What We Saw: DLS Wins In London

In the first-ever game played by a California high school football team in Europe, state No. 6 De La Salle of Concord completed a five-day trip to London with a 31-9 win over the NFL Academy team at Tottenham Hot Spur Stadium. Go inside for our unique experience of covering this game and how the Spartans handled their business against a team that has numerous players who could play for Division I colleges in the USA.

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California high school football teams have played opponents over the years from Mexico and Canada, of course, but not one from Europe. That all changed on Tuesday night in London when the developmental NFL Academy team based in London, which has players from 19 countries, played famed De La Salle of Concord and made too many mistakes in a 31-9 defeat at the hands of the Spartans.

The actual game played at the fabulous Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which is just five years old, can hold more than 62,000 fans and hosted an NFL game between the victorious Minnesota Vikings and New York Jets two days before, was part of a five-day trip for the California squad.

Prior to the game, the De La Salle players took a day to get used to the time change (they flew from America last Thursday at 6 p.m. local time and arrived at Heathrow International Airport at around 12 noon Friday on London time), went on a tour of London top attractions on Saturday (began at Buckingham Palace and ended at the Tower of London), went to the NFL game on Sunday and did community service work on Monday at a local flag football camp.

“I’m really tired but really grateful for the whole experience,” said De La Salle head coach Justin Alumbaugh, who’s team (ranked No. 6 in the state) improved to 6-0 and won’t be playing again until Oct. 18 vs league rival San Ramon Valley of Danville. “We’ve been able to get some incredible memories. The flag football event yesterday was awesome. Those kids were getting introduced to (American) football and we were helping to do that for them.”

De La Salle was selected to play in the game almost six months ago as part of the NFL’s goal to develop the sport and players in a country that is dominated by English Premier League soccer. The NFL Academy team based in London played its first game against an American team last year during the week between when the NFL’s annual games in London are played. The NFL Academy alao had a trip to America in August when it played and lost in games against Massillon of Ohio (played near Nike World Headquarters in Oregon) and Edgewater of Orlando, Florida.

The Spartans really proved to be a perfect team to bring over for the NFL Academy team to play. They clearly were more precise in all football skills, but the London team had size, several players who one would say had D1 college potential in America and they played hard to the final seconds. It wouldn’t make sense for a developmental team like the NFL Academy to play a California team, for example, like state No. 1 Mater Dei (Santa Ana) or state No. 2 St. John Bosco (Bellflower). Maybe in a few years, but what would be the point of bringing over the Monarchs or Braves to be ahead 50-0 at halftime?

De La Salle took the opening kickoff and went on a 10-play drive that ended on a fourth down incomplete pass from the NFL Academy 25-yard line. The Europeans eventually had to punt on their first series, but that punt was fumbled and that set up the Spartans on the opposing team’s 29-yard line.

That drive was cashed on on a 14-yard TD run by senior RB Dominic Kelley.

The next DLS drive resembled the first one but on that one the Spartans marched 81 yards to pay dirt and scored with 9:55 left in the second quarter on a 15-yard scamper by senior RB Derrick Blanche. The Spartans then took a 21-0 lead with 4:22 left in the quarter on a 10-yard run by Kelley that capped a 57-yard drive in nine plays.

There was a period of time in the last four minutes of the first half in which it looked like the NFL Academy team could get back into it. QB Michael Szabo, who is from Austria, had a 33-yard pass to Matthew Okunade (England) and then 13-yard and 11-yard completions to TE Luca Wolf (Austria). If the Europeans could have scored on that drive and started the second half with another one that would have been the ticket. Instead, the DLS defense forced a fumble on 15-yard line that was recovered by Jayden Nicholas at the 8-yard line.

Another bad punt snap, this one that sailed high, after the NFL Academy’s first series of the second half set up the Spartans for a 36-yard field goal by Justin Uribari. The defense then got a fourth-down stop on the DLS 31-yard line and then on the next play Nicholas hauled in a deep pass from QB Toa Faavae and took the ball all the way down to the 4-yard line for 65 yards. Blanche then scored his second TD of the game on a 1-yard run for a 31-0 lead.

In the fourth quarter, Alumbaugh made it a point to get in as many players into the game as possible to give them the experience of playing at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. He said only four players on the team were not able to have family members who traveled to London and he especially wanted to give those families the experience to also watch their sons play in the game.

The NFL Academy scored its first points of the game on a 29-yard field goal with 10:10 remaining by Liam Dineen (Ireland). De La Salle was attempting to run out the clock in the last few minutes, but the NFL Academy got one last chance with 2:03 left. Back up QB Bobby Bridges heaved a pass toward the goal line on the final play that at first looked like it was broken up, but the ball bounced around and was caught by Rafael Blakstad for a 28-yard touchdown. No PAT was kicked since the game was over showing a 31-9 final score.

“I would say we did play well,” Alumbaugh said. “That was a big team up front. Nobody knew much about the academy team over here, but they were a challenge for sure. They were probably the most physical team we’ve played so far. We took advantage of a couple of their bad punts. We’re still not there yet, but we have a chance to be a very good team.”

We know that the stats we took in the game probably won’t match what’s on MaxPreps because we didn’t yet pay the cost to get a VPN number in order to look at MaxPreps in the UK. According to our friends at the El Dorado Hills-based company, its servers won’t accept foreign IP addresses. People traveling in Europe have to get a VPN number to get around that.

As Alumbaugh said, the NFL Academy team had some tough players to deal with, especially DE Jonas Kanyana (England) and LB Joel Quessier (Germany). The Spartans were efficient but held down to just 149 yards rushing. Blanche had 12 carries for 59 yards (2 TDs) and Kelley had seven carries for 48 yards (2 TDs). Faavae did have the 65-yard pass play plus 18 more passing yards. Junior QB Brayden Knight also went seven for 10 passing for 56 yards.

“It was just an amazing all around experience,” Blanche said. “Just playing here in this place and doing all that we did has just been a blessing all around. They were a very talented team with some size and they have some guys from all over the world. We still pretty much dominated them like we were supposed to. We had a couple of rough patches on offense but we liked how the result ended.”

It should be noted that De La Salle’s selection to play the NFL Academy this season in London was announced after we had already scheduled a trip to Europe. Wife Kathleen Moody has just retired from teaching and a commitment made to her after all of her support of Cal-Hi Sports over 30 years is that we’d travel in non-summer months to avoid the biggest crowds and worst of the summer heat. It just so happened that the game fell on a date in which we already were supposed to be in London. She might not have believed that, but other than this game story our web site has been set up with stories and work done by Ronnie Flores and Harold Abend to make it run as seamlessly as possible. We have enjoyed many London sites on the trip so far and will be heading to Paris for four days on Thursday of this week. The De La Salle team flew home to California on Wednesday.

Trying to get media access for the game was complicated by those factors, however, and it wasn’t until 40 minutes before the game started that a credential from the NFL was granted. They had already given a free ticket to Kathleen. End of game protocols for the media weren’t known either, but eventually someone took myself down to the field and enough De La Salle players and Alumbaugh were thankfully still there.

Another highlight for many of the De La Salle players had to be how excited some of the younger fans who were there were to get a wristband or similar souvenir or even to touch their shoulderpads. Upon being there in person, it’s easy to see the bigger picture of what the NFL is doing for London, Europe and growing the sport of American football around the world.

Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports