Will the Barons Play? Yes, for Scotty

The message, Matt Mehdizadeh knew, came from Scotty Lang, the friend who had died barely half a day before.

The words were written by Scotty’s grieving mother, Cindy, then spoken by a bishop in the chapel of Scotty’s Mormon faith. Matt felt Scotty in them, felt Scotty in that chapel, where friends and teammates gathered Tuesday at dawn to mourn his passing.

“Tell Matt,” the bishop read, “that Scotty wants you to play for both of them. Scotty wants you out there.”

Fountain Valley High will play another football game, four days after the death of Scotty Lang, only 16. The underdog Barons will play Long Beach Poly on Friday night, a decision they officially arrived at after an hourlong afternoon meeting Tuesday before practice. In their hearts, however, they knew at the chapel that morning that they would play, when Scotty called them by name and urged them to go on with him, only without him.

Matt shared a tackle position with Scotty. After Tuesday’s practice, Matt stood in the dark and did not lift his eyes off the parking lot.

“I have to keep his spot alive,” he said quietly. “Keep him alive.”

They wore armbands with Scotty’s number, 75, on them. Their helmets also bore the number. The parents who drifted silently from the parking lot, across the grass, were handed ribbons with the same message.

A football program tried to worked out its grief on a football field, beneath a sky smeared with clouds tinted orange.

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“I feel sorrow,” Matt said. “I don’t think it’s completely hit me yet. I still picture him. I think I’m going to see him.

“Just to step on the grass was hard. Every second you’re thinking about him, you’re seeing the pictures in your mind.”

Eric Johnson, in his first season as Fountain Valley football coach, stared blankly and said this was all too raw for him to gauge. They prepared for Long Beach Poly, ran plays they thought might work against the powerhouse team, but thought only of Lang. Johnson said some players simply walked away, slumped to the ground that 24 hours earlier caught Lang, and wept.

“I didn’t know how it would go,” said Johnson, whose son, Kjell, is on the team. “I’m winging this whole thing. I guess you have to face it and deal with it no matter how tough it is. I was really proud of them. They showed a lot of toughness.”

This stopped being about football the moment the life left Scotty Lang, Johnson said. It is playing for Scotty, competing for him, if not winning for him. It is about standing together in his memory, one more time.

“We’re playing for ourselves, and for Scotty Lang,” said John Chae, a senior. “He died on the football field practicing for this game, and I think he would want us to play.

“Now, more than ever, it means more considering that everyone is playing for two now.”

The news of Fountain Valley’s misfortune traveled quickly across the county and beyond.

“I’ve got three boys of my own, and it makes you take stock,” said Jerry Jaso, Long Beach Poly’s coach. “Football is an easy game to get wrapped up in, to the exclusion of everything else. When something like this happens, you ask, ‘What’s really important here?’ ”

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It was for Fountain Valley to decide.

“If we lose trying, I don’t think we could do anything else,” John said. “Scotty will be looking over us during the game, and even if we lose, I think he’ll be smiling on us. We don’t have anything to lose in this game.

“There’s not a guy on the field who doesn’t think we can beat Poly. Everyone on the field knows that at 100%, we can defeat Poly despite what everyone thinks. That night, they’re going to be in for a fight.”

Perhaps it would begin with Matt Mehdizadeh, whom Scotty left with a whole job, rather than a shared one, and a message of inspiration.

“There was a lot of grief, a lot of sadness, but not desperation,” said Bishop Tim Miller, who witnessed the reading. “We talked about Scotty. The plan of salvation. We hoped they found comfort and direction.”

Times staff writer Martin Henderson contributed to this report.