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By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
The parents and alumni looked at the new football coach's youth and limited resume and pointedly asked if the principal had taken leave of his senses.
They glimpsed the 24-year-old bespectacled, low-key new coach at work and wondered out loud if the school knew what it was doing.
It was 1978 and De La Salle High, a small Christian Brothers all-boys school in Concord, Calif., 30 miles northeast of San Francisco, hadn't had a winning season in six years of fielding a team. It had just hired Bob Ladouceur (Lad-uh-sir), who not only had never been a head coach but had just one year as a volunteer secondary coach, to change that.
"Frankly, some of the parents questioned my sanity on that one," recalled Michael Meister, the principal at the time. "They were expecting someone a lot different."
But what seemed a recipe for disaster has become the biggest success story in high school football.
Several mythical national championships, a 263-14-1 coaching mark and a national-record 126-game winning streak later, the man they call "Coach Lad" and the program he built have become models to be marveled at and emulated on and off the field as they come here for Saturday's HHSAA/First Hawaiian Bank Football Classic game against St. Louis School.
"Never, even in my wildest thoughts, did I imagine something like that," said Meister, now a vice president at St. Mary's College in Moraga, Calif.
Indeed, Ladouceur was working the graveyard shift at juvenile hall and serving as an assistant coach at Monte Vista High in Danville, Calif., when he happened across De La Salle's notice seeking candidates for a combination coach and teacher in a church publication.
Ask the man whose sideline manner is reminiscent of former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry what kind of potential he saw in the job and Ladouceur deadpans: "Nothing. I just wanted an opportunity." Not that he was sure he would get it. "I didn't know if they would take a gamble on me."
But in Meister he found someone willing to look beyond the skimpy resume and his tender years and deep into the person.
Asked to complete a 15-question application, Ladouceur spent a week on it and produced a 15-page dissertation that dealt almost exclusively with educational philosophy.
The best thing Ladouceur had going for him, he claims, was a letter of recommendation, not from a coach but a theology professor Meister held in high esteem.
Truth be told, when it came time for the interview, Ladouceur confesses they spent more time talking about theology, which the coach had gotten a degree in, and the professors the two had in common from St. Mary's. "I don't know how much he really knew about football; we didn't talk much about it," Ladouceur said.
But Meister knew people and had an instinct for those who could teach. And he knew he didn't want what he perceived as the worst side of a stereotypical football coach. "I didn't want a yeller and a screamer. I didn't want someone trying to live out their own athletic fantasies," Meister said.
The X's and O's were less important than the person. "I wanted a teacher; an educator first," Meister said. "I wanted someone who was going to teach more than football; someone faithful to the mission of the school."
It was soon apparent what the Spartans really needed was a miracle worker. His first year, Ladouceur had 24 players to work with and little else. He convinced the school to buy a modest set of weights, only to have thieves run off with them. After that, players brought weights from home. Their fan base consisted of immediate family and very few students.
Running the veer offense that Ladouceur installed, the Spartans somehow went 6-3 that first season in 1979 and began building a tradition based on year-round work, discipline and painstaking attention to detail.
Players spend 49 weeks a year in a rigorous conditioning program — getting just three weeks off during the Christmas and New Year's holidays. They work on repetition, sharpening what they run to a fine point. So well-conditioned and prepared are the Spartans that some of their players play both offense and defense.
And, they don't do it in a vacuum. There are grade checks every two weeks, and if a student's grades are lagging, there is mandatory after-school tutoring that must be completed before being allowed to practice. Or, no football at all. On the field, taunting isn't permitted and neither is jewelry.
It is a formula that has allowed the Spartans to go unbeaten since Dec. 6, 1991. Some of this year's players were 7 when De La Salle last lost a game.
Meanwhile, as the streak has grown to beyond-remarkable lengths, Meister long ago came to find humor in those who had early on questioned the sanity of his coaching hire.
Ladouceur said, "He told me, 'hiring you was the best decision I ever made.' "
History would agree.
