Kruse Feels Right at Home, and Right on Target

Even standing among the hungry, the four or five dozen Mater Dei football players only days away from Long Beach Poly and a shot at a Southern Section Division I championship, Tyler Kruse is the determined-looking one.

Eyes back, forehead out, posture unyielding, Kruse already feels his responsibility coming.

The speedsters of Poly will advance quietly, and it will be his lot to send them back with a ferocious bang.

Mater Dei is back in a familiar place, practicing in the early evening chill, two weeks after Thanksgiving. They run through drills by the glow of four spotlights mounted on a 15-foot pole, powered by a clattering generator. Receivers run routes from the dark into the light, lest they risk being hit in the neck by the hard, tight spirals of left-handed quarterback Matt Leinart.

Kruse, the senior inside linebacker, stands in the middle of it, falling back into a zone beneath the defensive backs, into the darkness, his shoulders hunched, his eyes riveted on the football.

Unlike most players in the 12th grade, his arms do not dangle from oversized sleeves and bulky pads. He wears the gear as if born into it.

He is built thick and tall and still low to the ground, 6 feet 1, 225 pounds, all thighs and shoulder pads. He glides, reads and then churns in short, frantic bursts to the ball, to the hole he will fill and the hit he will deliver. He has 71 tackles, most of them hard, seven of them sacks. He also is the Monarchs’ starting fullback.

Bruce Rollinson, Mater Dei’s coach, has a voice with one game left in it. He rasps at them, “It’s not about getting to the finals. It’s about winning.”

The Monarchs play Poly on Saturday night at Edison Field. Kruse, one of their captains, will help lead them. And while Rollinson preached of the destination, there is something to be said, too, for Kruse’s journey.

A year ago, Kruse finished his third varsity season at Fountain Valley High. Then came a tumultuous period for the program, ending with the retirement of football Coach George Berg. Hopeful that his senior season would bring a Division I scholarship, Kruse for the first time considered Mater Dei, where major-college recruiters come for lunch and a stroll through the prospects.

“It was a young team coming up and I just wanted to have a good year,” Kruse said. “I knew I’d get a lot of exposure over here.

“This was something I had to do. I talked to all my friends. They told me they would have done the same thing.”

Kruse enrolled at Mater Dei during the spring semester, a decision he and his father, Jim, wrestled with in detail. In his first weeks, he befriended Eric Johnson, an assistant football coach. They formed a relationship. And then, in the irony that brings a chuckle from father and son, Johnson took the vacant job at Fountain Valley.

“We’re not turning back,” Jim Kruse said. “In hindsight, if we knew Johnson was going to be there, he might have stayed.”

Tyler said he has no regrets. In the final days of hell week, his teammates voted him one of four team captains. He had the senior season he worked for, and is preparing for the very game that attracted him to Mater Dei.

“All in all, it’s been a great experience,” Kruse said. “The program over here is great. And I wouldn’t trade the three years at Fountain Valley either. Those were three great years.”

Come Saturday evening, Jim Kruse said, he will shed “a lot of tears, tears of joy.”

Tyler likes the idea of playing for John Robinson at Nevada Las Vegas. He also has heard from Washington, which recruited him as a fullback; Boise State and Hawaii.

“I see myself going [to UNLV],” he said.

It will, however, mark the end of a Kruse family tradition, one that began four years ago. On the mornings of game days, Jim arises early. He prepares a breakfast of eggs, potatoes and bacon, then wakes Tyler. They talk about the game and they laugh and they decide they’re ready for football.

“It’s kind of a father-son thing,” Jim said happily, perhaps feeling the tears a few days early.

Then Tyler goes off to hammer people. He has earned a reputation as one of the area’s most feared hitters.

“There’s nothing like it, just popping a guy and watching him lie there with his eyes going everywhere,” he said, grinning in spite of himself. “There’s nothing like it.

“Hitting the quarterback, that’s my favorite. Them not seeing you, right in the back.”

His father said, admiringly, “He brings it.”

It, of course, is power. Hurt. Eventually, wariness. Surrender.

“You can see it in their eyes,” Tyler said. “Scared, that type of thing. They just play patty-cake with you. They don’t want to hit, really.”

Back on the practice field, Kruse’s journey is nearly complete. Standing again among the hungry, he is the one who looks ravenous.

“He’s living a dream,” Jim Kruse said. “Now, with the possibility of getting a championship, we couldn’t write it any better.”