"Gentlemen," the head coach says. Spaghetti-twirled forks freeze. Sixty high school football players snap to attention.
On game days like this one, the varsity players wear ties and shirts with collars under their gold jerseys. That morning, defensive back Sara Rathbun put on her father's $16 tie and had him knot it for her. She's wearing his black Levi's, her No. 35 jersey and a tucked-in white Oxford shirt. Coach Rich Wheeler hates it when his players walk around with shirttails out. This team will not look sloppy.
Tonight, we'll see what La Canada High School is made of. See if it can play with the Big Boys. In five hours, Wheeler will put on his lucky game cleats, and La Canada will take part in what amounts to a league championship showdown. La Canada hasn't been this close in a dozen years. Now the Spartans face a homecoming crowd at Monrovia High School, No. 1 in the division with a star tailback. ("Every Division I school after him . . . gained 463 yards in one game. . . .")
"You have a chance to do something that hasn't been done here in 12 years," says Wheeler, 49. His tone is conversational. "Let's get serious about it. Let's take a moment."
This is Wheeler's second season at La Canada, after 24 years of coaching in the Midwest. In 1997, he led the Spartans to their first winning season in years. Of course, he wants to win. But not with a bunch of thugs. This team will have guts and grace.
Sara, a 17-year-old senior, stands up with the team and bows her head. As a reserve, she knows she might not play in tonight's nail-biter between the league's two undefeated teams. But she's not here to rack up game stats.
Sara is no Billie Jean King. She is a post-feminist athlete--not a crusader, not a groundbreaker, but a competitor in a sport charged with testosterone. She's a longtime soccer player and varsity track-and-field athlete, but nothing pushes her, enthralls her, like football. Nothing else makes her feel like she's a part of something colossal.
La Canada football is not 95 boys and one girl, with a freshman, junior varsity and varsity squad. La Canada football is 96 players. Anybody who survives the seven-hours-a-day summer practices is in.
Sara--5 feet 8, 138 pounds--dragged herself through Hell Week like everyone else. In 112-degree heat, she ran until she dry-heaved alongside the boys by the chain-link fence. She lifted weights until her arms shook so much that she couldn't drive home. She charged until guys twice her weight crashed into her and she saw black blotches and stars. If she messed up, the defensive coordinator shook a finger in her face and screamed, and she took it like a football player.
