Team of the Year: Vaca football players willed selves to SJS title win
VACAVILLE — The moment when things looked as bleak as they possibly could for the Vacaville High football team also happened to be the moment that Bulldogs showed what they were: The truest definition of a team.
Trailing defending state champion Folsom 28-20 at the midway point of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division II championship game on Dec. 3, Vacaville players were, by all accounts, about as down as they could have been.
The defense had been lit up for 300 pass yards and a 99-yard touchdown pass by Folsom quarterback Tanner Trosin, and the offense had struggled to get a foothold early in the game.
“We were down at halftime, everyone was just down,” said lineman Johnny Schupp that night, crediting the halftime talk for the comeback.
It was a talk not given by the coaches, but by the players who knew they needed to rally themselves to come out with the victory.
“I think it was the locker room talk, definitely,” Schupp said. “We had a good talk in the locker room. Everyone was really, really down and, you know, a few of the captains stepped up. I stepped up, and I said ‘Pick your heads up. We’re down. We’ve been here before. We’ve been in that situation with good teams before and we’ve come (out) on top.’ ”
The Bulldogs called on that past experience and shut down Folsom in the second half, while capitalizing on turnovers to take the lead in the final five minutes of the game, and ultimately claiming their second SJS title in six years.
It’s for that chemistry and the willingness to play as a unit rather than as a bunch of talented individuals, that the Bulldogs are the Daily Republic’s 2011 Team of the Year.
Head coach Mike Papadopoulos said the sense of team really came from the players, and nothing that the coaches said or did.
“A lot of the leadership is self-generated,” he said. “We hope for the best we can, but each group is a little different.”
This team established itself as a special group right away.
“There were some big, defining things early in the season,” Papadopoulos said. “The (Week 2) loss to Marin Catholic was not a big devastating thing. There was the comebacks against Granite Bay and Valley Christian where we were down 14 points before we were even on offense.”
In those games, the players were the ones who sparked the rallies that resulted in victory and a 12-game win streak to end the season.
“The kids committed to what we do and hanging in there,” Papadopoulos said. “Those were very much some of the powerful things. We learned early on that we have something special going on.”
Also, the players were open to the ideas the coaches presented, and they were not a group that gave up easily, if at all.
“They got those lessons and achieved some great things that really springboarded us into what was happening,” the coach said.
Looking back at the halftime talk at the section title game, Papadopoulos said it was all on the players, that the coaches didn’t say much, if anything.
“The big part, again, I put it back on what had happened early on (in the season). It was something that was achievable and doable,” he said. “The players decided to let it all hang out and play with no regret.”
The first-half numbers Folsom ran up on Vacaville were the result of playing too conservatively, Papadopoulos said.
“We gave them too much respect early on and then we started challenging them,” he said. “The talk at halftime was generated by the seniors. . . . It doesn’t matter who’s speaking, they all respect each other and they’re all in it for each other. Talk about like a ‘Hoosiers’ moment. A couple kids just felt strongly and had something to say.”
The biggest part for Papadopoulos was that the inspiration and the rallying cry was not coming from the coaches.
“It was nothing that I had to say, and that was a special thing to me,” he said. “If you look at what kids did collectively, they were self starters. You don’t have to say something if you feel that kids do it on their own. They willed themselves in that game.”
Reach Mike Corpos at 427-6979, or mcorpos@dailyrepublic.net.
Short URL: http://www.dailyrepublic.com/?p=121659
Posted by Mike Corpos
on Dec 30 2011.
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