Welcome to Hell Week

Hell Week is aptly named.

It's a period of intense drilling and conditioning conducted by prep football teams everywhere, and takes place near the end of the summer -- usually in the sun-scorched month of August. This is a varsity hopeful's first real opportunity to begin earning a spot on the team.

The two-a-day sessions are intended to sift the team -- to separate those who want to play from those merely infatuated with the idea of it. During this annual rite of passage, players sprint to the point of throwing up. They drill to near fainting. They push to the edge of breaking. 

Infatuation rarely survives Hell Week.

Few are better geared to execute the purposes of Hell Week than SCCS assistant coach John Sanna. The fiery defensive coordinator stepped onto the practice field in dry, dusty Agua Dulce carrying five years of experience with the team. He'd seen the Cardinals through their birth and their first steps. In 2003, Sanna was eager to see them take flight -- even if it meant kicking them out of the nest.

He set the tone early.

"It was our first day and we weren't even done stretching when coach Sanna saw a rattle snake over by our cars," said then-senior Stephen Crawford.

Sanna didn't bother interrupting the warm up. He grabbed a broom and marched into the dirt parking lot.

"He just walks over and starts whacking away," Crawford said. "And when he was done he dropped the broom, threw the carcass away and walked back and stared at us while we were stretching. He didn't say a word. It kind of scared the heck out of some of the younger kids, but it set the tone that we meant business. We all saw it. We all knew what had happened."

Sanna applied the same no-nonsense approach to preparing his defense. He preached a simple message: pursue, then punish.

"The defense is a lot stronger this year," he said before the season began. "These guys know they can win. And we have more guys so everybody's out here fighting for a spot."

Sanna took full advantage of the competition. Players vying for a place on his defense had plenty to prove. Speed and strength were critical. But nothing was more important than a commitment to ferocity.

"He brought a pink chair and cooler of lemonade and an umbrella to the field," Crawford said. "He told us, 'Anyone who doesn't want to work hard at practice can have a seat in the sissy chair.' The catch was if you did that, you had to run the gauntlet when practice was over."

The gauntlet was a tunnel of players lined up two-by-two. Victims race threw it to the end, all the while absorbing a pounding from the rest of the team.

Sanna brought the sissy chair to every practice. Not one player ever elected to sit in it.