By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

When the arms and legs grow weary and fatigue begins to set in, there is the schedule.

When trips to the weight room threaten to become a suffocating grind and there are a dozen other, more appealing places to be in the summer, there is the schedule.

"When I'm tired and sweating, I recite the schedule," said John Chan, a starting tackle for De La Salle High of Concord, Calif., the nation's No. 1-ranked high school football team. "I don't want to miss a set (of weight repetitions) and have it be the difference in us winning or not."

School starts today for the owners of the beyond-remarkable 125-game winning streak, but the focus on what looms as potentially the Spartans' toughest schedule — and a Sept. 21 game with St. Louis School in the First Hawaiian Bank Football Classic at Aloha Stadium — has been relentless and year-round.

A copy of the schedule is posted in the school offices and on the Spartans' Web site. It is a topic of conversation among parents and fans. And, increasingly, it is showing up in USA Today, which has ranked the Spartans as the national champion the past two seasons. But, like Chan, many players have already committed it to memory and installed it on automatic playback for inspiration.

Indeed, the Spartans do not lack for competition or would-be threats to their reign this season. If the nation's longest active winning streak in any sport is to end its 10-year run this season, chances are it will be somewhere in a month-long span between mid-September and mid-October.

There, the Spartans step into the teeth of their five-game non-league schedule: No. 21 St. Louis, No. 4 Long Beach Poly and La Costa Canyon of San Diego. (Poly plays two-time Hawai'i state champion Kahuku in the other half of the Sept. 21 Classic doubleheader).

"We definitely feel like it is a tough schedule and getting St. Louis was the icing on the cake...a very big cake," said Terry Eidson, De La Salle's athletic director and defensive coordinator. "St. Louis was like the final piece of the puzzle."

"It just motivates us to work that much harder," said linebacker Cole Smith.

"Because we know the teams we are going to play are getting ready for us, too," Chan added.

The Crusaders, De La Salle's second opponent of the season, are becoming more familiar by the day as the Spartans, who began practice Monday, watch more film and spend more preparation time.

"We know No. 84 (Jason Rivers) is their go-to receiver. We know their quarterback (Bobby George) and some of their sets," said linebacker De'Montae Fitzgerald.

Mostly, the Spartans have come to know by heart the depth of the challenge that shortly awaits them.