ISHPEMING HS FOOTBALL MAKES SI:
Tragedy to triumph: The amazing story of the Ishpeming Hematites |
Ishpeming High capped off its dream season last month by upsetting Detroit power Loyola to win the Michigan state title.
Daniel Mears/AP
By Jon Werthheim
Ishpeming's head coach, Jeff Olson, may have been in his 21st year of running the program, but the decision didn't come easy. He called time out and gave it thought. He reckoned that if his team went for it and failed, Loyola would be just 19 yards from scoring a touchdown; and afterwards, there wouldn't be much time left on the clock. Olson ordered the punting unit onto the field. Except that his players openly voiced their disagreement. "C'mon coach," they pleaded, "we'll get it."
In another time and place, the notion of the players disagreeing with Coach Olson -- at the end of the biggest game of their lives -- would have been laughable. And the notion of the coach relenting would have been funnier still. But in this sweet and bitter and wonderful and terrible upside-down, mixed up football season, it somehow seemed right.
Ishpeming burned a pair of timeouts, twice trying to draw Loyola offside. When that failed, the team's junior quarterback, Alex Briones, grabbed the snap off of a quick count, and, behind the team's 5-foot-10, 160 pound center, barreled ahead for the first down. Soon the time diminished to zero, Ishpeming had won the state championship. The players stormed the field and began the mother of all dog piles. In the stands, the thousands of fans who'd made the eight-hour drive down The Mitten of Michigan -- the equivalent of Chicago to Memphis, New York to Columbus -- hugged and cheered and shrieked.
On the field, Coach Olson took to a knee and then fell headfirst to the ground. For four months he'd held it all together, in the face of almost unimaginable tragedy. The entire fall was like one protracted staring contest with his emotion. Now, finally, he blinked. Actually, he broke down, sobbing convulsively while smiling with disbelief.
When the players saw their coach brought, quite literally, to his knees with emotion, well, most of them lost it, too. On this day anyway, there was crying in football. It was pointless to try to distinguish the tears of joy, the tears of anguish and the tears of relief. So they all just cried.
*****
You may have noticed the recent decline in the release of meaningful sports movies. Not that long ago, the Hollywood tastemakers offered us a regular diet of sports fare. Consider that Hoosiers, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and The Natural all came out just a few years apart. Today? The few sports movies that make it to the Multiplex are mostly either crappy comedies or adapted versions of successful Michael Lewis books.
Where did the sports flick go? The accountants will tell that you that as international DVD sales became so important in the film business, sports were a tougher sell. The allure of ghosts in the Iowa cornfields or the Notre Dame walk-on got lost somewhere between Dubai and Shanghai. There's also the issue of licensing. When you simulate the NFL and the Washington Sentinels have to play the Phoenix Scorpions or the Dallas Ropers, we lose some authenticity.
But here's an alternative theory: sports are already the most compelling dramas and comedies and even tragedies, hitting on those crucial elements -- protagonists, antagonists, tension, conflict, redemption, resolution -- they teach at film school. Every day, at all levels, sports give us what we want from a good movie. If there's any sector of society that requires no fictionalizing and scripting, it's sports.
Which brings us to the banks of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Ishpeming's listed population is 6,531, though residents put it closer to 5,000. It's a mining town, so much so that the high school team name is the Hematites, the mineral form of iron oxide. Many of the local adults work in the mines. Many of the local kids complain there's not much to do besides play video games, fish and hunt. "If it's four-legged and brown, it's going down," could pass for the town's unofficial motto.
For years Ishpeming was a basketball town, most of the 5,000 or so residents heading to the high school gym on Friday nights in the winter. But the allegiances switched to football in the '90s, and it's no coincidence: that was around the same time Coach Olson arrived.
Coach O. didn't exactly have access to a mother lode of talent. Even the best players on his teams were lucky to make the grade at a Division III college. (In two decades, no player under Olson has made the roster at a D-I school.) Two-way starters are the rule, not the exception. If you weigh close to 200 pounds you can count on being a lineman. Most of Olson's players look the way you probably picture them: pale, physically unremarkable kids with hair the length of freshly mowed grass.
Still, the program became a totem for the town. "I know from Steelers fans, but Ishpeming football is like nothing I've ever seen," says Gabriella DeLuca, a Pittsburgh native and cub reporter for the local Fox affiliate.
Olson just "had the touc h," as one of the parents puts it. Moonlighting as the school's gym teacher, he knew most of the kids in town before they joined his team. From the beginning, he was a benevolent despot, at once authoritarian and approachable; flexible but tough. Though undersized, he was a former high school player in Marquette, Mich., and he made his teams in his image. "We just talk about doing things right all the time," he says. "If you have commitment and discipline you can be successful at anything."
Two years ago, in the fall of 2010, Ishpeming reached the state championship. The Hematites' star quarterback was Coach Olson's son, Daniel. At 5-8, 165 pounds, he was an all-state quarterback, the 2010 Offensive Player of the Year in the Upper Peninsula. A good chunk of his career passing yards came via one of his favorite targets, Derrick Briones. The team fell short in the final game, losing to Hudson 28-26. In the eyes of many -- including the team's admittedly partial coach -- Daniel Olson was the best player on the field that day. But that didn't seem to matter. For months, Daniel blamed himself for the defeat, waking up in sweats in the middle of the night to scold himself for what he perceived as a failure.
*****
Earlier this year, Sports Illustrated began a quest to find America's most inspiring underdog stories in high school football. A camera crew pinballed across the country. To Pahokee, Fla., where football is the escape from endemic poverty in the state's swampy midsection. To Fort Campbell High in Kentucky, where all of the players' parents serve in the U.S. military. To Fremont, Calif., where the team from the California School for the Deaf holds its own against the state's best.
The crew stopped in Ishpeming because an SI editor had happened upon the story of the team's backup kicker. Eric Dompierre had been born with Down syndrome, bearing an extra copy of chromosome 21, a genetic fluke that often slows cognitive function and generally stunts physical growth.
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