Total Sports

            by Megan Hourula

 

Most sane people don't get the urge to make a defense sign. You know, the kind you see at football game—a big cut out D next to a cardboard picket fence. Well, I have. I was watching an Indianapolis Colts game on CBS when I first saw one. My dad couldn’t believe that I had never seen one before. “They’re everywhere,” he said. But I hadn’t. When I looked up at the smooth curve of the D and the spotless white of the fence, I knew I was in love. It was by far the coolest thing I had ever seen and I wanted one, bad. It didn’t take long for me to convince my friend Stephanie that we had to bring one to the next Berkeley High football game. The whole thing was easier said then done, but it got done, especially when I found someone else to make it. The “D-fence” was my first step towards addiction. Once I got the taste of it, the cravings began. I know I have a problem and admitting it isn’t hard. I’m addicted to high school sports and I don't see a path to recovery other than graduation.

Late September 2004, the Berkeley High football team was playing the Foothill Falcons. Stephanie and I had just finished volleyball practice, and though we were sweaty and tired, we were abuzz with excitement for the first home game of the Yellow Jackets season. As the newly appointed sports editor for the school newspaper, Stephanie felt it was her responsibility to be up to date on the current high school sports news.  Of course we both watch High School Sports Focus on T.V. but the newspaper she got at home covered high school sports, unlike my newspaper. As we walked she filled me in on the background of the Falcons football program and the friendly rivalry between the two schools. As it turned out, our team always lost. By a lot. The most intriguing information she had, however, was about the opposing team’s senior starting quarterback – Brandon Crawford.
        “Football isn’t even his main sport,” she said. “I read that he’s really good at baseball. He’s their shortstop and he made All- League last year. He’s being recruited by all kinds of D-I schools.” Impressive. Nothing makes a girl’s heart flutter quite like a multi-sport athlete. That night Crawford and the Falcons rolled over BHS leaving them much like they were found, hopeless.
        It was the following week when I received the life changing news. I woke up to the bland beeping sounds of a text message on my cell phone; it read BCOC2UCLA.  Brandon Crawford orally committed to the University of California Los Angeles! It was early, yet somehow I understood Stephanie's text message. After I Googled him, I found out he planned to play baseball with the Bruins and that he’d have a great chance at starting next year as a freshmen. It was then that the seeds of obsession for school sports were watered.
        It was the first Saturday in December when Stephanie and I first ventured away from BHS athletics to a wider world of high school sports. Berkeley High had been good to us that season. They led us through an emotionally exciting roller coaster of wins and losses that eventually ended in the first round of play-offs losing to a team with arguably the nicest field this side of Texas. Yet we felt like there was a gap begging to be filled, we wanted more. So we went to the North Coast Section Championship game. It was the end of the line for California playoffs, the high school Super Bowl, only it left about 10 Super Bowl champs, and granted some reporters the right to claim who was the best based on their opinion. The NCS game was a match up between De La Salle of Concord and Amador Valley of Pleasanton.  Our pick was DLS; I had been a fan since the 8th grade. Liking De La Salle is to similar liking the Yankees; they have more money then everyone else and always win. I’ll admit I was attracted to them because they never lost. Who doesn’t like the idea of never feeling the heart wrenching, life devastating, annihilating pain of losing? Their 151 game-winning streak had been snapped that year and they were the underdogs in the game. I had many reasons to root against Amador Valley, most important were that they were cross- city rivals of Crawford and the Falcons, and that their volleyball team had knocked Stephanie and I out of the NCS playoffs for volleyball.
        The game was to be played at the University of California’s football stadium on an overcast day at 1 p.m. I had to come directly from volleyball conditioning in Livermore. That morning I chose my attire carefully, wearing green sweatpants and avoiding all purple. Several times during conditioning I had to defend DLS to the trainers who were overtly anti-Spartan. The stadium seated 70,000 making the crowd of 10,000 look like an Expos game at Olympic stadium.  As we entered the game I was overcome by a nervous shake. We headed to the DLS side of the field.
        “Where should we sit?” Stephanie asked.
        “Away from everyone else,” I suggested. “We don’t need people asking us where we’re from.” I still felt a little self-conscious about watching a high school play that wasn’t mine. Looking around at the sea of silver and green fans I felt at home. I was surrounded by a group of people who understood what it was like to live and die with a high school game. The environment was intense, you could tell that the fans weren’t used to being told that their team wasn’t the best. There were two sets of cheerleaders at the game. I’m not sure why, but they dressed differently and led us in complicated clapping cheers that, despite all my efforts, I just couldn’t find cool. The cheerleaders aside, I could find no fault with game mostly because De La Salle won—more like the Spartans tore the Dons apart limb by limb—beating them 41-0. We sat there basking in the glory of our adopted team watching the players on the field who pointed and yelled to their mothers, who surrounded the championship plaque and who ran straight for the cheerleaders. The next event took us by such surprise I don’t know if I breathed. My eyes had been following Anthony Gutierrez, whose brother, a snap holder at the University of Michigan, was a hero of mine (he led DLS to two mythical national championships). Tony, as we liked to call him, held the plaque in his hands and began to climb into the stands. He walked up the bleachers in his cleats attached to his feet with white athletic tape and when he got just to the left of us he stopped. A black hole developed in my
stomach.
“Steph, oh my god. Look over there,” I whispered. “Quick take a picture.” He was just standing there waving to people I couldn’t see. Last year, as the quarterback, he had led DLS to a mythical national championship. I tried not to stare but my efforts were futile, like a moth to the flame I kept staring. Eventually I managed to tear my glare over toward Stephanie's camera. I almost died. It had run out of batteries, leaving us with only one other option- mental photographs. Not entirely joking Stephanie leaned over to me and said,
            “ You should ask him for the plaque. Or go over there and ask him for his
jersey? I’m sure he has plenty.”
        I laughed, as she continued to suggest what ways one could approach Gutierriez, knowing full well that we wouldn’t even get up, walk over, and “accidentally” bump into the football player. In our minds they were on a different, higher, level then a player in the NFL or even in college. They were all our age and thus untouchable.
        It’s moments like those that explain my passion for high school sports. We’re all just kids, waiting to grow into the people we will be for the rest of our lives. There is an element of innocence to these teams that become more for their players. They become something to count on, support systems and families.
        During Basketball playoffs, the fateful match up of DLS and BHS was schedule.  It was a no-brainer to root for Berkeley, but having been invested in the DLS program there was an upside to this match up. Stephanie and I arrived a little bit before tip-off (normally we would have gotten there much earlier but we had just been watching BHS lacrosse mount a last minute come back over some team from San Francisco) we took our seats behind the DLS bench with our red and gold D- fence in hand.  As we watched warm-ups we began to discuss whom we thought might show up to support the opposing team. Earlier that winter we had discovered that the athletes of DLS supported each other by attending other sport teams games; either that or they had nothing better to do in the suburbs of the east bay. “Bob Ladouceur is sitting on the end of De La Salles bench!”

“NO!” I shouted in disbelief. I looked over and Stephanie was right. There he was, the man himself, the head coach of the DLS football program. The man who gained his success not with emphasis on winning but on working hard and counting on the person next to you.

“Lets go get his autograph.” Stephanie said as she stood up ready to approach the man who had engineered 151 game winning streak.

“You can, but I can’t. I just can’t go over there and talk to him.” I tried to explain to Stephanie my fear of confrontation or of strangers or whatever it is that makes me turn bright red, lose my voice and begin to shake. “ I physically can’t.” Stephanie couldn’t believe it nor was she going to accepted it. She explained to me that I didn’t have to say anything and that we had to go over there.  So I did.  I got over there somehow and I stood staring at Coach Lad as Stephanie asked for his autograph. I could tell that this was the last thing he had expected to happen this evening. Think about it, two teenage girls dying to meet a Catholic schoolteacher. I had read many speeches that he gave to his players in “When the Game Stands Tall”, a book about the DLS football program, so his personality wasn’t much of a surprise. Though I will admit I was a bit thrown off by the leather jacket he chose to wear.  As we walked away, Stephanie and I could hardly believe we had just met God. I mean, what else do you call the man who had reached 300 wins in 322 games?
        The basketball game was intense, and not only because we had spotted several football players and one former football and basketball star, Matt Gutierriez on spring break from Michigan (I might add that Stephanie was fortunate to shake his hand while they both stood in line for nachos.) The game was a battle between two superstar seniors and with the help of a young freshman BHS came through victorious. The crowd erupted, nothing’s more exciting then a last minute game winning play. I jumped, yelled and waved my hands, anything to express how incredibly thrilled I was. It was then that I committed sport fan taboo; I looked at the players on the opposing team and felt sorry for them. I was once told that “once you start to feel sorry for the other team you lose.” I couldn’t help it.  DLS’ star senior Theo Robertson was crying. He had unfinished business, last year he lost in the state finals.  I’m sure there is nothing more he wanted and he let it show.  It was by all means not the end of the line for him; he was committed to UC Berkeley. But going to state, something you can only do in high school, he
could never do again.
        Stephanie and I capped our junior year off with America’s pastime, baseball. Everyday starting in December I checked www.viewmyschedule.com looking for the perfect time when we could see the Foothill Falcons play ball. And thanks to Malcolm X we were able to go in May.  Foothill was playing Monte Vista High School, which was convenient for us considering we enjoyed the drive to Danville and occasionally hung out at the school’s park. Interestingly enough we arrived late to our most anticipated game of the season because a certain someone decided to spend the morning visiting a
certain Cardinal red school (though I really can’t complain because I have no other means of transportation).
        Few fans were in attendance at the Friday after school game; Stephanie and I got a whole section of bleachers behind home plate to ourselves. There was little action in the game, so like many a baseball game the art/entertainment lay in watching the players. A certain quarterback / shortstop happened to be pitching for the Falcons and carrying the weight of a “re-building” team on his shoulders. We were both content watching the game and spoke little as we soaked up the rays of the hot sun.  However the occasional picture or statement was made (I had made sure to buy my own digital camera after what happened with Anthony Gutierrez). It wasn’t the last high school game we watched that year, there were still baseball playoffs to take place, but emotionally it seemed a fitting end to our year.
        After the game we stood outside the field watching the players go by and only pausing from our conversation when Brandon Crawford walked by. “ I can’t believe we won’t see him again,” Stephanie stated. I thought she was right, until I remember BCOC2UCLA.
I commented, “next year UCLA will play Cal in baseball, and if it’s a home game, well...”