When Demetrius Williams sat on the Oregon sideline Oct. 20, 2001, he was witnessing something he had not seen for more than five years.
The Ducks had just lost to Stanford, 49-42, and Williams, who was redshirting the 2001 season, had just lost his first football game since before his time at De La Salle High School.
“It felt weird, losing, but if you continue playing any type of sport, it’s just going to happen,” the redshirt sophomore said. “It hurt, but we had to move on, and I think it made me better in that I wanted to work hard so I wouldn’t lose again.”
You see, Williams and two other Ducks, linebacker David Martin and cornerback Charles Favroth, grew up in a winning culture. Each was a student at De La Salle — an all-boys high school in Concord, Calif. — that has not lost a game since late in the 1991 season. Entering the 2003 season, that’s 11 years, or 138 straight games.
“I met a lot of friends from that team who I will probably be friends with for the rest of my life,” Williams said. “The coaches were great. There’s just no other program like it.”
The program, which has won more championships for head coach Bob Ladouceur (16) than the number of games he has lost (14) since he took it over in 1979, is a funnel for Division I college football. The Ducks are a prime benefactor of that funnel.
Oregon’s trio of former Spartans have made an impact on the Duck program. Williams starts at the wide receiver position opposite senior Samie Parker, while Martin, when eligible — he sat out the first two games of the season due to academic probation — is a valuable component of Oregon’s linebacking core.
Favroth, meanwhile, didn’t play in the first two games of the season, but part of Oregon’s depth in the secondary.

The former Spartans credit their time in the Bay Area as a chance to build character, to learn what it takes to succeed in a post-high school life and to have fun playing competitive football.
That’s a set of compliments De La Salle takes personally and seriously.
“Our athletes are more committed and dedicated than the average high school athlete,” said Terry Eidson, the athletics director at De La Salle as well as an assistant football coach. “We’re always asking the kids to excel at whatever they do.”
The Ducks have a connection with the coaching brass as well. Joe Aliotti, an assistant with the Spartans since 1998, is the brother of Oregon defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti.
Make no mistake: The Ducks won’t necessarily recruit a player just because he hails from De La Salle. But hey, they’ve got some connections with such a prolific program. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look at certain players.
The Ducks almost got another De La Salle product after last season, but running back Maurice Drew decided to attend UCLA instead.
“They are still a high-profile school where they get a lot of people over there to recruit, and Joe helps us in keeping our name in front of (the players), but ultimately the kid has got to like it and want to come up here,” Nick Aliotti said. “It certainly gives us a step up. I’ve got a pretty good pipeline.”
As a school of approximately 1,100 students, De La Salle competes across the state of California, and last season traveled to Hawaii. The school is considered an independent, much like Notre Dame, and can play anyone it chooses. Often times, the Spartans will play near their campus, which is located about 30 miles from San Francisco, but will travel if need be.
For instance, a proposed trip to New Jersey to play No. 6 Don Bosco Prep was shelved because the latter was unable to schedule a game against a non-league opponent. Now, the Spartans will play No. 2 Evangel Christian of Louisiana on Oct. 24 at a nearby junior college. The game will be the first nationally televised high school game in history when it hits the airwaves on ESPN2.
The travel can be excessive for high school athletes, but the mentality that it prepares players for the collegiate level is a growing reality.
“It was crazy for us,” Martin said. “People said we didn’t play anybody, but we traveled. We played whoever and didn’t back down. We dominated everyone we played.”
As a tradition, Ladouceur and his assistants put the team’s players through 6:30 a.m. workouts that begin in early January. Eidson said they are a combination of weight lifting and agility drills designed to keep the players in top off-season shape. He also advises college-bound players to participate in hopes of staving off laziness.
No matter what the workouts are designed to do, the players say they certainly help prepare the team’s top players for play at the Division I collegiate level.
“Our program was at an excelled level,” Williams said. “Everything out there was just preparing you for here. I had a better mindset than more freshmen who came in with me.
“It’s intense, it takes a lot of your time and it takes a lot of focus, but it’s well worth it.”
When Williams mentions he has lifelong friends from the program and can check their progress in the sports pages, he’s not joking. Twelve former Spartans dot the rosters of Pacific-10 Conference teams — six programs overall — this season, while schools such as Miami, Michigan and Tennessee also feature former De La Salle players.
For Williams, Martin and Favroth, De La Salle represents a portion of their lives where they worked hard to keep a streak intact. For most Spartans, high school football represents their last time on the gridiron as college football is a pipe dream.
For the Oregon trio, their days are far from numbered. They just want to go out and prove themselves.
But, of course, they won’t forget their time as Spartans.