Customer Reviews

One Great Game : Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Don Wallace's ability to capture an essence of not only the emotions of what was truly a first in the world of prep sports, but the historical content that lead to a memorable event just a few weeks after this nation's 9/11 tragedy. The game was a temporary remedy for sports fans wanting to escape the horrors that occured in New York City. ESPN had named it one of the top sporting events in the country to watch for that week.

Wallace is able to captivate an audience with his descriptions of the preparation that went into the game itself. His attention to detail as to how each schools football programs arrived at the point of their unforgetable matchup is outstanding. I am most impressed with how the book uses high school football as a metaphor for how life as viewed by those involved in the game.

Don Wallace describes his own upbringing in Long Beach and the dynamics that have that have occured since he has moved away. His definitions of the suburban community of Concord, California, and how it somewhat evolves around the school with the infamous winning streak, actually makes the town sound interesting.

I believe those choosing to purchase this book will realize it is more than just about one football game. It reaches more into depth of two contrasting communities, that despite the differences, are very similar. It is more about the country we live in today.

I confess I was intrigued partly because of the success of "Friday Night Lights," H.G. Bissinger's classic look at high school football. However, I like Wallace's book better. While "Lights" drifted into long, rather dry sociological digressions, "One Great Game" is focused, beautifully written, and still explores--in a hard-hitting way--the fascinating contrast in two football cultures. It's an irresistible matchup: white, upscale Concord De La Salle, No. 1 in the nation and riding a 113-game winning streak, versus blue-collar, diverse Long Beach Poly, No. 2 in the nation and producer of more NFL football talent than any school ever. I was amazed at the access Wallace must have gotten to produce this book. He obviously spent a lot of times in the lockerrooms, absorbing the changing emotions and dreams of these young athletes, and he also proves himself an exceptional student of the two communities where these schools are based. It's worth the read just to glimpse into the mind and philosophy of De La Salle coach Bob Ladouceur, architect of the record winning streak, a guy who's apparently able to turn young men of good or even modest athletic ability into a juggernaut through discipline and commitment to the common goal. It's the kind of thing that's rare and makes an amazing story.

This book chronicles the first-ever meeting between the #1 and #2-ranked high school football teams in America. In October of 2001, #1 Long Beach Poly, a Southern California powerhouse with a long, storied tradition, alma mater to a record 50 past and present NFL players, played host to #2 De La Salle, a Catholic all-boys school from the upper-class suburban town of Concord, CA, home of the nation's longest football (and perhaps all team sports) winning streak, which, before the Game, stands at an astounding 116 games.

Prior to this game, no #1 and #2 teams had ever met in head-to-head competition, which always beggared the question, "Who's REALLY #1?," since most, if not all of the USAToday's Top 25 high school teams would end up the season undefeated.

Long Beach is the "most diverse city in America," a sprawling city of 425,000 sandwiched between monstrous L.A. to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. It has a long and rich history, much of it less-than-sparkling, where waves of immigration, first of blacks, Hispanics, and Japanese in the early part of the 20th century, then of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Central Americans following upheavals in their respective homelands, made for a boiling brew of racial tension. Despite all this, Polytechnic High School, located in the decaying heart of downtown Long Beach, is a shining beacon for the whole community, not only as an athletic powerhouse, but as an academic springboard to prestigious colleges. in the 2001 season, the Poly Jackrabbits have perhaps their most talented team ever, with 5 players ranked among the 100 best high school players in the country.

Concord, California, is a wealthy, mostly white, upper-middle-class suburb in the East Bay Area, populated by the professional, educated types who toil in nearby San Francisco. De La Salle is an exclusive all-boys school where tuition is $7,200 per year. The De La Salle Spartans are coached by a living legend, Bob Ladouceur, who since 1979, has lost only 14 games in his entire career, and none since December of 1991.

The book takes two parallel stories, one of Poly, the other of De La Salle, focusing on the players, coaches, families, and overall atmosphere of each school and community, before intersecting them at the Game, which is described in bone-jarring play-by-play detail. You can almost imagine listening to the game on the radio, the play-by-play is so well-written.

The Game was billed as a sort of David vs. Goliath, with De La Salle playing the part of David, traditionally undersized but winning on the basis of suberb coaching and relentless conditioning, and Long Beach Poly playing Goliath, with massive offensive and defensive lines and Division I college talent populating every skill position. However, when reading about each program, the reader gets the impression that instead of David vs. Goliath, it's more like Godzilla vs. Mothra, two unstoppable juggernauts heading toward a climactic Battle Royale. And ultimately, that is exactly what it is - simply one of the finest battles between two programs of the highest caliber in the biggest game of their lives, and possibly the lives of many others.

I was very satisfied with this book. If you like football, sports in general, or just like a thrilling and consuming read, this book delivers.

When I first picked up the book I was worried that the account would be bias toward the Poly side, especially considering it's the writer's alma mater. However, Mr. Wallace presents a fair, balanced account of one of the most anticipated prep sporting events ever. He starts off about a year prior to the game, when it was only a rumor and concludes with an action filled account of the game (portrayed play by play). Characters are well developed, and -- although I can only speak from experience on the De La Salle side -- seem to be very accurate. The introduction leading up to the game got a bit long winded at times, but outside of that the book was hard to put down. I recommend it to any fan of high school sports, as well as for people curious of how two of the most successful football programs in America opperate.

The extensive background presented for the cities and the schools may get tedious to the casual reader, but for anyone involved with the schools and their football programs, it is a wonderful read. I was delighted to find a complete replay of the game. Wallace's description of De La Salle and its program is very accurate, and shows the effort he put into understanding everything about it. I enjoyed the insight into Poly and its program; since Wallace is a Poly grad, I'm sure his description there is even more accurate. It is also enlightening to see the bigger picture, the way competition with St. Louis of Hawaii and with Mater Dei helped to shape the events. I was there for most of it, and he's right on. Bravo.

Don Wallace's account of the first ever high school football championship game is frequently riveting, and always insightful. In the chapters leading up to the Game (An October 2001 matchup between #2 Long Beach Poly and #1 Concord De La Salle)Wallace proves himself more than able to juggle two disparate narratives, managing to track the players and football programs at these two perennial powerhouses while capturing the social dynamics of the towns in which they reside.

At first, the towns seem diametrically opposed: Concord is a predominantly white, upper middle class suburb; Long Beach is an ethnically diverse community replete with gang warfare and violence, as well as Wallace's alma mater.

But Wallace, it's clear, does not buy in to the American Dream vs American Nightmare pitch. Poly, it turns out, is an academic as well as a football powerhouse, a diamond circumscribed within the rough streets of Long Beach. And while the students at De La Salle may be economically priviliged in comparison to Poly's, they are also burdened by heavy expectations (A 116 game winning streak on the line)and must dedicate themselves completely to football.

One Great Game concludes with a vivid account of The Game itself, often digressing into a play by play account. It's during these moments that Wallace's intimate familiarity with the two teams, as well as the game of football, comes across best.

I highly recommend this book, not just to football fans, but to anybody with an interest in contemporary American society. You won't mistake One Great Game for a PHD thesis--its far too interesting and well worded--but you may find yourself admiring the poignancy Wallace discovers, or creates, from our best, quintessentially American sport.

If you remember and enjoyed the lettered style of Hayward Hale Broun's TV sports pieces, it's a bet you'll like the writing style in Don Wallace's `One Great Game'. He's not so over the top as Broun, but his prose style brims with lyrical language, smart allusions and penetrating social reflection.

`One Great Game' follows the millennial arc of the first ever `mythical' National Championship Game between the number one and two high school football teams in the country. The one-two rankings were determined by prep football polls - so to say `mythical' is fine. Polls are polls, especially when you consider there are over 40 thousand high school football teams in the country.

Powerhouse team number one, according to the USA Today Top 25 Prep Poll (2001), was De La Salle, a Concord, California parochial. Concord is a commuting community on the pastoral edge of the Bay Area above Oakland. And with the exception of a few talented athletes, the De La Salle (DLS) student body is 98 percent white and capital `C' Catholic of course. Also, and more than in passing, it should be noted that DSL was on a 116 game win streak, the longest in prep football history then too.

The number two team in the country was about as opposite from the DLS Spartans as it is possible to get. Long Beach Polytechnical (LBP) was a southern California prep steamroller, an ethnic Tower of Babel of over 4500 students in the middle of one of the most `diverse' urban centers in America.

It hadn't been too long ago that LBP suffered from a brutal reputation, honestly come by in the late `60's due in part to the neighboring Watts' race riots in `67. In fact the school got so bad during the crack-cocaine wars of the early `70's, that gangbangers and bystanders alike were getting permanently ventilated by Uzi, AK-47 and MAC 10 machine pistol fire. I even remember a morbid City of Angels morgue joke of that era that went like this: When an urban drug war soldier was brought in expired from multiple gun shot wounds, the cause of death would be listed as `LA Natural' in pencil, then erased and `MBWs' (multiple bullet wound(s)' entered correctly in ink.

The author even mentions that players used to stop practicing and argue over which type of automatic weapon the shots they had just heard came from.

At one point the Feds even threatened to take the school over from local authorities.

Then in the early `80's a miracle happened and things started turning around. There were still the economically ill-starred African American and Central American Hispanic refugee students; the Vietnamese, Laotians and Hmong too, having landed at the immigration induction center in Long Beach.

Also complicating the student body mix was another constituency; the kids of casually educated roughneck oil field workers (all white) that worked the Signal Hill wells, not exactly harmonious exemplars of tolerance.

Then, seemingly from nowhere, young bookworms began showing up at LBP in droves, signing up for so many AP classes that offerings had to be expanded. These middle-class kids were sons and daughters of engineers and scientists from the new high-tech firms that were moving onto the edges of the Long Beach school district, (e. g. Lockheed cum Boeing Aerospace, etc.).

By 2001 LBP was no longer the old `diversity dystopia' as the author called it, the school having come full circle. It even got itself voted the `most honored high school' in California -`honors' not only for its traditional arena of excellence, athletics, but also its successful arts program and stand out academic achievement too.

But even though Poly's reputation in 2001 was very different from what it had once been, the prep sports writing industry went Jerry Springer and Damon Runyon to hype the impending `Big Game'.

It was `White versus Black'; 'Day versus Night'; `Right versus Left': 'The Crusading Knights' versus 'Mammon High'.

How, writers brayed, could a pious and goodie-two-shoes small high school from the beautiful hills of the Bay Area compete with a small `c' catholic, huge and historically street tough public high school, that teetered down on the edge of the La Brea Tar Pits yet?

Writers alluded to `Crips and Bloods' - `Klan Kindred' - to violent Hawaiian Gardens and M-13 Central American Hispanic gangs. Oddly though they didn't bother to point to the outsized Easter Island statuary Samoan and Tongan linemen that tilted the playing field even more in favor of "Fallen Angels High", the fully metal jacket 'Jackrabbits'.

Northern California writers pointed out that De La Salle's head football coach, Bob Ladouceur, the most successful coach in prep history, was also the school's religion instructor. Some said he was a mystic and perfectionist and that having his players attend retreats so they could examine their moral values and the team's relationship with God was a key to his enviable record. (Of course this sort of thing did keep his players from attending mixers, working on their night moves, when they should have been concentrating on school work and lifting weights.)

One So Cal writer rode the religious contrast even harder, intimating that some of the new LBP players he'd interviewed, from homes where science-educated parents shaped their values, where actually freethinkers, and cross yourself, maybe agnostic. So if God is a prep sports fan you're looking at a zero sum game here. (Cheering section signs - "Roast the Heretics!" on one side, "Unhorse the Crusaders" on the other?)

So in the Spartan's view, it was `Holy Communion Academy" vs. a prep athletic culture that admired its graduates in the Arts which included rapper Snoop Dog (Death Row Records) as well as actress Cameron Diaz, star of the `R' rated `There's Something about Mary" (suggestive sexual humor and language).

Yet another writer pointed out that there was an additional problem for the DLS team and that was that Poly had sent more players to the NFL than any other prep football program in history,

Poor De La Salle.

Not so fast. In the CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) private schools can theoretically recruit from anywhere in the state, unconstrained by property tax borders. And they can give star athletes full tuition grants (over $7,000 per year at DLS) and get parents jobs with boosters; tutors can be provided for the athletically gifted but academically unprepared also.

So let's not feel too sorry for the DLS Spartans or Mater Dei of Santa Ana, nor Saint Paul or Bishop Amat or any other private powerhouse teams in the CIF. After all they have other athletic advantages besides the `California educational tax credit' and God's helping hand up in a close game.

But if LBP has the record for matriculating the most players to the NFL, note that DLS is not that far behind. Perhaps you may have heard of Maurice Jones-Drew, only a junior when he scored several touchdowns in the Big Game and already over a 1000 yards rushing this season for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Also Matt Gutierrez, the 6' 5" QB then who has been tossing TD's for the Kansa City Chiefs. And Amani Toomer, another DLS alum, staring a wide receiver for New York Giants.

In the area of `reflections' the author also casts an eye over an idea that isn't often brought up in polite high school sports conversation; that American football nearly approximates war.

Unlike baseball, basketball or golf, it's territorial, gaining and losing ground on every play; and it's physically violent with teams suffering collision casualties, players removed on stretchers with severe sprains, broken bones or concussions from spear tackling - or being crushed at the bottom of a pile of 300 pound plus linemen.

This discussion reminds me of a comment that I cannot find attribution for, even with many Google searches. But this is the way I heard it. After seeing his first American football game a British Major General was asked what he thought of the spectacle.

"For sport it is too much," he said, "... but for war not quite enough."

Pretty good. Anyway, I'm not going to tell you how the Big Game came out so you'll have to buy the book for the author's excellent play by play that stretches from page 230 to page 281!

And I need to take a minute to congratulate Don Wallace here.

Turns out that he's a 1970 graduate of "Mammon High" himself and, not surprisingly, played football which accounts for the accuracy of his substantial knowledge of the game. In fact three generations of Wallace's have played there, including Uncle Max, `Ramrod Max', who was on the first Poly team of ought eight (that would be 1908).

And that Don doesn't obviously or overtly cheerlead for one team or the other in this book shows a breathtaking restraint! Of course he was cheering in his heart and probably at the game too, just not on both sidelines.

So even though `One Great Game' was published in 2003, its ideas and observations are timeless and its language is like the lyrics of a witty and musically enchanting song on the radio. Driving along you look forward to hearing it often whether you're headed up the 405 past LAX or down the 580, squinting into the sun, looking for that Concord turnoff.

Don Wallace did an excellent job profiling the stark differences between De La Salle and Long Beach Poly, creating much more interest in the game and it's outcome. Whether you are a fan of DLS or Poly, you couldn't help but come away with a greater appreciation of the other school. Yes, it was One Great Game, and it was One Great Book.

I bought this as a gift for a teen with reading difficulties. It looked a bit intimidating - maybe some pictures would help.

One Great Game is an interesting chronicle for those who like high school football. The analysis of the longest winning streak in history in any sport would be enough in itself. Indeed the game account seems less important than discourse on social and economic differences between the featured schools and their students. Though the writing is ponderous at times, I learned a lot about the nature of high schools in other states - for instance most of the perennial powerhouse football teams are from private schools. The character sketches of players and coaches is good, but I still would like to know how to pronounce Bob Ladouceur's name. Cover notes on the book say it is "an engaging cultural history about twenty-first-century American life." I submit it is, instead, a cultural narrative about life in California. Where else would you find players, when gunshots erupt in the neighborhood, react by citing the type weapon being fired, then resume practice as if nothing unusual happened. Going in, I expected the story would convince me that California high school football is the best played anywhere in the U.S. Despite the author's conviction that California has not just the best but probably the second- and maybe third-best teams anywhere any given year, I came away figuring teams from my state and others would fare well playing the Golden State schools. Had there been more interstate games, I doubt The Streak would have happened. I give the book 3 stars because I consider it about midway between the most and least enjoyable books I've read. Oh yes, if you're buying it, suggest you get the September 2005 edition that includes epilogue and afterword rounding out the story.