by Neil Hayes
★ ★ ★
The final game of the four-game series against Mater Dei was an anticlimax. Rollinson didn’t have the personnel to match up with De La Salle, and the game ended predictably with a 34–6 Spartans victory.
He would never have imagined that he wouldn’t be able to defeat De La Salle once in a four-game series.
Rollinson remains more fascinated than ever by The Streak.
“I think Coach Rollinson is the best coach in the country, but to this day he still wonders how to beat them,” Leinart said.
Rollinson wanted to see the rivalry continue in 2002, but Eidson already had scheduled Long Beach Poly and was close to finalizing the trip to Hawaii. He didn’t want his team traveling twice in one season.
Besides, the interest in the games had slowly declined. The final game drew 8,525 fans, which made it difficult to cover expenses. By that time the game between Long Beach Poly and De La Salle was the focus of the high school football community.
One of the residual upsides to the Mater Dei series would benefit De La Salle greatly within the Bay Area high school football community. The series gave the program visibility. It called attention to the Spartans’ work ethic and Ladouceur’s unique perspective.
The more people understood about the program, the less mysterious De La Salle seemed. It didn’t hurt that Mater Dei was a Southern California team. Northern California teams that had been getting buried by De La Salle for years suddenly found themselves rooting for the Spartans and celebrating their success.
The Mater Dei series—combined with the public school–private school hearings held by the North Coast Section in 1997 and De La Salle’s subsequent offer to secede from the Bay Valley Athletic League—reduced the level of animosity many felt toward the program locally. De La Salle became more a regional symbol than a local whipping post. Respect for the program soared.
Regional pride wasn’t limited to Northern California. Before De La Salle’s first game against Long Beach Poly, the Poly staff requested a meeting with Rollinson and his assistants. The two Southern California schools were fierce rivals. But they found a common ground when it came to trying to beat De La Salle. Rollinson told the Poly coaches everything he had learned.
“I could tell when we were done with the meeting that they didn’t understand what they were getting into,” Rollinson says. “I told them they better humble their team because De La Salle doesn’t give a flying fig about size and speed. They punch the clock, go to work, kick your ass, and get on a plane and go home. They don’t get caught up in the hoopla. That’s the one thing I couldn’t convince the Poly guys of.”
26
A HEADFIRST SLIDE INTO HISTORY
An ornate green-and-white quilt hangs in the hallway, the name and number of each De La Salle 2002 varsity player stitched into its design. Candles flicker in the living room, where coaches sit with their wives, away from the kids and the parents and the mayhem. Holiday lights twinkle outside the window.
It feels more like a Christmas party than the last team meeting of the season. Beverly Ladouceur and Wendy Aliotti are in the kitchen. Mary Blasquez sits next to her husband, her blond hair pulled back in a bun. Baby Bianca sits at their feet, drooling happily. Mark and Sue Panella’s laughter fills the room. Nicole Geldermann is in the final, uncomfortable stages of pregnancy.
The feeling of finality that began to settle in before the Ygnacio Valley game was palpable during practice earlier in the week. “I can’t coach you anymore,” Ladouceur tells his players. “I can’t make you better in two or three days. It’s all on you now.”
He has fantasized about sitting with his assistants in the top row of the bleachers and watching his team play. He considers it the ultimate test for a high school football team. He might just do it yet.
They condition after Monday’s practice leading up to the North Coast Section 4A championship game against San Leandro just as they always do, Blasquez lording over the workout with a stopwatch.
“Remember this day,” he tells them as they fight for breath, their sweat-drenched shirts sticking to their backs. “I don’t care what you do or where you play, you’ll never be in this good of shape again in your lives—never.”
The offensive linemen hit the blocking sled forty times after Wednesday’s practice the way they always do, firing out low, striking and raising the sled high before dropping it with a crash. Ladouceur rides on the back of the sled barking out the cadence—“Down … Set … Hut”—again and again, the sled gliding over the grass, rising and crashing to the ground. This workout is different, however. This is the seniors’ last long, slow dance with the sled they have smashed into for the past four years. They keep going, pulling left and hitting the sled, pulling right, every step in unison, as the sun fades behind the distant horizon.
If there’s one snapshot that best captures the De La Salle program, this is it: the work ethic, the repetition, the precision. Ladouceur, the sled, the crouching linemen, large beads of sweat dripping from their faces, all cast in black silhouette against the vibrant orange backdrop of autumn twilight.
Ladouceur hasn’t been satisfied with the play of his offensive linemen in games against San Leandro for the past three years. He told them as much after the sled was pushed to its winter resting place. They have a chance to rectify that, he tells them. It’s all up to them.
He walks off the field in the gloaming, wondering if the excellence shown by his offensive line over the past two weeks—in fact, how his entire team has performed—answers the question he has been asking himself since that run on the beach in Hawaii: How far should a coach push his kids? At what point does a positive experience turn into a negative one?
“If our kids are looking bad in one area, we’re never going to throw up our hands,” Ladouceur said. “If they can’t do something that’s fundamental to our program, they’re going to get hammered with it all year until the end of the year, when we’ll finally realize they couldn’t do it. We’re not going to give up on it. This group is a perfect example. We had to hammer on them a lot at the beginning of the year, but look at them now. We’re tough on kids because we believe they can do things they don’t believe they can. But when do you keep pushing them and when do you back off and let them settle at their own level? That’s a tough question, and it’s different for each individual kid.”
Justin Alumbaugh returned from Europe on Thursday. Players hold their helmets in the air and chant, “Coach Baugh! Coach Baugh!” when he walks out to the practice field. They circle around him as he entertains with tales of his adventures in Budapest and Prague.
“I can’t tell you all the stories until football is over,” he says, grinning.
There is another visitor to practice, a stranger who wandered through the gates, unsure. He wants to know if this is the school that has won 137 straight football games. He is told that it is. He looks around, bewildered.
He is in the Navy, he explains, and has followed The Streak in the newspapers while stationed in Virginia. He is on his way to a family wedding in San Diego but wanted to stop here first.
“How do they do it?” he asks, desperate for an answer. “How can they keep winning like this?” He searches the campus for something that isn’t there. “I can’t believe this is where they play their home games. You think De La Salle and you expect something more.”
That evening, pasta is served and duly consumed on long tables in the garage. Players fold up the tables and carry away the trash to make room for the team meeting.
Christmas lights illuminate the eaves outside the open garage door. Ladouceur wears jeans and a black leather jacket. Players wear sweatshirts and rub their hands together to stave off the damp cold.
This is the final team meeting of the season, the last-ever team meeting for the twenty-five seniors. Eidson stands before them, head bowed, as if he is still trying to formulate his words as players quietly clear their throats. This is Eidson’s twenty-second year in the program. He could’
ve become a head coach, could’ve become a college assistant years ago had he not made it known that he would never leave De La Salle.
Never before have his contributions loomed so large. His defense came into the season greener and riddled with even more question marks than the offense. But it was consistent all season, while the offense struggled to find its way, making the staff question the team’s ability to defeat St. Louis and Long Beach Poly. The success of his defense and special teams was crucial to this team’s success. Eidson begins:
You have to remember you guys have been in games for six and seven weeks when things have gone your way and the game has been basically over by halftime. It’s been somewhat easy. You’re playing an undefeated team, 12–0, and they’re not going to roll over and die, and if they do, great, but there’s no guarantee of that. You may not have the lead tomorrow night. You may fumble the ball on the first possession. They may hit a guy on a bomb on the second play of the game. A lot of things can happen. I anticipate this being a four-quarter game. This is a championship game. This team, outside of us, is one of the best teams in Northern California and could compete with Southern California schools, too. This is a good team. A lot of things can go wrong. Keep your heads about you. Don’t panic. Remember what got you here—passion, emotion, hard work, technique—and put it together.
Go out and enjoy it and make a nice memory for yourself.
Ladouceur is almost always asked to compare teams after each season. He prefers not to. But no team he can remember has come this far this fast. The Archbishop Mitty and St. Francis games seem like a faded memory. This team maximized its potential, its crowning achievement—his crowning achievement—being the 28–7 win over Long Beach Poly on a day when many believed The Streak would end. For all these reasons the 2002 Spartans will forever hold a special place in his heart.
Still, the last game of the season weighs heavily on his mind. San Leandro is undefeated, tough, well-coached, and possesses the one thing that has always worried him most—speed.
This group played as well as any De La Salle team he could remember in winning playoff games against Antioch and Hayward. The offensive line improved more than he thought possible. The defense has been superb all year, but this team has shown signs of immaturity all season. It would be just like this team to stumble now, after all it has invested and accomplished, regardless of how well it has been playing. Ladouceur not only has had to coach this team, he has had to lead it.
He can’t afford to quit leading it now.
I promised Maurice and Jackie and Gino, all you guys that are going to run the ball tomorrow, we’re going to block for you, and goddamn it, you offensive linemen better do that. I’ll be very, very disappointed if you don’t. Regardless of how I feel about it, you should be disappointed if you don’t block for those guys. I have a feeling they’re going to come out and give it everything they’ve got as runners. You have to put the two together. I’m so sick of watching San Leandro lay hit after hit on our running backs and watching our linemen stand around and watch it all happen. When I see that as a coach I get real discouraged, because it shows them that they are more aggressive than us, and that’s the way it has been offensively.
This team that we’re playing has a lot of grit. They’re not in any way, shape, or form afraid of you. They want to lay hits on you. That’s been my experience with them. They want to lay hits on you guys, and if you don’t fight, scratch, and claw as linemen you’re going to betray everything we’ve worked for. That’s what your job is as linemen, scrappers, fighters, grit, right down in the pit. That’s what you signed up for. That’s what it is. Follow through on that tomorrow.
Think of where we started back at Mitty. Even in St. Louis, although we gave a great effort, we were still pretty raw and green. Look at our beginnings. After looking at our St. Francis film, we were looking around as coaches and looking at you guys and saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know if these guys can pull it together.” It didn’t seem like you were going to, but I’ll be damned if you didn’t.
I think you had an outstanding year considering where you’ve been and where you are. There’s nothing more gratifying to me, I couldn’t have been more proud of you guys after watching your last two games, after watching you play with that kind of heart, that kind of determination, that kind of spirit. It was everything I could ever want as a coach, or even as a fan of the game. I’d love to see it one more time. We’re not going to see football like that here at De La Salle all the time. You guys have been playing great, and that’s a rare phenomenon to get the eleven guys moving as one like that and playing with that kind of heart. I don’t know when we’re ever going to see that again. Who knows? Nothing is guaranteed anybody. I’d love to see it one more time.
I know San Leandro is dangerous. I know they’re good, I know they’re physical, but I believe in you guys. I believe you can mash those guys. But you’ve got to bring it. You have to bring what you have been bringing. If you do, you’ll ride back on that bus tomorrow and there won’t be any greater feeling. That I guarantee. You’ll ride back on that bus and you’ll say we just did something that was really good, and not just the championship game, the whole thing. You’ll have done something that not many guys can do.… I can’t envision you guys falling apart as a team. No way. It’s not us. It’s what I wrote to you seniors in your letter. Be you tomorrow. Be Spartans. Give everybody—teammates, coaches, parents, everybody who comes to watch—give them something; give them a thrill. Let us all walk away and just say, “Wow.” That’s what I’ve been thinking for the past two weeks. You can do it one more time. You’re in perfect position for it.
Responsibility had weighed heavily on the seniors, who were sad to see the regular season end. Deep down they also were relieved.
People always talk about the inherent pressure in being caretakers of The Streak. The seniors didn’t think about it that way. They, like the coaches, were too immersed in the details—taking the right first step on 13 veer, memorizing the scouting report, living up to their commitment cards.
But there’s no denying its omnipresence. The Streak is always there, the elephant in the room, lurking in the backs of their minds, if not the front. How could it not be when outsiders are constantly reminding them of it?
They inherited The Streak, put their own personal stamp on it, prolonged it. One more win and their mission is complete. They can pass the responsibility on to the next class.
“I want to thank Erik Sandie for being the type of player that he is,” says senior captain Cole Smith, the first player to stand during the final team meeting of the 2002 season. “Erik, you’re so big and strong and gritty. You’re everything I always wanted to be as a lineman. I like the amount of heart and hustle you play with. It inspires me. I would just like to thank you for that.”
Cameron Colvin rises from his chair, so much more confident and self-assured than he was at the beginning of the season. He carved a niche for himself. He set himself up to have the kind of senior season that could take him far, far away from the people who passed him on the streets of his hometown, people who think they know everything about his mother, his father, and his uncle after reading about them in the newspaper. People who even think they know him.
“When the season started I didn’t think I would make it,” he says, pausing to make eye contact with players around the room. “It was indescribable. Being out there with you guys made it bearable. I just want to thank everybody here for making the worst time of my life the best time of my life. Everybody should know I love them.”
“You made a name for yourself,” Damon Jenkins tells quarterback Britt Cecil. “Everyone talked about how you would replace Matt Gutierrez, and you would say how you weren’t going to try to replace Matt Gutierrez. You were just going to try to be Britt Cecil. You did that. Even though Maurice did all the scoring, you were the one in charge of the offense. I just want you to know that I respect the hell out of you for that.”
Cec
il has spoken only rarely in team meetings. He will never forget the feeling of having to be prodded into speaking the night before the season opener against Mitty. Finally, Panella had insisted he say something, even if Cecil felt he had to prove himself on the field before he would have any credibility with his teammates.
He had overcome so much. People said he was inexperienced, had a weird hitch in his delivery, and wasn’t a strong leader. Maybe it was true. He hadn’t developed into the accomplished running quarterback many had predicted he would become over the course of the season.
But he had come to personify this team. He was raw and untested when the season began, but he played his two best games in the two biggest games on the schedule. He wasn’t the player anybody expected him to be, but he got the job done—at times spectacularly.
He proved himself in some of the biggest games in De La Salle history. He feels as if he finally has earned the right to speak.
“I want to thank Coach Lad,” he says, looking the head coach right in the eye. “I want to thank you for all the patience you showed me. You were there through all the bad times and I could always see a little twinkle of confidence in your eyes and it kept me going. You made me dig deeper. I thank you for that.”
Chris Biller had taken his second injury in stride. He hated watching his teammates play without him but felt fortunate to have played at all considering that his varsity career nearly ended before it began.
He proved himself in the biggest game of the season, earned the respect of everybody in this room, and reserved a starting position for himself on the offensive line during his senior season.
“Coach Blasquez went to bat for me at the beginning of the year,” he says. “I don’t know what he went through to get me all those appointments. I just want him to know how much I respect him for that.”