Chapter One

RUMORS

On December 7, 1991 -- nine years and 299 days before the first high-school national championship game -- the Concord (California) De La Salle Spartans suffered what they still refer to as their own "day of infamy": they lost a football game. With two minutes and nineteen seconds to play, Percy McGee snatched an interception and returned it for a touchdown, giving the Pirates of Pittsburg High School a 35-27 lead and putting them in reach of an upset over the Spartans, who hadn't lost for thirty-five games.

The Pittsburg Pirates were the underdogs. Pittsburg is a gritty, blue-collar, racially mixed port town on the windswept outlet where the Sacramento Delta empties into Suisun Bay, a distant and distinctly unglamorous backwater of the San Francisco Bay. De La Salle -- private, suburban, Christian Brothers-founded -- was going for its fourth consecutive California North Coast Section championship and had future New York Giants star Amani Toomer among its standouts on the field.

More than any single player, though, De La Salle had Robert Ladouceur, then thirty-seven years old and completing his twelfth year as Spartan head coach. Before taking the job, only the second coaching position he'd ever held, Ladouceur had been a juvenile probation officer at age twenty-five, moonlighting as a high school football assistant. As De La Salle's coach, he became a legend. Not right away, of course; but soon enough his reputation as a perfectionist started to precede his team onto the field. Seeing him on the sidelines -- intense, unsmiling, deep-set eyes -- opposing coaches and players found it easy to ascribe a sort of supernaturalism to Ladouceur to explain away their losses to what had been a doormat of a team.

And handing out losses was becoming automatic; Ladouceur's Spartans showed a knack for putting together winning streaks. Five in a row, six in a row, an entire season. Then a twenty-four-game winning streak -- interrupted by one loss -- followed finally by a thirty-five-game run, which was on the line tonight.

But if De La Salle had a legend coaching that night, Pittsburg had a windfall of talent, including future Oakland Raiders lineman Regan Upshaw, who pounced on a De La Salle fumble in the last minute to secure the victory. For Terry Eidson, who had taken over as the De La Salle defensive coach just three games before the championship when an assistant abruptly left, the memory is indelible -- if coded in football jargon. "They came out with a five wideout set and surprised us," he says, self-recrimination straining his voice. To be a Spartan is to be prepared. "I vowed to myself to never get beat that way again."

Upshaw went on to become, after college at the University of California at Berkeley, a first-round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. For the last three seasons as a Raider he has played on the same Oakland (now Network Associates) Coliseum turf where the Pirates had won. But for him, a pro lineman, nothing compares to that night: "Playing the game with all the buddies you grew up with," he rhapsodized in a newspaper interview nine years later, "playing for the glory of football."

While Upshaw's memory is of glories past, De La Salle and Ladouceur have continued to gather new glories every year: since Upshaw and Pittsburg's big night nine years ago, the Spartans have not lost another game. In late August, when the 2001 season opens, their streak will stand at 113 consecutive victories -- and counting.

Ever since the December evening in 2000 when the Long Beach (California) Polytechnic High School Jackrabbits had won one of the most thrilling Southern Section championships anyone could remember, they had been sitting on top of the world; there was no other way to put it. It was more than just a game -- it was a vindication, a celebration of community, and a kind of exorcism as well. One man in particular had good reason to be floating. Long Beach Poly coach Jerry Jaso had heard the doubters for an entire year following the outcome of the 1999 championship game, against perennial nemesis Mater Dei of Santa Ana.

The rivalry between the two teams mirrored the social divisions in California education. Poly represented a return to public school glory from the days preceding Proposition 13, which had devastated the state's tax base in 1976 and led to plummeting test scores and the limitation, or in some cases, the elimination, of most extracurricular programs. Private parochial powers like Mater Dei benefited from Proposition 13, able to pick and choose their students, feeling no responsibility to the unprepared, the unparented, the unruly, the physically or mentally challenged, the migrant or the poor. Furthermore, as a private institution Mater Dei could also skim the cream of the crop of local athletes, and local was a pretty fluid term in the sprawling five-county Los Angeles Basin, home to almost 20 million.

By the late 1990s the Mater Dei Monarchs would crow over being the undisputed kings of Southern California football, voted number one in the U.S. twice in national year-end polls. The Poly Jackrabbits had vowed to topple Mater Dei, but for an entire decade had always fallen just short. Yet there can be lessons in losing, and even inspiration, too. Under coach Jerry Jaso, the Jackrabbits would finally learn that winning on the field means becoming a winner off it.

In the 1997 California Southern Section title game, Poly had surprised a favored Mater Dei. Then it was Mater Dei's turn, stealing the 1998 final from Poly and what some are still calling the most talented high school team in history. In 1999, it was Mater Dei again, invoking that old Catholic school hoodoo and keeping the Jackrabbits off balance -- and off the scoreboard. It came down to a last-minute drill; Poly scored a touchdown with zero seconds left on the clock and trailed by one point. There was no provision for overtime in the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) rules, so everyone expected Jaso and the Jackrabbits to go for a two-point conversion and victory. Who plays for a tie, anyway? "A tie is like kissing your sister," as Alabama coach Bear Bryant once said.

Coach Jaso sent the kicking team out: stunned silence and even some boos. The kick was good, but the cheers were muted; neither school could really celebrate. And Poly caught the flack afterward. People said that Jaso's going for the tie had tarnished the championship; that he didn't dare go for the win because Poly's public school kids just weren't disciplined enough -- that is, white enough -- to pull it off. Those Poly Jackrabbits were chokers.

But Jaso stuck by his decision; at least that's what he said. He knew the Poly haters would find something to say no matter what, especially if he had gambled on the two-point conversion after the touchdown and then lost. At least Poly had come away with its second championship in three tries over three straight years, and they'd thwarted Mater Dei. Give it time, and that's all anybody would remember: a historic run in the 161-team CIF Southern Section, whose Division I is the largest and strongest football division in California, and arguably in all of America.

But then came last December's game -- against Loyola High School of Los Angeles, another Catholic school, another old foe of Poly's (as what Catholic school wasn't?). For Poly the rivalry wasn't individual so much as Inquisitional: if it wasn't Mater Dei torturing the Jackrabbits, then it was Loyola. Or Bishop Amat, or Servite or Saint Paul.

And the game had indeed been torture for the green and gold of Long Beach. At halftime the underdog Cubs had made 15 yards and no first downs compared to 152 yards for Poly, yet the score was 0-0. A field goal put Loyola up 3-0 before Poly linebacker Marvin Simmons blocked a punt into the end zone, which junior Darnell Bing fell on for a 7-3 lead. With less than two minutes left in the game Loyola got the ball on their twenty. All Poly had to do was hold for four plays. Everybody in the stadium with any sense of history knew to expect a surprise, so there was no way the Poly defense was going to fall for any Catholic schoolyard tricks. Right?

Wrong. Here comes the fumble-rooski, a play so old the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse might have chuckled over it. The quarterback calls the signals, the center snaps the ball but holds on to it. Then he falls over, hiding the ball between his legs, while the rest of the Loyola team fakes a sweep right -- except for this one player who dawdles, then trots over to the center, picks up the ball -- which has technically been fumbled -- and dashes left for 60 yards, down to the goal line.

The fumble-rooski hadn't been tried in CIF football for fifteen years, which is probably why it works. Loyola scores to take a 10-7 lead with 1:12 left. The anguish on the Poly side is existential. Here it is again, the nightmare from last year's championship -- Poly has to try to put something together an...