmur.
“St. John Baptist De La Salle,” Dre
w says, beginning the responsory.
“PRAY FOR US,” his teammates answer.
“Keep Jesus in our hearts,” Drew says.
“FOREVER,” comes the familiar reply.
In the momentary silence that follows, players wait expectantly for the popular and long-standing post-prayer tradition. After the appropriate seconds have ticked away, Eidson throws his clenched fist toward the ceiling and screams: “AND DON’T FORGET, GOD’S A SPARTAN!” The corresponding cheer echoes off the cinderblock walls and cement floors.
13
1982 TERRY EIDSON FILLS THE VOID
They opened their presents on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day was reserved for the traditional six-hour drive from the Bay Area to Southern California. Every trainer, jockey, groom, and railbird in the state knew that Opening Day at Santa Anita fell on December 26.
“If you’ve never been down to Santa Anita, it’s one of the most beautiful tracks ever,” Terry Eidson says. “It’s one of the best places to be in the morning when the sun comes over the San Gabriel Mountains. I always loved watching the horses work out at Santa Anita in the mornings.”
Don Eidson sold legal books by trade but always had a small stake in several local thoroughbreds. His youngest son insisted on going to the track whenever one of his father’s horses was scheduled to run.