Check out part one and part two .
When I was in 3rd or 4th grade, my family lived in the small town of St. Johns which is about an hour away from Lakeside, where the Blue Ridge High School is located. At that time, the St. Johns football team had been undefeated for three years straight (they were in a lower division).
The previous year, Blue Ridge had won the first state championship in what would end up being a long string of championships. When the two teams met each other on the St. Johns field, Blue Ridge ended their 30+ game streak with a massive 66-6 victory. I have vague memories of people talking about it and laughing it off in a wow-that-was-a-really-bad-game sort of way. I had no inkling that I would later move and attend that school. When I first joined the football team, I still didn't have any idea about the teams "tradition of champions".
The Blue Ridge team of the 90's were fast, hard hitting, and intimidating. After several years of complete domination, they reached a certain critical mass where most opposing teams would show up anticipating a loss. From 1994 to 2001, the only games Blue Ridge lost were state championship games, where there probably wasn't so much of a psychological intimidation factor. Still, some of the state games were massacres. In 2000, they beat Park in the big game 67-19. My brother-in-law was on the 2001 team that beat Coolidge 58-8 in the state championship.
Something changed in 2002, the year Winslow beat Blue Ridge on their homecomeing night 20-0. Although Blue Ridge would not lose another regular season football game, they came close to losing several times and eventually lost to Winslow again in the playoffs.
After I had graduated from freshman football and joined the JV/Varsity squads in 2003, I became aware of the level of disappointment and resentment the team held because of the previous years outcome. At both Mountain and California camps, we had late night meetings in which the Seniors on the team informed us of how we were going to do better than the previous year, and I could tell they wanted a state championship very, very badly.
After the exhausting ordeal of California camp was over, we had a day off, and then immediately began our actual football practices which commenced on the first day of school. The people who decided to join the team and hadn't gone through any of the summer extremities were doomed. They couldn't keep up, and I don't recall any of them staying on the team.
It was a tradition of Coach Moro's to schedule the previous years state champions for the first game of the season, provided that the team had lost the previous year. Teams in the past would work all summer and the first couple months of practice preparing for the opportunity to smash the defending champions into the ground, take the wind out of their sails, and establish dominance. This year was no different, we were scheduled to play Globe who had won the 2002 state championship.
We knew that we probably had prepared better than them and should have the upper hand, but I sensed fear in the locker room before the game. I felt like I was surrounded by people who knew they were not only expected to win, but win big. There was a genuine fear of not being able to live up to expectations.
We ended up winning that game, but it wasn't a very large margin. We were maybe two touchdowns ahead. So it was a victory, but it didn't seem to alleviate our self conscious anxiety.
The next few games were unexpectedly easy (which allowed me lots of playing time). However, our fears were realized when we go completely shut down by Snowflake in a devastating loss, 42-7. We didn't only lose a regular season game, but we got smacked around. This was definitely not supposed to happen. This was bad. Really bad.
Blue Ridge's rivals, Show Low High School is just a few miles down the road. It so happened that a former Blue Ridge coach, Jeremy Hatchcock, had recently left Blue Ridge and accepted the position as head coach at Show Low. He knew the system that Coach Moro used, and he knew that it worked and so he replicated it. They spent the summer going to Mountain and California camp, which they didn't bother to rename. Whether people might accuse them of imitation was apparently of no concern. Their practices were exactly the same, and even the way they did their pregame stretches were an exact replication. And the team was good. Really good. Not only were they in shape and disciplined, but they had incredible talent as well.
Every day at school, during lunch, we were expected to either bring our lunch or go grab it as quickly as humanly possible from the cafeteria and then head straight to a classroom where we would watch film. We would either watch ourselves in the previous weeks game or we would watch the team for whom we were preparing for.
One of the vivid memories I have is the Monday in the film room after we had been badly beaten by Snowflake. Coach London was in his usual seat with the remote control with which he could rewind or slow down the film, and then he started the Show Low film. For the next 30 to 45 minutes, we watched as one by one he pointed out each player and the high level of talent they possessed.
Even though the Varsity had lost to Snowflake, our JV team had won which meant that the team that had gone undefeated as freshman still hadn't lost. Our hopes of being the first team to go undefeated all four years was still alive. I had gone from being completely ignorant of all things football related to being a starter on JV, which meant that I would play the first half of the game until we were winning by multiple touchdowns.
However, Show Low still loomed on the horizon.
