Different sport, similar success for De La Salle football alums
There’s still some jawing about who led De La SalleConcord’s defense during its football state-championship years in 2014 and 2015.
By the most accurate accounts, it was Keanu Andrade — who led the team in tackles — and Damon Wiley — who was selected as the East Bay’s Defensive Player of the Year.
But in the current scope of the story, the truth doesn’t really seem to matter.
“That’s always going to be a constant argument,” Andrade said, “but we’re focusing on pushing each other to work really hard for the team.”
Andrade and Wiley are now sophomores on the Cal rugby team, an historically elite program that will play for the 15on-15 national championship Saturday against Life University (Marietta, Ga.) at Santa Clara.
The Bears have won 29 national titles (24 of them in 15on-15) during Jack Clark’s 34 years as head coach, but this could have been a rebuilding year — a phrase not easily attached to Cal rugby.
Instead, Clark and the Bears went 22-2, developing a starting lineup that has included as many as seven underclassmen and relies heavily on the foundation Andrade and Wiley had infused at De La Salle.
“We went from a high school program that consisted of hard work, teamship and love, and when we got to college, we joined a college team that shared those same traits and characteristics,” Wiley said. “It’s made it easy for us to come out every day and work our butts off for the guys around us and improve as student-athletes.”
Andrade and Wiley are two of six major Cal contributors who played football at De La Salle, which is hardly an anomaly.
Clark’s coaching dominance is similar to that of Bob Ladouceur — De La Salle’s longtime football coach — and the programs have shared a number of players.
Recent Cal rugby standouts include Scott Walsh and Lucas Dunne, the latter having broken Maurice Jones-Drew’s season touchdown record at De La Salle. Before them, there was Chris Biller, an All-American at Cal who played rugby professionally in England and on the U.S. national team.
“The De La Salle connection goes back to the late ’80s,” Clark said. “… Those guys get serious about physical preparation pretty early. Sometimes their rugby skills take a little more time to polish up, but physically, they come in understanding the weight room and have good feet, and culturally, they’re a good fit.
“Those boys get coached hard there. Expectations are high, and they’re chasing a form of excellence.”
Andrade and Wiley played Pop Warner and high school football together. They were even freshman roommates, but they come from different worlds.
Andrade is a 5-foot-7, 188pounder who knew as early as 10 years old that rugby could be his path to college. Wiley (5-11, 227) was fielding Division II football offers into his senior year of high school, then decided rugby was his path.
What brings them back together is the weight on their shoulders.
Both understand that De La Salle had rickety bleachers and a walk-in closet for a weight room before it won 151 straight games. Both understand that Cal rugby, which has won more than 87 percent of its games during the past three decades, had to fight to save its program from extinction in 2010 and ’11.
“I think there’s a recognition that you stand on the shoulders of the guy who went before you,” Clark said. “That baton is in our hands now to do our best. I think it makes for a richer experience to realize that you’re part of something bigger and larger than yourself.”
Andrade said: “The team, as soon as you get here, already has that winning culture where you’re already thinking about everything that’s been done before you and everything that has been accomplished. You don’t want to let anybody in the Cal rugby family down. That’s always on our minds.”