When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition

by Neil Hayes

  Bates takes an option pitch from quarterback Britt Cecil and finds himself so in the clear that he cuts back, even though there’s no reason to. Pittsburg coaches grab their hair and scream, “No! No! No!” as Bates crosses the goal line. The 2-point conversion makes it 24–0.

  “Don’t y’all want to win?” screams a middle-age woman in a Pittsburg jersey who is hanging over the string of flags that keeps spectators from wandering onto the visitors’ sideline.

  A Pirates running back gains 12 yards on a draw play. “They ain’t shit!” a Pittsburg player screams on the sideline. A Pittsburg receiver makes a one-handed catch for a critical first down, sending the Pittsburg crowd into hysterics.

  The quarterback drops back on fourth-and-goal at the 14 and throws to a receiver positioned near the left pylon. Damon Jenkins makes the interception at the 1 and races up the sideline in front of disbelieving players and coaches en route to a devastating 99-yard score.

  “Don’t let them do you like that!” the woman on the rail screams loud enough for players to hear. “Y’all look bad, real bad.”

  Galli remains focused on the action on the field, directing players, shouting instructions, communicating to his assistant coaches. Bastianelli stares off into the night, as if imagining himself anyplace other than the visitors’ sideline at Owen Owens Field.

  Pittsburg gets the ball back with 1:09 left in the half. After a completion for a 12-yard gain, an incompletion, and a failed reverse, Eidson calls a time-out to stop the clock and give his team a chance to return the punt before the halftime clock expires. As if the play were scripted, Drew returns the punt 46 yards for a touchdown with fourteen seconds left, to make the score 37–0.

  Bastianelli is furious at what he considers an attempt to run up the score and confronts Eidson as the teams exit the field at halftime.

  “It’s 30–0,” he shouts. “Why are you trying to score?”

  The confrontation surprises Eidson. He quickly recovers.

  “How long have you been coaching?” he shouts over his shoulder, immediately attributing Bastianelli’s outburst to naiveté. “Three weeks?”

  De La Salle often was accused of running up the score in the 1980s, a charge Ladouceur flatly denies. More often in recent years, opposing coaches appreciate his restraint.

  “I always think the first half of a game is open,” Eidson says later. “I don’t know of many teams that can’t play a half of football. If the team is completely overmatched it’s another thing.”

  “They should show some class,” Bastianelli, still angry, mumbles to Galli outside the weight room at halftime.

  “You know what?” Galli says. “That’s football.”

  “It’s not right,” Bastianelli shoots back, refusing to concede.

  “Let them do what they do,” Galli says, trying to calm him. “Every dog has its day. Ours is coming soon.”

  “I’m pissed,” Bastianelli says.

  “I’m pissed, too, but calm down,” Galli tells him.

  “We’re 6–2,” Galli says, more to himself than to Bastianelli. “Fuck this game.”

  Galli marches into the weight room, as if the statement has made up his mind. Players follow him with their eyes as he paces back and forth, composing his thoughts.

  “Things are not going our way tonight,” he tells them. “These guys are good. They’re a good football team. We’ve got a ways to go, but we have a good football team in here. You know what? We got a gift tonight because Clayton Valley beat Freedom. I wanted to come and try to win this game, but we need to stay healthy. If we win the next two games we win the league. So right now, everybody’s going to play in the second half. We’re going to get everybody in. If you go in, you need to keep fighting. I just don’t want you guys to quit. Play hard. No pouting. Write this one off. When the time comes maybe we’ll see these guys again later this year.”

  Galli’s halftime speech does not sit well with many of his players. The grumbling begins as soon as they leave the locker room.

  “The coaches say we’ll get the subs in the second half,” one player shouts as they make their way back to the field. “Fuck that. This ain’t over.” Others nod in agreement. Still others repeat the mantra as they try to fire themselves up for the second half.

  “This ain’t over,” they scream again and again, while slapping one another on the facemasks and shoulder pads. “This ain’t over.”

  Britt Cecil throws a bomb to Cameron Colvin down the right sideline on the first play of the second half. Colvin leaps high in an attempt to make the catch but the pass falls incomplete.

  Galli and his coaches immediately recognize the play for what it is. Colvin is from Pittsburg. Ladouceur wants to give him a chance to make a play in front of friends and family.

  The irony occurs on the next play, when Bates takes an option pitch and runs down the sideline, right in front of Bastianelli, who has his hands in his pockets and is still shaking his head in disgust and dismay, en route to a 59-yard touchdown that makes the score 44–0.

  “If you don’t want us to run up the score, let us throw the ball in the third and fourth quarter,” Eidson says. “Throwing the ball isn’t our strength, especially with the second and third unit. If we run the ball it’s not considered running up the score, but that’s how we score all our points. If we throw the ball with our backup guys you’re going to get sacks, incompletions, you’re going to get the ball back. If I was coaching against De La Salle I would say keep throwing it, it’s fine with me, because I know they’re not going to score that way. But nobody looks at it that way.”

  De La Salle keeps the ball on the ground and even with the second and third stringers in the game the lead soon balloons to 51–0 and, a few minutes later, 58–0.

  “They ought to have a completely different fucking league for these guys,” mutters an observer in a black leather jacket standing on the Pittsburg sideline.

  Bastianelli is still fuming about Eidson’s time-out as he kicks the grass with his hands in his pockets, at times talking to former De La Salle players who come out of the stands.

  “I’ve never seen it before,” he says, referring to the Spartans running up the score. “What are they teaching over there? Aren’t they supposed to be teaching sportsmanship and class? How can you do that when you know the other team is clearly outmatched? I’m still pissed.”

  Bastianelli makes a point to hug Eidson after De La Salle’s 65–6 win. It’s more of an expression of appreciation for all Eidson has done for him than an apology for the confrontation. “It starts in January, not June,” Eidson says. Bastianelli nods. He knows exactly what he means. In order to have any hope of defeating De La Salle, a team must first match the Spartans’ commitment to their off-season training program.

  “I don’t know if I struck the wrong chord with some guys at halftime,” Galli tells his players a few minutes later. “We came here to win this game tonight. In no way am I telling you guys it’s OK to quit. Things didn’t go our way. I wanted to beat these guys in the worst way. It wasn’t our night to shock the world. It will happen. But you know what? We’ve got a bigger goal. Once things weren’t looking good for us I had to do what’s right for our football team. I want, and I know you guys want, to win the title. We win the next two games and we’re BVAL champions. Keep your heads up. Monday we go back to work. Tomorrow we’ve got films and we’ll take a look at this mess. Get your stuff. Let’s get on the bus and get the hell out of here.”

  Deep down Galli didn’t expect to win this game. But he didn’t expect to lose by 59 points, either. He’s mystified as he boards the bus for the long, quiet ride back to Pittsburg. He coached those De La Salle kids. He knows his current players. How can they be that much better?

  “That was fun to watch,” Eidson tells De La Salle players in the De La Salle locker room. “Those De La Salle graduates were pretty sheepish walking across the field after the game tonight. There’s a lesson to be learned from this game and I think they learned it to
night. You can’t wish it and hope it. It takes hard work and dedication. You guys proved that. You reminded the guys who played here—and they knew it, deep down inside—what Spartan football is all about.”

  21

  THE RECRUITING CONTROVERSY SHADES OF GRAY

  The allegations have dogged Bob Ladouceur his entire career. By all accounts, his personality renders him incapable of what he is frequently accused of. He finds the idea of recruiting so contrary to his nature that he turns down offers to work at the college level, where success is determined by a coach’s ability to sell himself, his program, and his school.

  Bob is a reluctant celebrity. He never had the desire to walk into a room and have strangers slap him on the back and call him “Coach.” Alumni mixers, booster luncheons, and recruiting visits are his private definition of hell. To him, they have no meaning.

  His father may have been a slick enough salesman to buy a house with a five-dollar down payment. His youngest son is not.

  “He doesn’t want to go into someone’s home and tell parents how great their son is when he knows the only reason he is there is because the kid is six-foot-four and runs a 4.4,” said Steve Coccimiglio, a former De La Salle basketball coach and a friend of Ladouceur’s. “He won’t do it.”

  De La Salle recruits. It’s a simple deduction, the easiest way to explain the school’s success and dismiss The Streak. The accusation permeates the public school community and is repeated so often that it’s assumed to be true, even though nobody has produced conclusive evidence.

  Rumors have swirled around the program for decades. De La Salle offers financial enticements. Players take steroids. Star players are given automobiles and other bonuses. A rumor several years ago held that Ladouceur drove a Lexus, when in fact his battered Nissan had more than 120,000 miles on the odometer at the time.

  “The accusation of recruiting has been here from the beginning,” said former De La Salle principal Brother Jerome Gallegos. “The gossip has always been there. We’re constantly trying to prove we’re innocent. It’s hard enough to prove you’re not guilty, let alone innocent. People end up shrugging their shoulders and saying, ‘Yeah, we know.’ ”

  School policy mandates that any coach caught recruiting student-athletes will be immediately terminated. A De La Salle basketball coach was fired for recruiting two student-athletes from Oakland in the mid-1970s. Other than that, school officials past and present insist there has been no need to take disciplinary action against a coach or faculty member for recruiting.

  But the charges became so persistent in the late 1980s and early ’90s that Gallegos carried cards bearing the name and phone number of Paul Gaddini, the North Coast Section commissioner. He presented the cards to accusers and urged them to forward any evidence to the NCS office so a full investigation could be launched.

  Gaddini and current NCS commissioner Tom Ehrhorn say they have never been presented with evidence that would warrant an investigation.

  “They do everything by the book,” says Ehrhorn, who has been the NCS commissioner since 2000 and involved in NCS governance for a decade. “They are very sensitive to accusations of recruiting and go to great lengths to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  There are insiders and outsiders; people who love the school or loathe it. They are either convinced that recruiting takes place, or certain that it doesn’t. There are very few fence-sitters in this debate. People want to believe this issue is illustrated in black and white, when in fact it is cast in so many shades of gray.

  How each student arrives on this well-swept campus is a saga in itself. Many come because their parents can afford it. Others are there for the prep school curriculum or Catholic values. Parents send their boys to De La Salle because they perceive it to be safer than public schools.

  There is no doubt that some are attracted to the football program.

  “I know some coaches over there are out hustling,” says Clayton Valley assistant coach Jerry Coakley, who has coached in the area for forty years. “I know it. The kids have told me.”

  There have been numerous instances in which eighth-graders boast that they were recruited by De La Salle. Gaddini investigated a recruiting charge that did not involve De La Salle while he was commissioner of the Catholic Athletic League. The student burst into tears as soon as they were left alone in a room. He’d never been recruited, he told Gaddini. He just thought it made him look better to his friends.

  “I think that happens more than we would like to know,” Gaddini comments.

  Justin Alumbaugh was a senior at De La Salle when he was approached by a middle school student who puffed out his chest and told him that Bob Ladouceur offered him a football scholarship. He wanted to know what kind of financial enticements Alumbaugh received.

  The senior captain knew he should’ve set the kid straight, but he couldn’t resist a tease.

  “I got a Lexus,” said Alumbaugh, then the proud owner of a 1988 Chevy Celebrity with 131,000 miles that he’d nicknamed “The Beast.”

  “They’ll say, ‘De La Salle offered me a full ride,’ ” Galli said. “I hear it all the time. They swear they got a letter, but there is no letter. Kids like to talk.”

  Few blame Ladouceur and Eidson directly. They believe that a network of former players, alumni, parents, and sometimes even assistant coaches scour the region for the top football players and funnel them to De La Salle, even offering financial assistance.

  De La Salle has no more formal control over its alumni than any other private school. Former players who cherish their football experience at the school may see nothing wrong with giving glowing recommendations. Such testimonials can be interpreted as recruiting and in extreme cases may even fall under the North Coast Section definition of recruiting.

  The section defines recruiting and undue influence as “any act, gesture or communication performed personally or through another, which may be objectively seen as inducement, or part of the process of inducing a student, or his parent or guardian, by or on behalf of a member school, to enroll in, transfer to, or remain in a particular school for athletic purposes.”

  “I don’t think Bob recruits,” said former Pittsburg coach Bill Cockerham. “He’s above that. But there are no alumni rules in high school like there are in college. I think from time to time his assistants recruit, and there’s no question that alumni do.”

  The school’s teachers and coaches have become hyper-sensitive to the accusations. For years it was taboo for faculty members to even mention the word “recruit” on campus. Eidson forwards all such inquiries to the athletic office directly to Admissions.

  Ladouceur believes that if the school is guilty of anything, it is over-vigilance. He doesn’t believe that teachers and coaches should recruit kids, but he thinks they should be able to talk about the school to prospective students who express an interest in attending. Even that has been discouraged in recent years.

  “I found very little recruiting by public and private schools in the section when I was there,” Gaddini said. “What I saw a lot of was school shopping, where parents wanted to showcase their kids who had talent in a given area. That’s not recruiting. That’s human nature.”

  Ladouceur and Eidson maintain that their program creates athletes and the evidence is overwhelming. They describe Derek Landri as a chubby kid with little athletic potential when he first arrived on campus. Ygnacio Valley coach Mike Ivankovich admits that Maurice Drew probably would not have been a Division I–caliber athlete if not for four years of Blasquez’s ultra-demanding strength and speed program.

  Others say De La Salle starts out with better talent, and given the caliber of athletes drawn to the school in recent years, that would also seem beyond dispute. The truth is, it’s a combination of both. At De La Salle, below-average athletes become average, average athletes become better than average, and good athletes develop into dominant performers.

  “They’ve been harangued,” said De La Salle’s first football coach, Ed
Hall, who went on to a successful junior college and college coaching career. “Ground zero for their success is Bob and his philosophy and vision and the standard he sets. People are jealous of others who have success. They don’t recruit. They are the hardest-working football program in America. People don’t want to admit that.”

  No one denies that The Streak sells itself. No other team has its games televised regionally on a regular basis. Bay Area newspapers and television stations cover the Spartans extensively. The local paper, the Contra Costa Times, assigns a reporter to cover the De La Salle beat.

  “They don’t have to recruit anybody,” said former Antioch and Deer Valley coach Mike Paul. “If you are a great high school football player, why wouldn’t you want to play there?”

  Both sides offer compelling, albeit circumstantial evidence.

  For example, former Pittsburg High running back Percy McGee was the player perhaps most responsible for De La Salle’s last loss. McGee returned an interception 79 yards for a touchdown to provide the winning score in Pittsburg’s 35–27 victory over De La Salle in the 1991 North Coast Section championship game. He claims he was recruited. A De La Salle assistant coach allegedly approached McGee in the stands while he was watching a junior varsity game between the Spartans and Pittsburg High during his freshman year in 1988.

  McGee’s mother confirms the story, saying she received a phone call from a man who tried to persuade her to enroll her son at De La Salle.

  Percy refuses to name names, saying only that it was a well-known assistant coach.

  Like most people, Tyler Scott assumed that De La Salle recruited. His father urged him to attend the school, but Tyler resisted. He planned to attend a local public high school with his friends—until he participated in Ladouceur’s Championship Football Camp during the summer of 1988.

  Some consider the camp a recruiting tool, which Ladouceur calls absurd. Twenty-nine of his varsity players did attend the camp, and some parents like the Cecils use the camp to see how their son stacks up against other future De La Salle players.