florida night lights - mbrobertswriter.com

good
LIFE
SPORTS
SPORTS
good
LIFE
The competition
will be tough
between
teams such
as American
Heritage
and Cardinal
Gibbons.
Florida
NIGHT
Lights
Some of the best football
players in the country hone their
skills in our backyard.
by MB Roberts
Rewind to the late fall of 1977. Jimmy Carter is
president, Elvis died a few months back and it would be
extremely uncool not to own a pair of platform shoes.
Queue up NFL films narrator:
The scene? The football field
at Deerfield Beach High School
where Deerfield’s Bucks are squaring
off against the Cobras of Boyd Anderson.
If Deerfield wins, they clinch their first-ever
district title so long as Pompano Beach beats Fort
Lauderdale that same night.
Remember, this was decades before cell
phones. The concept of Twitter was beyond
the imagination of the most creative Jetsons’
scriptwriter. But the Deerfield coaches, anxious
to keep abreast of the across-town score, devised
a plan.
“A guy on our staff got one of his buddies at
FP&L to park his truck outside the Pompano
stadium and watch the game,” said longtime SunSentinel high school Sports Coordinator Dave
Brousseau, a team statistician for Deerfield at
the time. “There was another truck at Deerfield
talking to the Pompano truck on the CB radio.
And we had walkie-talkies.”
There was little suspense in the Deerfield game
(the Bucks won 47-21). Toward the end, fans
and players noticed Deerfield coaches gathered
around a big walkie-talkie antennae.
“People caught on that we were listening to
the other game,” said Brousseau. “And the game
was really close.”
After their victory, the Deerfield players
clustered around, listening to the play-by-
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September & October 2013 | FLMag.com
play. The fans stayed in their seats waiting for
a reaction from the cluster on the field. The
stadium was quiet; the only sound was the voice
of the FP&L guy reporting that Fort Lauderdale
was driving for the winning touchdown. Then,
Pompano intercepted. The clock ran out. The
Deerfield players and coaches leapt up in a group
shout. The fans rushed the field.
“Things like that don’t happen anymore,” said
Brousseau.
These days, information is available
everywhere, instantly, and like many other
things in our society, high school football in and
around Fort Lauderdale is much bigger, faster and
stronger than it was 30-plus years ago.
For instance, this year, defending Class 7A
champion St. Thomas Aquinas kicked off its
season in late August against Miami Northwestern
not at their Brian Piccolo Memorial Stadium
(capacity 4,500) or on Northwestern’s home turf,
but at Sun Life Stadium, home of the Miami
Dolphins and the Miami Hurricanes (seating
capacity: 78,000). On Sept. 13, St. Thomas hits
the road to play John Curtis Christian High
School (River Ridge, Louisiana) at New Orleans’
Superdome.
“It’s going to be a very interesting three weeks
for us,” said Aquinas Athletic Director and
former head coach George Smith.
St. Thomas Aquinas – synonymous with
football excellence in Fort Lauderdale with 28
St. Thomas
Aquinas kicked
off its season
at Sun Life
Stadium.
district titles, seven state crowns and two national
titles (in 2008 and 2010) to their credit – has a
tradition going back to Brian Piccolo, a running
back from then Central Catholic’s class of 1961.
Piccolo went on to lead the nation in rushing
as a senior at Wake Forest, then played for the
Chicago Bears before dying of cancer at age 26, a
tragic tale portrayed in the movie, Brian’s Song.
Dozens of other St. Thomas players have gone
on to play football in college: Cameron Davis, ’92,
Florida; Lamarcus Joyner, ’10, FSU; Sam Young,
‘06, Notre Dame, to name a few. Graduates who
made it to the pros include Michael Irvin, ’84,
Dallas Cowboys; Stefan Humphries, ’80, Chicago
Bears; and Tavares Gooden, ’03, Baltimore
Ravens and San Francisco 49ers.
Sports Illustrated recently referred to the
school as “an NFL factory,” noting that from
2007-2012 the Raiders sent eight former players
to the NFL draft. (No other high school sent
more than five during that same period.)
“That’s a very positive statement,” said Smith,
who coached the Raiders for 34 years. “We’ve
had some incredible players, coaches and great
human beings come through our program.”
The bad news for teams scheduled to play the
Raiders this fall – including Hollywood Hills,
the first Broward County state championship
team back in 1973, and Deerfield, a team that
handed the Raiders their only losses in their
championship seasons of 1999 and 2007 – is that
the reigning state champs were looking good
before the season’s start.
“They’re already championship material,” said
Brousseau. “It’s pretty scary.”
Aquinas isn’t the only talented team in town.
In Class 5A, the competition will be tough
between teams such as American Heritage
(Plantation), the 2011 District Champs who
went 9-2 last season, and Cardinal Gibbons,
which finished 8-3 and 7-3 in 2011 and 2012,
respectively.
American Heritage coach Mike Rumph – a
former San Francisco 49ers player with deep
South Florida roots (he played for Atlantic High
in Delray, and was on the University of Miami’s
2001 National Championship team) – notched
several successful seasons as the Patriots’ track
and field coach before taking over as head
football coach in 2012.
“Coach Rumph and his team are taking on a
brutal schedule this year,” said Brousseau. “But
that’s by design. They want to be good.”
Cardinal Gibbons, which boasts five district
championships (1990, ’91, ’93, ’94 and ’95),
is known for developing great athletes. In
2008, nine of its players went on to play
college football, including kicker Blair Walsh,
who played for Georgia and then went pro,
distinguishing himself last year when his two
field goals propelled the Minnesota Vikings to
the NFC Championship.
In District 14-7A, one team with a storied past
and a promising future is 2002 State Champions
Blanche Ely in Pompano Beach. Ely has a long
list of alumni turned NFL players, including
Arizona Cardinals two-time Pro Bowler Patrick
Peterson, who returned to Pompano this past
summer to host his first youth football camp.
Al Harris, a 14-year pro, most notably with the
Green Bay Packers, is back in town coaching at
St. Thomas, where his son, Al Harris, Jr. plays
cornerback.
Ely is also well known for its longtime rivalry
with two-time Class 4A State Champions (1986,
1989) Dillard High, which has been played out
almost every year since 1962 during the seasonending “Soul Bowl.”
“It’s the kind of game you mark on your
calendar, “said Brousseau.
These last few years, over 6,000 spectators
have packed Fort Lauderdale’s Lockhart Stadium
for the game, which Dillard won in 2012 (22-6).
Ely currently leads the series (21-20-2).
Also on high school football fans’ watch
list this fall are the Suns of University School,
newly bumped up to class 4A. The CBS Sportsaffiliated website maxpreps.com recently put
it among its top 25 high school teams in the
nation. Despite being a young program with
less than a decade under its belt, the Suns won
their first state title last year under Coach Roger
Harriott. This year, University will be led by
Sean White (2014), one of the top quarterback
prospects in the nation.
So, how does Fort Lauderdale compare with
places like Pennsylvania, where they were
playing football back when the helmets were
made of leather? Or with Texas, where 30,000
seat stadiums are the norm?
“In terms of attendance, Texas beats us,” said
Cardinal Gibbons coach Mike Morrill. “But in
terms of individual talent, going back to the
mid-80’s we’ve got probably the best high school
players in the country.”
Now that’s something to cheer about.
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