The De La Salle football team, and the seniors who had worked so hard for this reward, were supposed to be gearing up for a nationally-televised game in the true land of “Friday Night Lights” a day from now.
Most other Bay Area teams would have been kicking off their seasons Friday night.
But the novel coronavirus pandemic had other ideas, postponing the fall ritual until early January — with the threat of eventual cancellation looming.
The Bay Area News Group asked a handful of seniors to reflect on this solemn moment in their young lives and try to put things in perspective.
Here are their stories:
Four. Maybe five. Dorian Hale doesn’t remember how many times he has played in a nationally televised football game on ESPN. The De La Salle High quarterback, however, can recite the exact dates of his team’s rare heartaches.
Hale does not forget the tough times, whether it’s the Aug. 23 anniversary of the Spartans’ 2019 season-opening defeat to the country’s No. 1 team, Florida’s St. Thomas Aquinas, or the loss to St. John Bosco of Bellflower on Dec. 14 in the state championship.
Saturday marks another day of disappointment for him and his teammates. It’s when they were supposed to play at North Shore High of Houston, MaxPreps’ fifth-ranked team in the country. The game that was scheduled for national TV is canceled, like so many other events during the coronavirus pandemic.
Hale, who said he takes his leadership role on the country’s No. 17-ranked team seriously, sees an opportunity on Saturday to make the best of an otherwise frustrating situation.
“I’ll definitely send the guys out a text, but I don’t think any of them will forget that this Saturday was supposed to be our time in Houston,” Hale said. “I’ll probably get some of my guys together, throw around the football. I want to use it as a team-bonding moment to kind of reflect on what’s going on.”
The Spartans already had been commiserating with each other since the Texas showdown was canceled June 15.
“I think, personally, it would have been super fun,” said Hale, who led De La Salle to a 12-2 season in 2019 that included a 28th consecutive North Coast Section title.
Instead, Saturday will just draw them a day closer to Dec. 14. That’s the first official practice for NCS teams — and the first anniversary of the last game they played, as Hale points out.
“I’ve been seeing guys go through their senior year for three years straight and this is definitely different,” said Hale, a fourth-year varsity member headed to Sacramento State next year. “I talked with some of the seniors last year and they said you go into practice, you go into games, you go into school, you go into everything differently, because it’s your last year.
— Jon Becker
The first anniversary of the brutal slaying is two months away but Omari Taylor said he will not let one of the worst days of his life sabotage his future.
“It is a tribute to him by getting to college,” Taylor said of his brother who was fatally shot last Halloween while working as a DJ at an Airbnb mansion party in Orinda.
Omar Taylor Jr., 24, was one of five victims of gang violence, according to authorities. He is survived by a young daughter, a sister and three brothers.
“Every day is a tribute to my brother,” said Taylor, a running back. “Last year, we won State for my brother.”
This fall Taylor wanted to make his brother proud by earning a college scholarship. He said he expects it to happen after getting recruiters’ attention at a Best Coast Showcase camp three weeks ago in Reno.
The plan to play in college is what his older brother by seven years wanted for Omari, Taylor said. Omar Jr. stopped playing football after a career at El Cerrito High School and East Bay Pop Warner. He was trying to become a music producer at the time of his death.
Omari Taylor’s single-track drive has made it easier to accept the way his senior year has begun amid the global pandemic.
“With my brother, it brought out another side of me,” Taylor said. “It matured me a lot. But “before my brother passed away I was already moving up in the ranks. Then when my brother” died “it just shocked me and it made me a whole different person.”
Taylor said he takes nothing for granted anymore. He appreciates the people who have been part of his life, particularly the extended football family.
“I’m not even thinking about high school at this time,” Taylor said. “I’m thinking about what will take me to college so I can play some more ball and not end my career in high school.”
If a season does happen in January, Taylor knows his senior year will not be the same without Omar Jr. in the stands.
“He would have been at every game,” Taylor said. “He came to the majority of my games even when I wasn’t starting. He would have been there for everything, even in college.”
Omari Taylor said he plans to hold a get together on the anniversary of his brother’s death in late October, something he hopes to make an annual tradition.
“I’m my brother’s keeper,” Taylor said. “We should celebrate instead of being sad about it.”
— Elliott Almond
Anyone involved with the Serra Padres football team knows about the Grinders Jubilee.
One week before the season opener the players gather on the school’s all-weather track to measure their fitness and speed.
It is an unpleasant exercise: the players are timed for running one 400-meter sprint, then a 300, three 200s, and five 100s. All the players must meet a certain time for it to count.
Christian Pedersen’s final Jubilee was supposed to take place last Friday.
“Believe me, it is not fun,” he said. “But it’d be the last one I’d ever do. It’d be nice to say, ‘OK, that’s it, that’s the last time I’m doing that.’ ”
The state of 2020 has left some seniors even longing for the bad stuff they have endured to play football.
Pedersen, a 6-5, 230-pound tight end committed to Louisville, could still get his timed nightmare if a football season kicks off early next year.
But he and fellow seniors did not get to enjoy the school’s first pep rally where the Padre, Serra’s spirit commissioner, traditionally shaves his head. Pedersen won’t get to feel the butterflies on the bus trip to Pittsburg for the season opener that was scheduled for Friday.
“I try not to think about it because it is depressing,” he said. “It is even harder because some of the guys on my Louisville team in their states are playing.”
About 30 state associations have approved playing football and other sports this fall but not California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and a handful of others.
Pedersen said he is focused on positive moments during an outbreak that forced the cancellation of many sports events and other activities.
He and some teammates work in construction after school, a welcomed release from staring at a computer screen in the virtual classroom.
But as Friday drew closer Pedersen thought about the pre-game sessions in the school chapel where players unabashedly share their feelings. He thought about the lucky wristband and shirt he wears for games. Pedersen said he has worn the same Nike compression shirt since third grade. “I wasn’t the smallest third-grader,” he added.
Pedersen does not want to address it but he acknowledged he cannot shed the thought from his mind: “What if the State game (last year) was my last high school game ever?”
— Elliott Almond
Noah Short has been thinking about The King’s Academy season opener against Christopher of Gilroy that would have happened Friday night.
“It’s everything a kid imagines for a big game,” he said. “The lights. Making big plays. Our parents watching. Making the alumni and teachers proud. Everything that goes into a season opener is magnified when you’re a senior.”
Short and his fellow seniors still hope to get to enjoy the experience in early January. The 6-0, 180-pound two-way starter, said he plans to commemorate the traditional opener this weekend by gathering some of the seniors to throw around a football at Fair Oaks Park near campus.
As a junior, Short scored both Knights’ touchdowns last year as The King’s Academy won its second consecutive Central Coast Section title by defeating Terra Nova 14-13.
He hoped to soak up the rituals of high school football one last time this fall. The pregame team meals. Wearing jerseys to school on game days. Fielding questions from teachers and students about the upcoming opponent.
“It’s a big process and a very fun one too,” Short said.
He mostly was anticipating the team meetings as a three-year varsity member. Short recalled sitting in the meeting as a sophomore petrified about the impending game.
He knows what he will tell inexperienced teammates: “It’s all right to be nervous but you can’t let the stage get too big and just do what you did in practice and all summer.”
Short has five Division I college scholarship offers, including the three military academies. He had hoped to visit some of the campuses this summer but travel has been difficult during the health crisis. But no matter what happens this school year Short knows his football career will continue.
It’s another reason he wanted to share his senior year with the Class of 2021.
“The thing about high school football, the reality is not everybody is going to go on to play college football,” Short said. “It is that special bond you have with your buddies you spend so much time in class and on the field with that it makes it man, ‘This is really our last ride together.’ ”
— Elliott Almond
As the coronavirus pandemic began closing schools, offices and much of American life in March, Jake Kern went home thinking he would get two extra weeks of spring vacation.
“But we never went back to school and we won’t be strapping up this Friday,” said Kern, Clayton Valley’s dual-threat quarterback.
The Ugly Eagles had been scheduled to travel to Turlock High School this Friday for a special season opener in the Central Valley. Now they hope the game takes place in early January.
In the meantime, Kern underscores the anxiety unrecruited seniors looking for a chance to play in college feel about this school year. The season represents the last chance to get noticed.
“We get closer and if they decide to shut this down, I don’t know what to do,” said Kern, who has not received a college offer. “And the other guys don’t know what to do. We have so many guys trying to play at the next level. They have put so much work into this season. We all have a lot to prove and we all are not done yet.”
The pandemic not only scuttled fall football in California but it also limited the number of summer camps and 7 on 7 passing leagues where recruiters evaluate players. Kern said he did not have a chance to participate in any off-season activity.
“All that is left is a season that’s in jeopardy,” he lamented.
Kern said he loves playing football so much that he will consider almost any school willing to give him a chance. Kern realizes that 6-2 quarterbacks are not the prototype college recruiters seek.
“I think I belong at the next level,” he said. “I’m trying to be a grade-A football player and grade-A student as well.”
Kern said he wants to play his senior season for the school as much as for his future.
“I left De La Salle to come to Clayton Valley,” he said. “There is still so much more I want to accomplish. We won a State title. We won NorCal. I want to win the league championship.”
Clayton Valley installed a new turf field this season that Kern and his teammates hope to christen in January.
“I thought about what it is like going out on our new field under the lights, wearing No. 8 and wearing Clayton Valley across my chest,” Kern said. “Nothing excites me like football.”
— Elliott Almond
JP Murphy of San Ramon Valley loves the game-day traditions of high school football.
But this Friday will pass without a cheerleader hanging a handmade poster on the garage or front door of his parents’ Danville home. Murphy, a 6-4, 220-pound tight end, will not wear his game jersey to campus.
And the Wolves are not playing host to Vintage High School of Napa as once scheduled.
“Everyone waits for their senior season because that closes up your high school career,” Murphy said. “How are you going to end it? It’s tough that I might not get to end it all as a senior.”
He said reading Buzz Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights” helped him appreciate the exclusivity of being a senior player.
He said he had envisioned getting the crowd excited by scoring touchdowns and sacking the quarterback on defense this Friday.
“There’s no better feeling,” said Murphy, who has committed to San Diego State.
All of that is on hold.
Then hundreds of fires in and around the Bay Area last week compounded the ordeal. The smoke from the fires led to hazardous air quality readings in Danville, limiting the outdoor training for Murphy and his teammates.
Murphy sighed when asked about the way 2020 has unfolded so far.
“We’re caught in between everything right now,” he said. “I’m just trying to do everything I can to be ready for San Diego State. That’s my focus. If there is a high school season, thank god. If not, I’ll look for what’s next.”
— Elliott Almond
Lu Magia Hearns realized long ago nothing about the start of his senior year at De La Salle High was going to be normal. That’s given him time to take a pragmatic view of the obstacles the pandemic created.
Instead of dwelling on what could have been Saturday with a now-canceled season opener on national television in Texas, Hearns zeros in on what needs to be.
“Right now, I’m more focused on when’s the next time we can all meet up as a team,” Hearns said. “We haven’t even had workouts in like four or five weeks as a team. Even when we worked out it was only in groups of 10-12 people at a time.”
Hearns said the Spartans hope Contra Costa County public health officers soon allow them to use the team’s weight room. But, the county still is among those on the state’s COVID-19 watch list that limits activities.
Hearns, a star wide receiver and cornerback who committed to Cal three weeks ago, never allowed himself to get too excited about De La Salle’s planned opener.
“When everything first happened with the coronavirus outbreak, I kind of already had doubts of us playing that high caliber of a game,” Hearns said. “In my mind, there’s no way they were gonna fly 80 kids to Texas to play a football game when kids can’t even go to school, people can’t even go to work.
“The reality was I didn’t think it would be played.”
— Jon Becker
