De La Salle High School football team's winning streak ends at 151

[Dynasty]

A high school football team from Concord, CA lost for the first time in more than 12 seasons. That's a nice streak.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/preps...lle-loss_x.htm

De La Salle's 151-game win streak ends
SEATTLE (AP) — A California football team's 151-game winning streak, the nation's longest, ended Saturday when Bellevue High School beat the De La Salle High of Concord, Calif., 39-20 before a crowd of 24,987 at Qwest Field.

De La Salle had not lost a game since falling in the 1991 North Coast Section championship game Dec. 7, 1991, when the current seniors on the team were in kindergarten.

The De La Salle Spartans broke the nation's previous longest winning streak at 72 games in 1997, going on to more than double it.

Coach Bob Ladouceur, who now has a 287-15-1 record in a quarter century at the suburban San Francisco school, was gracious in defeat.

"The team we saw on film was not the team we played out there tonight," he said of the three-time defending state 3A championship Wolverines.

"Their coaching staff and players did a great job in every facet and gave us schemes we had never seen," he said. "We got beat by a better football team tonight. If we played them tomorrow, they'd beat us again."

Ladouceur said it was just time for De La Salle to finally lose.

"I'm all for there being a lot of king of the hills, not just one," he said. "Bellevue represented their state well."

De La Salle got off to a solid start by moving the ball down the field 83 yards to score with relative ease.

But Bellevue senior J.R. Hasty took the ensuing kickoff 74 yards to score.

The Wolverines were motivated.

"There were all the Internet polls, the message boards where everyone said they were going to blow us out," said linebacker E.J. Savannah, who led Bellevue's defense with nine tackles.

Bellevue coach Butch Goncharoff said his team was thoroughly prepared for the school's biggest game ever.

"This is a great feeling," he said. "We worked eight months for this. I don't think we were intimidated coming in and our kids executed. We've said the strength of this team is our offensive line and it was tonight. They spent more time, more hours than anybody. Even De La Salle."

The streak — the longest in perhaps any sport — created a near-cult following for Ladouceur. The program at the private, all-boys school has inspired two books, a documentary and national telecasts of games, and last month earned the Spartans a seven-page spread in Sports Illustrated.

The Spartans have often faced the top competition from California and around the country, drawing tens of thousands of fans to see if the streak will end. But De La Salle graduated 17 starters from the 13-0 squad from 2003.

The team also suffered off-the-field heartache recently. On Aug. 12, linebacker Terrence Kelly was shot to death in Richmond, 20 miles east of De La Salle's campus, just before he was to leave for the University of Oregon, where he had earned a full football scholarship.

[ThaSaltCracka]

yup they lost to Bellevue high school. It should be interesting for me because my my high school alma mater is likely to play Bellevue HS in the state playoffs(and they have a good chance to beat them). I actually live in Bellevue and I seriously wonder if most of the best football players in Bellevue are deciding to go to Belleve HS. Bellevue is a city of close to 100,000 people with 4 public high schools and atleast 6 other private high schools to compete/draw from. FWIW I think they have excellent coaches, a nice budget, and some sort of "recruiting" going on.

[Chris Daddy Cool]

i went to james logan high school (cowboyws safety roy williams was a senior there when i was a freshman) which used to always play de la salle in the ncs championships and de la salle would always whoop us.

their streak was pretty damn amazing considering that it's a private boy's only school with only 400 or so kids.

[RiverTheNuts]

Yea around where I lived, Evangel (Where all the Booty kids and Brock Berlin went) used to be nationally ranked perennially and would play De La Salle

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Well, maybe not the most, but the most amazing I know of.

Last year, Tollgate H.S. in Rhode Island defeated Mount St. Charles for the state H.S. hockey title. Why is this amazing? Because Mount St. Charles had won the title for 27 straight years.

Now, that's a streak.

[JoeU]

Having gone to a private Catholic school for both high school and middle school, I can tell you that De La Salle is in a much better position to field a superior football team than Joe Schmoe Public High. They are able to recruit players and their parents similar to what a college program would do. They also can give internal scholarships to fund their education. My high school won back to back state titles when I went there, and at one point was ranked 19th in the country. The only game they lost in my first 2 years there, they lost because most of the seniors were suspended (smashing pumpking on the school lawn). They met that team in the state championship and beat them 19-0. The opposing team didn't cross the 50 the whole game.

It isn't as impressive as De La Salle, but the 400 student private school can field a pretty good football, even if it is for longer than a decade!

Joe

PS Roy Williams is my favorite Cowboy!

[Analyst]

What makes the streak even more amazing is that De La Salle would consistantly schedule games against the nation's top high schools, such as Bellevue, and even the local games were played against the area's top public and private programs. They didn't beat 151 creampuffs.

[nolanfan34]

[ QUOTE ]
It should be interesting for me because my my high school alma mater is likely to play Bellevue HS in the state playoffs(and they have a good chance to beat them).

[/ QUOTE ]

Who is your alma mater? I don't see anyone beating Bellevue this season.

What's funny is that non-Washingtonians would be surprised to see that Bellevue High is right smack in the middle of one of the richest cities in the state. Bellevue's famous for its retail mall more than anything. Given the fact that there's no way they have the most athletic team in the state, it says a lot about how strong the coaching is.

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
Who is your alma mater?

[/ QUOTE ]
O-D-E-A!!!!
Yeah I know they just lost to Capital, but don't count them out. Expect to see them in state.

[nolanfan34]

I had a feeling you were going to say either that, or Kennedy.

O'Dea throttled us two years in a row in the State Semifinals, back in the 2A days. Bastards.