When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition

by Neil Hayes

  The Southern Section was so competitive and so insular that Mater Dei coach Bruce Rollinson had only a vague awareness of De La Salle until the game was scheduled. The more he learned in the months leading up to the much-anticipated showdown, the more concerned he became.

  “You could’ve hit me on the head with a two-by-four twenty times and I couldn’t have told you who Bob Ladouceur was,” Rollinson said. “Then I started reading articles as the game approached and seeing the similarities between our two programs. We both pride ourselves on discipline, execution, and conditioning. People talked about how well-coached they were and how technically sound they were. Those were things we took a great amount of pride in, too.”

  He didn’t talk to his players about The Streak. Instead, he told them they would be playing the finest opponent in Mater Dei history. They were going to play the mirror image of themselves.

  There were similarities, but when De La Salle players walked hand-in-hand onto the field before kickoff they quickly noticed striking differences. Mater Dei seemed to have more assistant coaches than De La Salle had players. Rollinson had an eighty-five-man roster, and his players took up almost the entire field during pregame stretching.

  Then, dressed in red helmets with three white stripes, red jerseys with white piping, and red pants, they bunched together near their sideline, running in place, their feet chopping furiously. Rollinson, wearing khaki pants, a blue Oxford shirt, and a red print tie, then led them down the field as their fans erupted with applause.

  Many of De La Salle’s players that year refused to wear elbow pads because they didn’t want to differentiate themselves from their teammates who didn’t. They stood silently on the sideline, taking in the strange scene.

  “De La Salle is more like special ops than the Army,” said former player Patrick Walsh, who was a De La Salle assistant coach in 1998. “We truly live a Spartan existence in football. Our coaches don’t wear headsets. We only dress forty-five guys. We have guys play both ways. Then we came out and saw this team that looked more like a college or professional program. They had banners and balloons and cheerleaders building pyramids and Coach Rollinson leading them across the field, and we had none of that stuff. In some ways it became an ideological battle.”

  Rollinson knew he was in a game from the first snap. Few teams in the Southern Section run an option attack. He had spent much of the off-season prepping for De La Salle’s veer.

  “We’ve got our hands full,” one of his assistants said early in the game. “Those guys can get off the ball.”

  “What the hell did you expect?” Rollinson growled.

  It was chaos in the De La Salle locker room at halftime. The Spartans led 21–7 but it felt anything but secure. Mater Dei had scored late in the half to reverse the momentum.

  Offensive players crowded around a blackboard in one corner of the room. Everyone was talking at once, trying to describe Mater Dei’s defensive alignment to assistant coaches. Ladouceur stood in the back of the room, strangely detached as coaches and players made adjustments.

  “How do you guys feel about the quick trap?” he asked finally. Silence fell over the room as he walked slowly to the board, meticulously changing the blocking assignments on that one play.

  Walsh walked out of the locker room wondering if Ladouceur had lost his mind. De La Salle basketball coach and former Notre Dame quarterback Frank Allocco entertained similar doubts. “I’ve seen a lot of halftimes, but I’ve never seen somebody waste an entire halftime changing the blocking on one play,” Allocco said.

  Mater Dei roared back to tie the score in the second half. The game was slipping away from the Spartans when the third-quarter clock expired. De La Salle’s quarterback was thrown violently to the ground for a 25-yard loss, setting up a third-and-32 at the Spartans’ 19-yard line.

  The Monarchs had taken control of the game, if not the scoreboard. Red-clad Mater Dei fans, who made up the vast majority of the crowd of 20,781, were on their feet. Not since the last-second win over Pittsburg in 1993 had The Streak been in such peril.

  Ladouceur sent in the play. Running back Atari Callen took the handoff, picked up a key block, and flashed into the secondary. He ran diagonally across the field, eight Monarchs in full pursuit. On third-and-32, he was finally dragged down after a 52-yard gain.

  Walsh and Allocco knew immediately what had happened and were dumbfounded on the sideline. The play that may have saved the game and The Streak was the quick trap out of a passing formation.

  “That’s when I started to wonder if he was magic,” Allocco said.

  De La Salle hung on for the 28–21 victory. Afterward, Ladouceur stood before his exhausted team. It was by far the biggest victory in school history at the time, but the coach noticed that several of his players wore masks of disappointment.

  “It’s OK to feel disappointed if you didn’t play your absolute best,” he told them. “That’s what we’re all about.”

  ★ ★ ★

  Bruce Rollinson of Mater Dei looks like a football coach should. He is a tall, broad-shouldered man with a graying mustache and a voice so gruff it sounds as if he’s talking through a mouthful of gravel.

  He was an all–Orange County running back at Mater Dei in the mid-1960s, before going to USC and playing on two Rose Bowl teams. He returned to Mater Dei as an assistant in 1976 and led his alma mater to unprecedented success after being named head coach in 1988.

  By 1999, the Monarchs had won five Southern Section titles, nine league championships, and two mythical national championships under Rollinson’s guidance. Rollinson was named national coach of the year by USA Today after the 1994 season.

  Rollinson had prepared his team for De La Salle’s option attack the year before and now, with the 1999 rematch approaching, he was more convinced than ever that stopping the veer was the key to snapping The Streak. His players had experienced the Spartans’ quickness and execution. They had felt the line surge and precision. They would be better prepared next time.

  “They get off the ball so fast and hit it so quick it’s mind-boggling,” Rollinson said. “You’ve got to get whacked by it a couple times before you even know what you’re up against.”

  Mater Dei’s 1999 season-opening loss to Clovis West dropped the Monarchs out of the national polls and stole some of the thunder from the rematch at University of the Pacific’s Amos Alonzo Stagg Stadium in 1999.

  De La Salle’s backfield featured 2003 pre-season all-American D. J. Williams and a sophomore quarterback named Matt Gutierrez, who had completed only seven passes in his high school career. Rollinson’s game plan was as simple as it was logical. He would crowd the line with defenders to stop the run. He wasn’t going to let Williams beat him.

  He had a player in safety, Matt Grootegoed, who was talented enough to tackle Williams one on one and make the strategy work.

  Grootegoed was also a pre-season all-American who had turned in one of the most spectacular performances in state history in the Southern Section championship game the year before. He was named the offensive and defensive player of the game after rushing for 224 yards and two touchdowns and registering seven tackles and a forced fumble in Mater Dei’s win over Long Beach Poly.

  Grootegoed has icy blue eyes, an old-school attitude, and would later play for USC. He was such a fearsome hitter that Rollinson referred to him as a “heat-seeking missile.”

  “He’s one of the best natural football players I’ve ever seen,” Ladouceur said. “He knew his way around the football field. His instinct for the ball, his tackling ability, and his athleticism made him so dangerous. He would come up and hurt people. He was that tough.”

  De La Salle came out in three- and four-receiver sets, but it was only a deception. Ladouceur was not about to throw his sophomore quarterback into the fire.

  “I wasn’t going to throw over those guys,” he said. “I was going to run over them.”

  It was obvious from the start that Grootegoed was fixated on D. J. Will
iams. He was flying up from his safety position and punishing De La Salle running backs and receivers. He found his physical match in Williams, who had his breakout game against Mater Dei the year before and was now being described as the best prospect in the nation.

  The two collided violently several times in the first quarter, both players refusing to give ground. The game was scoreless when Gutierrez ran what first appeared to be a typical veer option. He backpedaled at the last moment, however, and tossed a touch pass to receiver Demetrius Williams (no relation to D. J.), streaking down the left sideline for a 24-yard touchdown to make it 7–0.

  Rollinson felt he had been too conservative offensively in the first game and was determined this time to throw his entire playbook at Terry Eidson’s defense. Grootegoed and Matt Leinart would share time at quarterback. Leinart, a junior, was the more accomplished passer. When Leinart entered the game, Grootegoed—a dominant runner—would shift to tailback.

  “Their offense had a lot of volume but they only run a few plays out of every offensive set,” Eidson said. “To give our kids a chance, I had to make them understand what plays [Mater Dei] ran out of each formation.”

  Gutierrez threw every type of pass imaginable in the first half, from long touch passes to quick outs to precise timing patterns. As a boy he had grown up idolizing his godfather’s nephew, Damian Vallis, a running back on the 1991 De La Salle team. Now he was leading the Spartans to one of their biggest victories as a sixteen-year-old.

  Gutierrez completed more passes in the first half than he had all season. His three touchdown passes staked De La Salle to a 21–0 lead. He was only a sophomore, but the skinny six-foot-four, 196-pounder was doing exactly what Rollinson and his defensive staff had dared him to do by focusing their defense on Williams.

  “I worried about that game every single night during the summer,” Gutierrez recalls. “I had dreams about playing Mater Dei.”

  Grootegoed continued to dominate defensively. Ladouceur called a screen pass with hopes of exploiting Mater Dei’s run-oriented defense. Every time he ran it, Grootegoed sniffed it out.

  The play called for four receivers, two split on either side of the field. The screen pass would be run to the widest receiver on the right side. On the snap of the ball the inside receiver would take out the cornerback covering the outside receiver, who would slip down the line, catch the pass, and run upfield behind a convoy of blockers.

  Grootegoed was lined up on the inside receiver. When he saw his man go for the cornerback he burst upfield and blew up the play. Ladouceur made the adjustment at halftime. He told receiver Demetrius Williams to take three steps toward the cornerback the next time he called the screen pass and then cut hard up the field.

  It worked to perfection. Grootegoed saw the play unfolding and stepped up to make the tackle, but there was no tackle to make. Demetrius Williams was streaking downfield, no one within 20 yards of him. Gutierrez could’ve punted it to him. Just like that, the Spartans’ lead ballooned to 28–0.

  “A lot of the stuff we do at halftime isn’t planned,” Ladouceur says. “I’ll pull stuff out of the playbook. It’s like I’m fishing.”

  The final score of De La Salle’s ninety-first consecutive victory was 42–0.

  “I don’t know how you beat them,” Rollinson admitted afterward. “Hope their bus crashes, I guess.”

  Rollinson accomplished his goal of stopping D. J. Williams, but in his third varsity start Gutierrez turned in one of the most dominant single-game performances in school history, scorching the unsuspecting Mater Dei secondary for 300 yards and six touchdowns.

  “I was shocked at the outcome of that game and how he threw the ball and his poise and composure,” Ladouceur recalls. “Not in my wildest dreams did I think he was going to do that that night. I remember walking behind him to the locker room after the game and it was the first time I noticed how big he was. A lot of it had to do with the kind of game he had. He looked like he was six-foot-nine. He looked like a college quarterback. I was absolutely astounded.”

  A demoralized Rollinson took the team back to its Stockton hotel and made sure players were in bed before he gathered his assistants for a staff meeting as night turned into early morning.

  “We just ran into a hell of a football staff,” Rollinson told his coaches. “I hope everybody realizes that we got outcoached tonight.”

  Later, Rollinson would say, “We didn’t think they had that ability. We thought they were married to that veer and would run it come hell or high water. But they threw three and four receivers at us and no-back formations. Our coaches were scrambling. Our respect for that coach and his staff blew right through the top of that hotel that night.”

  ★ ★ ★

  Mater Dei kicker Brian New grudgingly accepts his role in Streak lore, even if he didn’t ask for it, even if he doesn’t deserve it. The worst part wasn’t even what happened on Saturday night. The worst was waiting for him on Monday morning.

  “It was horrible,” New remembers. “It made it hard going back to school. I kept waiting for someone to pop off to me. I felt like everybody was talking about me even though they probably weren’t.”

  Mater Dei wasn’t a team that was used to losing, especially two games in two years to the same opponent, especially 42–0. The Monarchs won ten straight after the embarrassing six-touchdown defeat to De La Salle in 1999; they then tied Long Beach Poly 21–21 in the 1999 Southern Section title game.

  Mater Dei opened the 2000 season with an impressive victory over the number one team in the San Diego Section, Fallbrook. The Monarchs were ranked eighth in the country by USA Today and were led by six-foot-five, 220-pound quarterback Matt Leinart, who would go on to win two national championships and a Heisman Trophy at USC.

  De La Salle coaches noticed the difference while watching film of Mater Dei. This team was not only talented, but hungry. De La Salle assistant coach Patrick Walsh predicted that the 2000 game would be even closer than De La Salle’s 28–21 win two years earlier.

  By this time the two schools had agreed to extend their home-and-home contract for two more years, which meant that Rollinson had two more chances to avenge the 42–0 loss and end The Streak.

  That’s what made the first quarter so unbearable. His frustration peaked when De La Salle jumped out to a 21–0 first-quarter lead in front of 17,000 screaming fans at Edison Field.

  “I was festering on the sideline,” he says. “I thought we were good coaches, and we were flopping around, giving up long passes. I was in everybody’s face. I was screaming at my defensive coordinator. I was questioning everything about coaching, everything about myself.”

  After Mater Dei cut the lead to 21–14 at halftime, Rollinson made a critical decision. His team was having trouble running the ball against Eidson’s defense. But he had a difference-maker in Leinart.

  “We couldn’t run on them,” Leinart said. “I remember Coach Rollinson saying we were going to air it out in the second half.”

  The De La Salle lead was 24–14 late in the third quarter when Ladouceur went for it on fourth-and-12 at the Mater Dei 34-yard line.

  “That was the last play I called,” Eidson said. “I knew they were going to bring the heat. I said, ‘Why don’t we just throw a quick screen to Demetrius Williams and let him run with it?’ ”

  The 34-yard touchdown extended the lead to 31–14 and would turn out to be crucial because of something hardly anyone knew at the time.

  Gutierrez had gone from a virtual unknown to an up-and-coming star after his six-touchdown performance against Mater Dei the year before. When his first-ever recruiting letter arrived in the mail, it was addressed to Matt Gutierrez, Monarch Killer.

  Now he was hurt. He had injured his wrist in the weight room during the off-season. It didn’t swell so he didn’t worry. But it never healed.

  “That was the worst experience of my life,” Gutierrez said. “I had a broken wrist and I didn’t even know it. All I knew was it hurt and the ball wasn’
t coming off my hand the way I wanted it to.”

  De La Salle led 31–28 and had the ball near midfield with less than three minutes left when Ladouceur made one of his few play calls that have ever been second-guessed. Instead of running the ball and milking the clock on third-and-8, he had Gutierrez throw deep for Williams streaking down the middle of the field.

  The receiver was wide open, just as Ladouceur knew he would be, but Gutierrez’s broken wrist prevented him from throwing the ball that far. Williams tried to come back to catch the underthrown pass but a Monarch defensive back made the interception at the Mater Dei 10.

  “It was a great play call,” Walsh said. “It was one of the few times his players didn’t execute something that was exploitable. It was a ballsy call but it wasn’t like the kid wasn’t open.”

  Mater Dei’s offensive line had been giving Leinart time, and he was shredding the Spartans’ secondary like no quarterback had ever done. He would finish the game with twenty-six completions in forty-two attempts for 356 yards and four touchdowns.

  He engineered a fifteen-play, 74-yard drive that included two fourth-down completions before it stalled at the Spartans’ 16.

  Brian New had been an all-state kicker for two straight years and was considered one of the top ten kicking prospects in the nation. Ladouceur was preparing for overtime when New lined up for a 34-yard field goal.

  “I should’ve called a time-out,” Rollinson said. “I wish I would’ve called him over to let him know that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he missed it. I regret that I didn’t do that.”

  New thought he struck the ball well but the potential game-tying field goal curled left with thirty-three seconds on the clock.

  De La Salle hung on for consecutive win number 103. Ladouceur told his players afterward that he would’ve been just as proud if the score were transposed. Rollinson even found peace. His players had competed so fiercely that he could find little fault in their performance.

  “A lot of people put a lot of blame on him, but that stuff happens,” Leinart said of New. “It’s hard not to point fingers because it was the game-tying field goal, but [the loss] was by no means his fault.”