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FeedNFL Meets Friday Night Lights
Valley Christian High football has a heavyweight roster—of coaches.
Photography by Jose Carlos Fajardo
(page 1 of 2)
John Parrella watched as two orderly rows of young football players jogged onto the practice field at Dublin’s Valley Christian High. The players wore red-and-black shorts, gray T-shirts with Vikings Football across the chest, and glistening maroon helmets fresh from the factory.
“The helmets look sweet!” the former Oakland Raiders defensive lineman bellowed.
Not all of the players knew what to do with their brand-new gear. Sophomore Taylor “Tex” Bartlett wandered over, held out the chin strap, and sheepishly said, “I don’t know how to put this on.”
Parrella, the head coach, has embraced an ambitious project at the 310-student high school: starting a football program from scratch. The 38-year-old—who played in three Super Bowls during his 12-year National Football League career—understands football’s value to a community. He played at a 150-student Catholic school in Grand Island, Nebraska, and says, “It changed my life.”
“Football teaches so many lessons about life, hard work, and discipline,” Parrella says. “And I think it’s going to bring school spirit like they’ve never seen before.”
It doesn’t hurt that Parrella has assembled a big-name coaching staff for the small school’s team, including former Raiders teammate Rod Woodson, voted one of the top 50 players in NFL history; another former Raider, Josh Taves; and a respected longtime high school coach, Craig Cook. Although the new program may lack history, it will not lack coaching expertise.
“We’re taking all that NFL experience and bringing it to high school,” says Woodson. “The kids are going to learn at the NFL level. Hopefully, that knowledge will lead to wins and also lead to the kids respecting and understanding each other.”
Reader Comments:
The Tri Valley needs a program like this and I think many boys will flock from the public high schools to get on board!
Good luck to Mr. Parella and all the team for success and character building. Go Vikings!
Update: The Vikings won their first football game, 41 to 22!
They beat a bunch of freshmen from Harker
One of their coaches, Rod Woodson, was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in January 2009. How awesome for this team!
Lights go on next Friday night for Valley Christian
By Michelle Smith, CSNBayArea.com columnist
August 27, 2009
Valley Christian High in Dublin has almost everything a high school football program needs to succeed – financial support, fan support, high-level coaching, committed athletes. The only thing the Vikings don’t have is a history.
But they will begin to take care of that next Friday night.
Valley Christian will kick off the school’s first-ever varsity football game on Sept. 4 at Chabot College in Hayward, facing off against Cochrane High School of Saskatchewan, Canada.
Former Raider defensive lineman John Parrella, who ran on to the field in three Super Bowls, will lead his team onto the turf for the first time as the Vikings’ head coach. The game is the culmination of a ground-up effort to bring football and visibility to this small Christian school that sits on the hilltop overlooking the Tri-Valley and Highway 580.
Varsity player Adam Brissey has attended Valley Christian since he was in preschool. But he was prepared to leave.
“They didn’t have football, so I was going to go to Dublin High,” Brissey said.
But it turned out that Brissey didn’t have to go anywhere. Instead, on a warm Tuesday afternoon, he finishes another football practice on the outfield of the school’s baseball field.
The anticipation for the first game is palpable on campus. Families are making their tailgate plans, elementary students at the school opened the year by running through a large paper football banner.
“We are going to be able to call each other in 10 years and talk about what we started together,” Brissey said. “I can’t wait.”
None of this would have happened without Parrella, who has equal parts deep faith and big-time football experience. He is the foundation of the foundation.
“Everybody needs a leader with vision and John’s that guy,” said Valley Christian pastor Roger Valci. “We are not here right now without him.”
Parrella has used his connections to assemble a high-profile coaching staff and to solicit advice and ideas from some of the other top private-school programs in the country.
Parrella’s coaching staff includes NFL Hall of Famer Rod Woodson and former Raider Josh Taves as well as more than two dozen other volunteer coaches.
Parrella and Woodson’s sons are on the varsity roster. Woodson, who held a fundraiser for the school and the program that raised $85,000 prior to his Hall of Fame induction earlier this summer, is also set to coach the school’s basketball team in the winter.
There’s no doubt the name recognition of the staff has made building a program more easier. Brissey and teammate Nick Rubio said the prospect of playing for Parrella and Woodson was undeniably appealing.
“They’ve been to the NFL, they are showing us the right way,” Rubio said. “Maybe we’ll get there someday too.”
The genesis of the program came several years ago when Parrella was sitting at breakfast with the church’s former pastor following a Sunday service, talking about how unfortunate it was that he would have to send his sons to another school in order for them to play high school football.
“He said ‘Let’s do it’, and I said ‘Do what?’ I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Parrella said. “He said ‘Let’s start football’.”
Parrella was in. He said it was his vision to build a “brotherhood”.
“It’s all about God and these young men,” Parrella said. “The hardest part is to push them to get better each day. We love them so much, we have to push them.”
He began by recruiting coaches, including Woodson, and traveled to schools such as San Jose’s Valley Christian, Southern California’s Oaks Christian (No. 7 in the nation in pre-season rankings) and Valor Christian in Colorado to ask them how it’s done.
He got equipment donated by private and corporate sponsors and arranged for the team to play its home games 12 miles away at Chabot College in Hayward.
“Our team has been very blessed,” Parrella said. “There are a lot of people here who wanted this to happen.”
The program began last year in earnest with a junior varsity team that went 6-2 in its inaugural season and brought 500 spectators to Chabot with them to watch.
“We have a great following. The first game we pulled up and there were 10 RVs parked out there and we wondered what’s going on and they were there for us,” Parrella said. “This year, Chabot’s already put in their plan about where all the RVs are going to park because there might be so many.”
Parrella has 31 players on his varsity team and 36 on the JV squad – accounting for nearly 15 percent of the school’s high school student body. The varsity team includes seven new starters who transferred to his program from other schools since last season.
The school held a camp over the summer that drew 130 athletes and he had to turn people away because there wasn’t enough space or staff to accommodate the demand.
The football program has brought an enrollment increase at the school. There is a waiting list for incoming freshman for the first time.
“We were projecting decreased enrollment and we have 25 more students than we did last year,” said school superintendent John Moran. “A large number of those are football players. I think there are people out there who really like Valley Christian, but were hesitant to send their sons here because we didn’t have football. And we’ve overcome that hurdle.”
Moran said it is part of the school’s strategic plan to build a football stadium in the next few years.
“This program is building more quickly than we expected,” Moran said. “Last year we were hoping to win one (JV) game and we went 6-2. Excellence creates influence and I think we have every right to believe we are going to have a highly competitive team here.”
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