When asked about his team’s biggest weakness, Live Oak head coach Jon Michael Porras responds instantly: “maturity.”
“Our team needs to find its leaders,” Porras says, “and we need to grow as a family.”
As the season begins, Live Oak is returning just five starters combined on offense and defense. The majority of the team will be lacking the big-game experience that last year’s team definitely had when they went to the middle-sized school CCS Championship against Riordan.
It took a lot of heart for Live Oak to even get there. In the final game of the regular season, against Saratoga, the offense staged a rlentless drive in the fourth quarter. Then junior placekicker Jeff Blean kicked an Adam Vinatieri-like field goal with two seconds left on the clock to win.
“It was the most incredible drive that I have ever seen or been a part of,” coach Porras recalls. “Twenty two plays and over eight minutes of possession later we finally won it. It feels great to get revenge on a team that we lost to earlier in the season, especially when it gave us the chance to play for a championship.”
This year will be different though. It will be a lot tougher of a task to get back to the top and play in another CCS Championship. The Mount Hamilton division that Live Oak plays in will get much better competition and Live Oak’s schedule is also getting harder.
Four of the teams that Live Oak played last year are all getting replaced with teams with much better records and reputations. Live Oak’s leaders will need to step up and play with the same heart that the team before them did.
Luckily enough, there are some seniors on the team who’ve been around awhile, even if most of them haven’t had a chance to start previoulsy.
“We have a very nice core of athletes to build our team around,” Porras says.
Those athletes are led by senior quarterback Jeff Roberts, who was all-league last year and looks to repeat again this year, as well as a very strong backfield and secondary.
Coach Porras will run these kids up and down the field using an array of different options centered on their all-league quarterback. These seniors will have to lead by example and help the team cohere to be successful again this season.
The team’s goals are to get exactly where they did last year, whether it be the middle school championship or (because of fluctuations in attendance), the small school championship.
“Our goal every year is to be practicing on Thanksgiving Day,” Porras says. “We want to make it to the playoffs and compete from there. Oh yeah -- and we want to beat Sobrato.”
The chance to beat-cross town rival will come very soon, when they play them in the first game of the season on Sept. 5.
Coming soon: Sobrato’s hopes and dreams.
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