Plaschke: Season in Paradise ends with cold, rain, sloppy play … and thanks

Their escape from the fire ended in the rain and cold, their strong backs shivering, their proud eyes flowing.

The soaked quarterback rocked in a teammate's soggy arms and cried, "It was my fault. It was my fault!"

The frigid running back, his feet planted in a chilly end zone puddle, whispered, "I don't want to leave this field. I can't leave this field."

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. The Paradise High Bobcats football team's resurrection season was supposed to march on forever.

One year after losing everything, nothing could stop them. A dozen consecutive wins, an unimaginable undefeated run that had the team pointed toward a state bowl game.

"I think at some point, we thought we were invincible," Coach Rick Prinz said.

Then, in a biting rainstorm, they stepped on the gray turf field at River Valley High to face powerful Sutter Union High and the truth surfaced.

They weren't supermen. They were 39 vulnerable young men who spent six months trying to hit their way through the pain of losing their homes in the Nov. 8, 2018, Camp fire that destroyed their town and took 86 lives.

Their young shoulders had been fitted with the burden of responsibility for restoring hope, rebuilding bonds and reviving a lost community. Some of them were not old enough to drive, yet were tasked with steering Paradise into a rebirth through weekly town reunions in the concrete bleachers of their ancient home stadium.

They grew into the challenge, becoming the heroes their neighbors craved. They approached games with a solemn grace, then snapped on their insurancebought helmets and beat the stuffing out of somebody.

They won big, bigger, then even bigger, wiping out opponents in front of hundreds of fans who hugged and wept and momentarily forgot the destruction wrought upon their lives. Throughout a magical autumn, on a field across the street from burned and twisted wreckage, they created the most raw and brutal sort of transformative beauty.

"They've been a rallying point for a lot of people," said Greg Bolin, Paradise's vice mayor. "They didn't give up, they didn't stop, they fought through the adversity ... they've been an example of what our whole town is doing now."

Two days after spending Thanksgiving in trailers and apartments and farms far from their lost Paradise homes, the enormity of the mission ultimately overwhelmed them.

"It was finally all too much," assistant coach Andy Hopper said. "They finally wore down. They finally fell apart."

They lost fumbles. They threw passes that were intercepted. They committed penalties. They failed to score three times after moving close to the goal line.

They lost 20-7 in a game they never led, but a game they could have won, and afterward they gathered in an end zone and cried.

They wept not only for the loss of a game, but for the end of a season that offered a piece of normality to which they had been clinging for months.

They cried for the loss of daily practice, of nightly team meals, of parking lot hangouts, of togetherness that kept some of them in school and all of them in a familiar and stable place.

"I guarantee you, those tears were about losing their family," Prinz said.

Soaked quarterback Danny Bettencourt looked around, as if lost.

"Where do I go now?" he said. "What do we do now?"

Frigid running back Lukas Hartley ducked his head and uttered what, under different circumstances, would have been considered an exaggeration.

"I didn't cry this bad when my house burned down," he said. :: Even in their final hours together, the Bobcats could not escape the scars of the preceding months.

After the team's final practice, on a darkened field in nearfreezing temperatures, Prinz addressed the team with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his green parka.

"I love you guys. I want to keep going on ... and the only other thing I have to say is this," he said, suddenly pulling his hands from those pockets and waving them in the air.

Adorning six of his fingers were gold and silver rings from Prinz's six sectional championships. They glowed through the chill. The surprised players gasped, then loudly oohed and aahed.

"You want one of these?" Prinz shouted. "Look at these. You want one of these?"

The excited chatter was interrupted by a voice from the back.

"I want one of those, because all of mine burned up!" defensive coordinator Paul Orlando shouted.