FLYING HIGH IN CONCORD BAND OF BROTHERS LED BY LADOUCEUR, DE LA SALLE TRANSFORMS AVERAGE PLAYERS INTO ONE POWERFUL FOOTBALL SQUAD.

Byline: RAMONA SHELBURNE Staff Writer

He grew up about an hour away, among the vineyards and ranches of Napa Valley. It's only 47 miles north of San Francisco, but it might as well be another world.

Couples come on the weekend to escape the hustle of the city and enjoy the good life. Goodfood, good wine, spa treatments and lazy Sunday mornings. Only the occasional blip of news from the outside world ever disturbs the sleepy little communities here.

But this was not Tyler Hess' idea of paradise.

Like many teenage boys in the late 1990s, he'd grown up hearing about a high school football team from the East Bay town of Concord called De La Salle. He read newspaper articles about their unprecedented national record 151-game winning streak, heard stories about their star players and legends about their tough, hard-nosed coach Bob Ladouceur.

``I thought they were supermen,'' Hess said. ``I went to their camps when I was a kid and (future Denver Broncos linebacker) D.J. Williams was my counselor. It was amazing.

``I knew I had to experience that.''

Over the years, countless curious visitors have come to De La Salle for the same reason. NFL coaches such as Bill Walsh or Jon Gruden have wandered to the small Catholic school to watch practice. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa asked Ladouceur to lunch.

Legendary Oakland Raiders' coach John Madden was so impressed by the program Ladouceur built, he financed an ESPN movie about the team.

This weekend, Southern California football fans will get to see De La Salle for themselves when the Spartans (13-0) take on Canyon (11-2) Saturday night in the Division I state bowl game at the Home Depot Center in Carson.

Just a warning: They are nothing like you expect.

The players are average-sized. The school is small, with no room to expand. There are no banners or gaudy trophy rooms showing off their accomplishments. Only a handful of the players on this year's team will go on to play college ball. And of those, more will play baseball or rugby than football.

``We really don't look like anything special,'' said Hess, an offensive lineman who has signed a baseball scholarship to pitch for Pepperdine next year. ``I'm 260 and I'm the biggest guy on the team.

``Our running back is skinny and bowlegged.

``A lot of our guys are too small to play college football so they go play rugby at Cal because they're tough guys who still want to play something.''

So if it isn't size and it isn't superior talent, what is it? You don't win 151 games in a row on luck.

You don't have almost as many undefeated seasons (18) as you have losses (19) in a 27-year career.

And you certainly don't maintain the most accomplished, well-respected high school football program in the country for more than a quarter of a century without having something special guiding the way.

``This is a team that doesn't have a superstar,'' said Ladouceur, whose career record stands at 319-19-3. ``Wejust work well as a unit.

``We played like that when we had D.J. Williams and (future Jacksonville Jaguars' running back) Maurice Drew, too.''

That special something, journalist and author Neil Hayes said, is Ladouceur.

``What Bob has is a blueprint for life,'' said Hayes, who chronicled De La Salle throughout the 2002 season and penned a book, ``When the Game Stands Tall,'' about the team in 2003.

``I think he uses football as a way of teaching that blueprint. He's a guy, that through football, has really made a difference with kids.''

That blueprint begins with accountability, responsibility and self- actualization. Ladouceur makes good players great and average players good. He stresses basics like tackling, blocking and explosiveness off the line of scrimmage. But most of all, he stresses brotherhood. Playing for your teammates and all those that came before you.

``I know a lot of people say that about their school, that there's this brotherhood. But with us, there really is,'' junior quarterback Mike MacGillivray said.

That brotherhood is formed through months of hard work, of sweating together, bleeding together, even throwing up together.

Every year, De La Salle begins training on the first day back from Christmas break. They run, lift weights and watch film as hard as they would if there was a game that Friday instead of eight months later.

They push themselves as far as they can. Some kids get sick on the track.

Nobody laughs. It's considered a badge of honor.

All through the season, the team and coaching staff gather at a parents' house for dinner Thursday nights. After dinner, they go into the garage and talk about the game. Ladouceur talks, the assistants talk, then the players. Each player then fills out a commitment card and passes it around to their teammates. It can be something as simple as: ``I'm going to make all my blocks this game'' or as deep as ``I'm going to be the best person I can be.''

Hayes, who now works for the Chicago Sun Times, has covered the NBA, the NFL and Major League Baseball. He describes his time with DeLa Salle as the most rewarding year of his life.

``Lad forces you to examine yourself at every level,'' Hayes said. ``I'd come back from those Thursday night meetings in the garage and think, `What am I doing with my life?'''

The commitment cards aren't just lip service. It's read aloud, in front of the team and coaches, then revisited the next week to stress accountability.

``It's about doing it the right way,'' junior linebacker Brady Amack said. ``You commit to doing something, to another person on the team and you take it upon yourself to make those goals happen.''

Often, the Thursday night meetings turn emotional as players talk about how much football and their teammates mean to them.

``He once told me,'' Hayes recalled. ``that you can't play for him unless your able to stand up in front of your teammates and cry.''

It's not the image you'd associate with the best high school football team in the nation. You expect them to be mean, cold, robotic. But Ladouceur encourages emotion. He channels it. And Friday nights, it all rains down on the Spartans opponents like a flood.

They wear you down, blow you off the line of scrimmage and exploit every weakness.

Over the years, plenty of the nation's most talented teams have taken their shot at the Spartans. In 2001, a Long Beach Poly team with 24 future Division I players had De La Salle down at halftime.

Ladouceur thought about making a fiery halftime speech, but when he looked around the locker room, he saw a group of players who were battered, bleeding and beat up. He stayed quiet and let his players rest up for the second half. De La Salle rallied to win, 27-15.

``I remember one time, in a particularly tough game,'' Hayes recalled. ``Where the offensive line came over to Lad in the middle of the game with the kind of hungry eyes kids get when they're looking for a coach to tell them how to fix something that's going wrong. Lad just looks at them and says, `Why do I always have to be the problem-solver? You figure it out.'

``In his perfect scenario, he'd go sit up in the stands during games. It's not about him at all.''

Over the years, Ladouceur has had several opportunities to jump to the college game.

Walsh tried to hire him on staff at Stanford more than once. But schmoozing with alumni at cocktail parties and recruiting visits aren't Ladouceur's style.

He doesn't measure success by the size of his school's stadium.

He rarely even talks about winning.

``Kids respect true humility, and that you stand for something more than winning,'' Ladouceur said in Hayes' book. ``They'll fight for you and their program and you stand for more than that. Our kids aren't fighting for wins. They're fighting for a belief in what we stand for.''

-- Gerry Gittelson contributed

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2 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) The De La Salle Spartans take the field before their national record-tying 72nd consecutive win in 1997.

Getty Images

(2 -- color) Concord De La Salle's Tim Maupin, right, runs for a touchdown during a game against Monte Vista in November.

Doug Duran/Contra Costa Times

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