Planting Seeds of Success

Every journey begins with a first step. Every path to greatness begins somewhere. For the Santa Clarita Christian (SCCS) football program, that first step took place in the most unlikely of places: On Catalina Island.
 

The date was November 17, 2002, and SCCS was making its first playoff appearance in three years. The Cardinals had never won a postseason game, and on this day they faced a steep climb to their first. Their opponent – the Avalon Lancers – was a big, bruising team with a 9-0 record and a No. 1 ranking in the CIF-SS Eight-Man Division. The Cardinals (5-4) were unranked.
 

The Lancers were also playing at home, which is a 75-square mile island that floats 22 miles south-southwest of Los Angeles. To get there, The Cardinal players, coaches and fans drove 50 miles to the Long Beach Harbor, where they caught a one-hour boat ride to the island – all of this to make it for a 1 P.M. start.

In truth, it wouldn’t have made a difference if the Cardinals had faced Avalon in their own back yard. They were outmatched.

The score was 60-26 Avalon before the Cardinals came up with their first defensive stop, which came on a recovered fumble with 47 seconds to go in the third quarter. For the entire second half, the boys from Santa Clarita were just trying to make it to the end of regulation. In eight-man football, a team that falls behind by 45 points or more after halftime loses via the dreaded mercy rule.
 

The Cardinals avoided that fate … barely. The final score was Avalon 80, SCCS 38.
 

The Santa Clarita Christian players, coaches and fans accepted defeat as gracefully as they had all season. The cheerleaders kept right on cheering even after all hope was lost. Parents (an armada of at least 40 crossed the water) continued to encourage their sons to “play for the Lord.” And the coaches and players sincerely congratulated the Lancers after the game, despite having endured more cheap hits, verbal barbs and showboating antics than in all their previous games combined.    

But that doesn’t mean they took the loss well. Everyone was disappointed. Some were devastated. Parents and players were in tears. This was a painful, bitter defeat.

    

Such devastation runs counter to the once-popular notion in Santa Clarita that SCCS athletes don’t care as much about winning as the rest of the football obsessed high schools in the Santa Clarita Valley. The players and coaches never argue with the refs. They don’t talk trash. They don’t rub victory in opponent’s faces and they don’t lose their composure or make excuses when they lose.

But anyone who confused good sportsmanship with a lack of competitive fire learned something from the Cardinal faithful on Catalina that day. Cardinal senior quarterback Caleb Sulham said it best.

“It’s been a good season, but I feel like I failed,” he told me. “I didn’t take the team past what anyone else has done. I didn’t pick it up when it counted.”

Sulham had just turned in one of the best statistical games of his career, completing 22-of-37 passes for 358 yards and four touchdowns. On defense, he shared the team lead in tackles with eight.

But there wasn’t much I or anyone else could have said to make him feel any better at that moment. If you’ve ever been an athlete, you know there’s no salve for the ache that settles in your stomach after you realize you’ve just played the final game of your career. 

    

He wanted to get his team to Round 2 of the playoffs – something no player wearing a Cardinal uniform had ever done. It was a noteworthy goal. The distance between Round 1 and Round 2 of the playoffs can be vast. 

But Sulham had already helped his team bridge an even greater chasm. He took a team of players that hadn’t won in almost two seasons and taught them to believe they could. He took a team with only three seniors and showed them how to win.

Sulham wasn’t on the field for the Cardinals’ season of firsts the following year. But that team was very much a piece of his legacy. The 5-5 sprout of a winning team grew into an eight-man powerhouse in part because he helped plant the seed. 

By the end of the 2002 season, Caleb Sulham had already taken the Cardinals farther than they’d ever gone. He just didn’t know it yet. Nobody did.

But some suspected.