High School Sports
Football: Bellevue foe mixes hugs with huddles

By Neil Hayes
Special to The Seattle Times

KARL MONDON / CONTRA COSTA TIMES De La Salle players prepare for another kickoff as they rolled past the Pittsburg (Calif.) Pirates last November for their 147th consecutive victory, 26-0.

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They filed into the campus chapel with red-rimmed eyes. The De La Salle High School football players who weren't openly weeping were clenching their jaws while choking back the emotion welling up inside.

It was Friday, Aug. 13. Nine hours earlier, Terrance Kelly, the team Most Valuable Player and perhaps the most respected member of the 2003 Spartans, was gunned down on the streets of Richmond, Calif. His former teammates struggled to make sense of a tragedy that made no sense at all. They knew they couldn't do it on their own. Even former players were drawn back to the De La Salle campus in Concord, Calif., because they understood that they had to band together to get through this.

People always wonder how De La Salle does it, as if the formula for success that has resulted in a 151-game winning streak, more than double the national record, can be patented, manufactured and sent streaming off an assembly line.

I spent more than a year answering that question while writing a book on De La Salle football. I learned that there isn't any one thing that has resulted in De La Salle owning the longest winning streak in football history.

He wrote the book Neil Hayes, a columnist for the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., has written one of two books on De La Salle football. He will sign copies of "When the Game Stands Tall" at the Bellevue Barnes and Noble on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. For more information, call 425-451-8463.

It's a hundred different things wrapped around the most basic human emotion: Love.

De La Salle coach Bob Ladouceur has a career record of 287-14-1. He has had more undefeated seasons (17) than individual losses but he doesn't see himself as a football coach. He sees himself as an educator who teaches young and often headstrong teens how to be thoughtful, caring, loving young men.

De La Salle, which faces three-time Class 3A champion Bellevue on Saturday as part of the Emerald City Kickoff Classic, doesn't win because of anything Ladouceur does.

Saturday Bellevue vs. De La Salle, Emerald City Kickoff Classic @ Qwest Field, 8 p.m.; also live on seattletimes.com

They win because of who he is and what he stands for.

"Kids respect true humility and that you stand for something more than winning," Ladouceur once told me. "They'll fight for you and your program if you stand for more than that. It boils down to what you believe in as a person, and I'm talking about how life should be lived and how people should be treated. Kids see all that.

The streak Consecutive victories: 151 Average score: 47-9 Shutouts: 39 Last loss: Dec. 7, 1991 Games decided by 5 or less: 4 Highest De La Salle score: 75 Lowest De La Salle score: 14

"It's a whole package of things that have nothing to do with standing in front of a team with a piece of chalk. You can know who to block and what play to call, but it has no meaning unless the kids know who you are. Our kids aren't fighting for wins. They're fighting for a belief in what we stand for."

Working together as one

You will better understand how they have defeated teams that have outweighed them by as much as 50 pounds per man along the offensive and defensive lines when you watch them crouch, set themselves and fire off the ball with the precision of a military drill team. You will be unimpressed with their size, but you will begin to comprehend their unprecedented success when you witness their execution and the passion with which they will play Saturday at 8 p.m. during their showdown with Bellevue at Qwest Field.

I've covered college and pro football for newspapers and magazines since I was 19 years old and I truly believe, when it comes to passion, execution and flat-out effort, Ladouceur's teams play the game at its absolute highest level.

"I've never seen a better-coached team at any level," former 49ers coach Bill Walsh said. "I watch his team play and can't believe it's a high-school football game. He's as fine a coach as the game has ever seen."

But it's what you don't see that truly separates De La Salle from its opponents. It's the emotion that comes bubbling to the surface during emotionally charged team meetings where players stand up, often with tears streaming down their faces, and talk about how much they mean to each other.

Its unmistakable feeling of brotherhood was felt in a chapel filled with broken hearts the day after Terrance Kelly died in a hailstorm of bullets.

	BOB LARSON / AP Former De La Salle player Cameron Colvin, facing camera, hugs friend Jackie Bates at Terrance Kelly's funeral.

Kelly grew up in the notoriously violent Iron Triangle neighborhood of Richmond, a city about 20 miles north of Oakland, but was determined to avoid the fate that awaited many of his childhood friends. He commuted more than 30 minutes each way to the De La Salle campus in suburban Concord to avoid the violence that plagued his hometown. He was never in trouble, never someone who was around when trouble occurred.

He was a role model in his gang-ridden neighborhood, hitting the books even when gunfire interrupted his nightly study sessions. In two days, he was to leave for the University of Oregon, where he would realize his dream of playing college football and become the first person in his family to attend college. Kelly had carved out a bright future for himself. He was a good athlete, sure, but he made himself into a Division I football player by embracing the culture of work that has come to define De La Salle football. The players who sat on the floor of the chapel respected that most of all.

This was the first time many of them had ever experienced loss. They looked to Ladouceur for answers he didn't have.

"I don't know what to tell you," said the 50-year-old coach believed to have the highest winning percentage in the history of high-school football. "We're just as confused and angry as you are. But it's OK. We're going to get through this together."

	BOB LARSON / CONTRA COSTA TIMES De La Salle coach Bob Ladouceur, top left, conducts a team meeting in the garage of a player's home on the eve of a 2003 game that was televised by ESPN.

Playing for each other

No one doubted that it was true. It's that feeling of community, of family, carefully cultivated by Ladouceur and his staff, that makes this program so special. Players don't play the game to see their names in the newspaper or to secure college scholarships. They work harder than any team in America because they are playing for the person next to them and all those who came before and left their blood and sweat on the practice field.

It's not all about football, you see. De La Salle would never have won 151 consecutive football games if the goal were to simply win football games.

"The game by itself doesn't stand tall," Ladouceur said, unwittingly providing me with the title for my book, "When the Game Stands Tall: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak."

"Without intangibles, in a certain sense, it's barbarism. The violence isn't what attracted me to it. It's getting kids to play together and get along with each other. The game should be a teaching tool. It doesn't stand tall on its own."

It's during the chapel service for Kelly that you comprehend the Catch-22 of the brotherhood Ladouceur creates. His players care so deeply for one another that a moment such as this can be even more emotionally devastating.

But Ladouceur does not try to make sense of it all or tell them how to feel. He is pathologically honest, always. He tells them the truth, even when the truth is he's still trying to make sense of a senseless death himself.

	SUSAN TRIPP POLLARD / CONTRA COSTA TIMES De La Salle tacklers double-team a Pittsburg ball carrier last December during the 4A East Bay Coliseum Championship in Oakland, Calif.

Kids remember the first person who treated them like an adult. For many De La Salle players, that person is Ladouceur, a man many call Lad.

Let the healing begin

The chapel session ends with players embracing each other one by one. It's something to see, a room filled with testosterone-fueled teenagers sharing heartfelt hugs without the slightest twinge of self-consciousness.

The wound is still fresh and it cuts deep, but the healing has begun.

"Lad creates an environment where you can cry in front of your friends and tell them you love them," said ex-player Patrick Walsh, now the coach at Serra High in San Mateo. "What do they do at the end of chapel service? They hug. Do you know how hard it is to get kids to do that? It wasn't until my first chapel service at Serra that I learned that love is the key to everything they do."

There has been a long-running debate about how players will react when The Streak comes to its inevitable end. Some have wondered if grief counselors will be needed to help players cope when the school that never loses finally does just that. But this team has experienced more than its fair share of grief in recent years. Kelly was the third ex-Spartan to die in as many years.

"People always ask us what it feels like to never lose," said Terry Eison, De La Salle athletic director and defensive coordinator.

"Believe me, we lose."

When De La Salle does lose, they will persevere just as they persevered after other tragedies that provide a constant reminder of how insignificant the game really is. They'll do it just as Ladouceur told them they would:

Together.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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