When the Game Stands Tall: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football’s Longest Winning Streak

Revised and updated edition of the book available in August 2014 to accompany the major motion picture directed by Thomas Carter and starring Jim Caviezel, Alexander Ludwig, Laura Dern, and Clancy Brown.
By 2002, The Streak—a historic 13-year run of consecutive wins by the Spartans, a high-school football team from Concord, California, that couldn’t be beat—was still going strong. In this revised edition of When the Game Stands Tall , author Neil Hayes, who had unrestricted access to the De La Salle team, writes from the inside about the games, the players, and their visionary coach, Bob Ladouceur, who managed to amass the highest winning percentage in football history (.995) through standing for something greater than winning. The book, which also features interviews with major sports figures like Bill Walsh and John Gruden, is a revealing portrait of the coach who believed above all in instilling basic life skills where winning is not the goal, but merely the byproduct of playing the game. The Streak had become a national story long before it ended in September 2004. In this revised paperback, Neil Hayes catches up on the lives of the main characters and takes readers through the final tumultuous year. What results is a timeless and inspirational story of struggle, tragedy, and triumph.