HELL WEEK: That Says It All

This week thousands of high school football players are becoming reacquainted with shoulder pads, helmets, tackling, getting knocked into the hard ground, sweating and sweating some more.

As coaches fondly say, it’s a time for hard work and a little blood, sweat and tears.

There’s a name for the grueling week in the scorching last days of August. No one is quite sure who coined it, but it fits: Hell Week.

“You look forward to it because you know the season will be starting soon,” said Kirk Alexander, who attended Loyola High and is now a senior cornerback at UCLA. “But you also dread it. It’s the final hurdle--and fortunately it lasts only a week.”

But that week can seem like an eternity in purgatory, according to many prep football players.

“It is a Hell Week,” said Kevin Mott, a senior defensive end at St. Monica. “It’s non-stop conditioning and hard work. It’s pretty torturous.

“The coaches run you as hard as they can. The name Hell Week really fits.”

The California Interscholastic Federation has a mandatory three-day conditioning program, Aug. 25-27, before allowing anyone to put on pads for full-contact drills.

Anything goes.

In 1982, St. Monica Coach Tom Jessee took his team to Camp Pendleton, the Marine base near San Diego.

For six days, 29 players and six coaches slept in the barracks, were awakened by reveille at 5:15, ate with the Marines in the mess hall and had three practices a day.

While St. Monica, which doesn’t have a football field, no longer indulges in such excursions, it still holds a three-day mini-camp, and the living-together concept is still in vogue.

Current St. Monica mentor Daniel Escalera, who coached for five years at Loyola High before returning to his alma mater in 1984, said the players will sleep at the gym, alias the “Mariner Hilton,” for three nights and come together as a cohesive unit.

“Some people may think it sounds hokey, but it’s a real family concept,” Escalera said. “The purpose is to establish a team unity. And what we do we think is pretty successful.”

A typical day begins at almost the crack of dawn. After breakfast, practice No. 1 at nearby John Adams Junior High School kicks off at 7:30 and runs until 10:30. After lunch, practice No. 2 lasts from 12:30-3:30. Finally, practice No. 3 goes from 5:30-8:30 and lights out is at 10.

St. Monica isn’t the only parochial school that swears by the benefits of a camp. Since 1973, Loyola coaches have been fans of such practices. Loyola’s camp is a weeklong venture during which players never leave school, practice three times a day for a total of about six hours and sleep in the gym.

“We’re like a family after the camp,” said Kai Kaluna, a junior offensive guard and nose guard. “It’s hot and hard, but it’s a lot of fun.”

Catholic schools such as St. Monica, Loyola and Servite draw students from a vast area, so it is not practical to have them go home between practice sessions.

“It’s been a success for us,” said Jon Dawson, Loyola’s athletic director and an assistant football coach. “It breaks down any financial or ethnic barriers.

“When you’re out there three times a day, it doesn’t matter if you’re white or black or whether you arrived in a chauffeur-driven limousine or a bus. You’re just another player suffering through the same thing as everyone else.”

Players who have survived the ordeal of a camp swear by it.

“The team is so close because they go through living hell together,” said Loyola’s Chris Rising, a senior linebacker. “I can’t think of a better way to do it.”

Until two years ago, Servite had a camp. But Coach Leo Hand said that part of the gym was converted into classrooms and it now lacks the needed space for sleep-ins.

“We would still be doing it if it wasn’t for the building situation,” Hand said. “It was a tradition here and I’m sorry we couldn’t perpetuate it.”

Eric Smith, a junior linebacker at UCLA, half-smiling and half-grimacing, remembers the Hell Weeks he survived at Servite: “I never looked forward to it, but Hell Week was an exciting time. It was an elite thing for us.

“Not too many other schools were doing it, so it made Servite stand out. And it helped us draw together as a team.”

Hand said he plans two or three two-hour practices a day, depending on the weather.

Despite three daily practices in heat and smog, some coaches do not consider camp week a Hell Week. They point out that the prep football season is now a year-round job.

After the season ends in December, most schools have a weightlifting and conditioning program that runs from January through April. Then spring practice starts, followed by the summer passing league and summer tournaments such as the Los Angeles Summer Games.

“We don’t have a Hell Week,” said Coach Hand. “Don’t even use that term with us. The whole summer’s hell.

But some feel even year-round football doesn’t lessen the pain of Hell Week.

“No matter how good condition you’re in, when you get those pads on for the first time in eight months it’s tough,” said Steve Schmitz, who coached North Torrance for 10 years before moving to El Camino College as an assistant this season.

Under Schmitz, the Saxons practiced three times a day and participated in an 18-event Iron Man, including tests of endurance, speed, strength, agility, weightlifting and distance running.

“It’s a good test to see what kind of condition the kids are in when they come back,” Schmitz said.

The best performances were logged and put on permanent display in the weight room. Schmitz said some players took it upon themselves to work out during the summer in an effort to get their names on that honor roll.

“I’ve been working during the summer so I can break some of the records,” said Dustin MacGillivary, a senior wide receiver.

But Schmitz’s successor, Don Bohannon, said the contest doesn’t motivate all players to get off the beaches and into the gym.

“Of 60 kids, I’d say maybe 25 to 30 are dedicated and work their heads off during the off-season,” said Bohannon, who was an offensive coach at North for six years. “But then there’s another 25 to 30 kids who don’t do anything, so when you put them through the rigors of conditioning, it is hell.”

Mark Sager, a former offensive lineman at North who is now at USC, admitted that he failed to work as hard as he should have during the summer: “My senior year, I didn’t run or anything and really paid the price. The first practice I was popped so hard I didn’t know what was going on.

“And last year at USC, I kind of dogged it and came into camp out of shape. But I found out there’s just no way you can sit all summer and just come in and play in the fall.”

St. Francis Coach Terry Terrazone also believes in a conditioning test.

During Hell Week, he has his players run 15 220-yard sprints, demanding that they equal or beat a specified time tailored to their position and size. Running backs and wide receivers must run each 220 in 35 seconds or less.

“It gives us a pretty good handle on how motivated they are,” Terrazone said. “Then we make our Hell Week commensurate with what kind of shape they’re in. This year the kids are in pretty good shape, but it varies. Last year they weren’t in very good shape.”

But Terrazone doesn’t believe in orchestrating a summer conditioning program.

“We tell our kids what we expect of them that first day, and that’s it,” he said. “Then they’re on their own.”

Other coaches, however, believe too much pressure is put on high school football players--and athletes in general--to work out year-round.

“It’s gotten to the point where kids can’t enjoy the summer anymore,” said Bill Redell, Crespi’s football coach. “It’s ridiculous. And although it may make you a better football team, I don’t believe in that Marine boot camp stuff.”

Harry Welch, highly successful football coach at Canyon High, goes a step further. He said such camps should be banned for all schools, public and parochial.

“To get the kids in shape, some coaches have thought of all these quasi-creative activities that I don’t think have very much to do with football,” Welch said. “It’s supposed to separate the men from the boys so to speak, but they should be outlawed.”

Welch, like Redell, holds a two-hour practice in the morning and another in the early evening. Each is simple. No iron-man contests or sleep-ins. Just the basics are stressed so the players are mentally and physically ready for the season.

In preparation for Hell Week, Welch had his players run a mile for time last week. The distance wasn’t that grueling, but the 97-degree heat made it seem hell-like.

“For some reason, it seems to always get hotter when Hell Week nears,” said Ken Sollom, Canyon’s starting quarterback, who ran a 5:17 mile. “The first three days are pretty hard mainly because of the heat. But as your body gets used to it, it gets easier.”

Coach Jim Brownfield, who guided Muir to a 13-1 record and the Coastal Conference championship last year, approaches Hell Week almost nonchalantly. He’s aware of the toll that heat and smog in the San Gabriel Valley can exact.

And he doesn’t have to ask his players to participate in off-season conditioning. He said The Hill, a closed Pasadena street that runs toward the Rose Bowl and has a 300-yard rise on a 30-degree incline, motivates his players sufficiently.

Each day, usually at the end of the second of two practice sessions, the players run The Hill in timed intervals (300-, 150-, 75- and then 50-yard dashes).

“The kids come back in great shape because they know they have to get up The Hill,” Brownfield said. “But they like it and they believe in The Hill. They wouldn’t feel comfortable without it.”

Ricky Ervins, the Pacific League most valuable player who rushed for 2,185 yards in two years, said The Hill is the worst part of Hell Week.

“Running it for time is what makes it so tough,” said Ervins, who was named in Cal-Hi Sports as the top returnee in the state. “I just want to get it over with and out of the way.”

Teammate Vince Phillips, a senior quarterback who was injured last season, is experiencing his first Hell Week. And after hearing the horror stories of players getting sick running The Hill, Phillips said he has been practicing during the summer.

“I’ve heard it’s really hard, even if you’re in shape,” Phillips said. “But I don’t care how hard Hell Week is, I’m going to go through it no matter how tough it is.”