Winning formula
‘When the Game Stands Tall’ role brought back memories for Jim Caviezel
By Michael Ordoña
The recently retired Bob Ladouceur coached his Catholic high school’s football team to 399 wins, including 151 consecutive. It’s hard to imagine another coach who could lay claim to anything close to such a run, while making so profound an impact on his charges.
Actor Jim Caviezel can think of one.
“My dad played for ( John Wooden) at UCLA and introduced me to him when I was a little boy,” said Caviezel, who developed a close friendship with the college basketball legend who won 10 NCAA championships in 12 years, including seven in a row.
Caviezel plays Ladouceur in the new film, “When the Game Stands Tall.” He sees clear parallels between the two coaches, especially on philosophy:
“Strength really comes from the fortitude that’s built within the heart,” he said. “The toughness from what one goes through and endures. But the greatest of all of that is working on the ego, creating instead of an ‘I’ and ‘me,’ a ‘we’ and ‘us.’
“My interest in doing this movie was, yes, I understood (Ladouceur) won 151 games, yes, I know Coach Wooden won 88 college basketball games in a row — these guys had multiple, multiple streaks of wins. What were they doing
that was different?”
The 34-year tenure of Ladouceur, “Coach Lad,” was about much more than the streak. Accordingly, “When the Game Stands Tall” focuses on what happened after the streak ended. Could the program bounce back from its shocking 2004 stumble, just as the coach had always taught his players to do?
“Other teams say, ‘We’re gonna put the hit on that team, we’re gonna put ’em through the wall,’ whatever,” says Caviezel. “And Lad would be like, ‘It’s not how hard you’re gonna hit somebody. It’s how hard you’re gonna get hit. And get back up.’ And they do.
“They play through that pain because something greater than that pain is that love they feel and that bond they feel for each other.”
The film takes some serious liberties, perhaps chief among them the creation of a major character whose honorable drive toward a personal milestone is probably meant to symbolize the best qualities Ladouceur worked to instill.
“I love his saying, ‘We’re not asking you to play a perfect game. What we’re asking of you, you should be asking of yourselves: to give a perfect effort on every play from snap to whistle. So your teammates can depend on you.’ What that means is, ‘You can depend on me. I’m not going to let you down.’”
Caviezel says he’s always wanted to play Coach Wooden, but the opportunity hasn’t come up. In researching Ladouceur, however, he saw the essence of some of his own formative athletic experiences.
“I was watching a documentary on (Ladouceur), and I looked at these kids, and they had that glossy-eyed look and their hearts were burning. You’ve experienced it at a funeral, at a film. You’ve experienced it when you feel love in your heart. And it enables you to overcome the conditions — the mud, the cold, the pain, the physical. Because you love and you feel that internal bond with your teammates, you’re not going to walk away from them.”
The sight stirred strong memories for Caviezel.
“We were playing the No. 1-ranked team in the state, Mercer Island (Washington),” he recalls of his high school basketball team’s tournament matchup. “When we found that out … I couldn’t sleep that night.
“We got together as a team and watched (‘Hoosiers’). Of course, in that film, you have an underdog playing a team that was unbeatable. After we watched the film, we felt like, ‘We can do this. We can do this.’ ”
That Kennedy High team didn’t leave the good feelings in the theater.
“I remember in the fourth quarter, my legs were burning because I was the starting point guard and I really had to do a good job shutting this guy down from penetrating the key and having his way. So to the expense of my legs, I didn’t have anything left, I’m picking this guy up fullcourt.
“Before I was feeling scared and ‘Boy, I’d better not screw up.’ … I felt this love from my teammates. Love, so much, that I wasn’t going to let them down. My legs were burning but, ‘No, it doesn’t matter. I’ll go through a wall.’ And we won that game.
“But if (they had outscored us), I would have said we won that game.”
The actor says he’d always wanted to make something that would have as strong an ef- fect on a viewer.
“That movie, ‘Hoosiers,’ how powerful that was — that was really the genesis for me when I read the (Ladouceur) script. I said, ‘Oh, wow, Kennedy vs. Mercer Island, there you are.’
“Football’s a sport you can play for a short period of time. But how he trains them to become men is something they can do for the rest of their lives.”