The football game is over and the players’ ritual begins.

Before heading to the showers, the victorious Los Gatos (Calif.) High team members head toward an end zone, pull off their helmets and take a knee before Charlie Wedemeyer, the most famous coach in the school’s history.
The players form a semi-circle around the side of Wedemeyer’s van, which is parked in its usual spot just behind the goal post. They wait to hear his observations and words of encouragement, even though he is no longer the varsity coach but an unofficial consultant for the freshman-sophomore team.
Not one of them has ever heard his voice.
Wedemeyer, a star athlete from Punahou School in the 1960s, cannot speak, nor can he move. He is confined to a wheelchair and communicates to his wife, Lucy, through a language of blinks, eyebrow raises and cheek twitches. She then relays the message to the team.
“Coach is very impressed,” she announces to the group. “Coach is saying, `Great job tonight,’ and, `I... like ... seeing ... those high numbers ... on the scoreboard.’ ”
Thirty-one years ago, Wedemeyer was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and told he had about a year to live. The incurable ailment, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, attacks the nervous system and destroys the ability of its victims to control their muscles.
Wedemeyer, 63, is unable to move from the neck down and needs a respirator to breathe, the air flowing through a ribbed tube protruding from his throat. He cannot swallow, so a round-the-clock nurse suctions the saliva from his mouth every few minutes. He is fed through a tube in his abdomen.
Among his former players is Buffalo Bills quarterback Trent Edwards, who played for him on the frosh/soph team in the Northern California town and still keeps in close contact. Last Sunday, Edwards launched a program called “Trent’s Touchdowns for ALS” to raise money for the ALS Association through private and corporate donations tied to touchdowns. Edwards is expected to sit out his second straight game this week, recovering from a concussion.
Edwards, who later starred at Stanford, said Wedemeyer was not only his first football coach but also his most inspirational.
“There are times when practice gets hard, hot double days, struggles that you face both on and off the football field,” Edwards said. “But you haven’t experienced anything close to what he’s gone through with his life.
”If he’s out there every day and he’s willing to give his best and be willing to help you as a player, you feel like you can’t give anything but your best. It was nice for me at a young age to learn that and have that instilled by a football coach.“
A three-sport star named Hawaii’s prep athlete of the decade for the 1960s, Wedemeyer went on to play football at Michigan State. As a coach, his specialty was working with quarterbacks and implementing a passing system that, when he first put it in place in 1977, was ahead of its time in the run-it-up-the-middle world of high school football.
By the time Edwards was at Los Gatos in the late 1990s, Wedemeyer’s role was preparing young players for the varsity. And even though he couldn’t speak, he maintained his exacting attention to detail.
That was the case with Alex Rollins, the Wildcats quarterback who followed Edwards. Because he was more of a baseball player, Rollins had a tendency to release the ball at a lower point. To correct that, Wedemeyer routinely had Rollins face his wheelchair ramp and throw pass after pass over his van.
Then, there was punter Jeff Collins. He would practice kicks with Wedemeyer wordlessly watching until the kid got it just right. And then the coach would have him punt over and over that same way.
”If you got a wink,“ Collins said, ”you knew you were doing something right.“
Wedemeyer was Los Gatos’ varsity coach from 1977 — the year before he was diagnosed with ALS — through 1985, after which the school relieved him of his duties because of his declining health. That was painful time for all involved, including the good friend who replaced him, Butch Cattolico, still head coach at the school.
”It got to a point where we really had to be careful with him out there on the field because he didn’t have the ability to move and he could get knocked over,“ Cattolico said. ”You wanted to be in there, but yet you had to kind of stand by him and protect him. That was really hard because he was still young. We were all young. At that point, we weren’t smart enough to know that we could die some day.“
Cattolico, who went on to win 16 league titles and become one of the area’s most successful coaches, believes that if not for the disease, Wedemeyer easily could have wound up coaching in college or maybe the NFL. He was that good, that dedicated.
”We used to spend Sunday afternoons at the Wedemeyer house studying football,“ he said. ”We’d go through the film, we’d break down the week of practice. We’d talk about how we were going to attack it. I know after eight or nine hours I’d say, `Charlie, I’ve got to go home. I’m dead.’ And he could stay there and Lucy would say he’d watch film for three or four hours after you’d leave.
“His comment was always: everything else in high school teaches you what life is going to be like, football teaches you what life is.
”I think football was life to him, and it still is.“
Wedemeyer’s final season as varsity coach was his most successful. Coaching from a golf cart driven by Lucy, he led the Wildcats to their seventh league title in nine seasons and a Central Coast Section championship. At one point during that season he weighed less than 100 pounds. He gradually regained some weight and strength — but lost his voice entirely — when he was placed on a ventilator.
Lucy would read his lips, which he still had the ability to move, and relay his plays to the assistant coaches. It was far from a foolproof system, and Lucy frequently found herself forgetting the first part of a play call before Charlie got to the end of it.
At one point during a game, with the clock winding down, Charlie instructed her to call ”Max.“ She didn’t know any players of that name.
”I’m looking down the sidelines for Max, assuming that we must have a new player ... “ she said. ”He said, `Just say Max!’ So I said, `Max!’ And it had a meaning, which meant maximum protection. But he had to call a timeout ... and you don’t want to call a timeout if you don’t have to.“
High school sweethearts since their days at Punaho Academy on Oahu, Charlie and Lucy have leaned heavily on their faith, family, friends and sense of humor to get them through the darkest days of the disease.
Their daughter, Carri, and son, Kale (pronounced CUH-lee, and Hawaiian for Charlie) live within minutes and have seven children between them. The Wedemeyers love being involved grandparents.
”We are super blessed,“ said Lucy, who has sold real estate since 1982 to help offset the staggering medical costs of the disease. The couple have also written a book, ”Charlie’s Victory,“ and were the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary and a 1988 made-for-TV movie.

The last year has been especially difficult because Charlie, who also has diabetes, has struggled with a stomach infection and colitis that kept him in intensive care for three months. Resilient as he is, that has kept him from spending as much time with the football team as he would have liked.
Sharon Matland, vice president of patient services for the ALS Assn., said it’s ”very rare but not unheard of“ for someone to defy the odds the way Wedemeyer has. The typical life expectancy for someone with the disease is three to five years after diagnosis.
Kale Wedemeyer, a standout football player at University of the Pacific who went on to become a physician specializing in pain manageent, attributes his father’s longevity in part to his intense desire to live.
”The first thing he might say is the stubbornness: he decided to stick around,“ he said. ”He wasn’t done living, and we weren’t done with him. We wanted him to be here.“
That’s the feeling on a shirtsleeves Friday night at the high school, as a steady stream of well-wishers make their way to Wedemeyer’s van. A former player holding his girlfriend’s hand. An administrator. A player’s parents. Even one of the officials from the game.
All wanting just a moment with the greatest coach they have never heard.