Football players often have to deal with cramps. Dehydration, lack of conditioning, muscle fatigue and weather – they can all contribute to a player cramping in the middle of a game.
But is there a strategic advantage in faking cramps to delay a game and slow an opposing team’s momentum?
Sierra Canyon head coach Jon Ellinghouse certainly thinks so. He believed the Serra coaching staff was instructing its players to fake cramps Friday night in the Mission League opener for both teams.
Throughout the first three quarters of the game, which Sierra Canyon won 30-0, defensive players for Serra frequently fell to the ground, grabbing their legs, leading to several stoppages.
Ellinghouse’s gripe is that those instances happened to coincide with Sierra Canyon’s offense picking up momentum or when it started implementing an uptempo playstyle.
Sierra Canyon struggled to move the ball against Serra’s defense for much of the game, and those delays further threw the offense out of rhythm.
Near the end of the third quarter, in retaliatory fashion, Ellinghouse instructed his players to fall down in unison and fake cramps.
Serra head coach Scott Altenberg charged onto the field and had to be held back by his players and other members of the coaching staff. He was clearly incensed about what had just happened.
Artis Perry, Serra’s athletic director, said in an X Spaces after the game that he made his way across the field immediately to talk to someone from Sierra Canyon’s athletic administration to discuss the incident.
No player or coach was ejected from the game, and the fourth quarter played out with no further commotion.
Both coaches spoke to sports reporter Tarek Fattal on Monday night on his YouTube show, “Fattal Factor” and explained their thoughts about what had occurred.
Altenberg maintained that he never instructed his players to fake cramps, but did take responsibility for one play in question where two Serra players appear to look to the sideline and then fall to the ground simultaneously. The linebacker rolls around briefly and gets up, seemingly fine, while the defensive lineman stays on the ground.
This happened after Sierra Canyon quarterback Laird Finkel scrambled for a 26-yard gain and the Trailblazers were driving toward the end zone.
“The one thing that we did, and I’ll freely admit to this, there is a thing we have and I think most programs have it, we call it ‘scramble,’ and we also call it ‘potato,’ depending on where we are on the field…,” Altenberg said. “We did have a young coach, and I found this out at halftime, he had said something about in college that the kids go down and they cramp and all that. That is not something I’ve ever taught. It happened one time in this game in the second quarter and it looked bad and it was wrong. I take ownership in that one time, and then we fixed it at halftime.”
While Altenberg acknowledged that particular play looked egregious and wasn’t typical of his program, he took exception that it warranted the response that Sierra Canyon concocted.
“I had to be held back by my coaches and I’m not proud of that, but I felt like I was defending my players,” Alternberg said. “I felt like they were being mocked, they were being ridiculed.”
After the game, Ellinghouse spoke to Fattal and expressed his regret for making the decision to send his players out to fake cramping in unison.
He reiterated that sentiment Monday, but said his frustration had boiled over to a point where he wasn’t thinking clearly and made the decision to send out his players to pull off the stunt.
“I was so angry and so upset that I was willing to do something outside of what I usually do,” Ellinghouse said. “I pride myself and our program on staying above situations like this. I don’t like that it happened, I don’t love that it took place, but I was so upset about what was taking place.”
“First and foremost, and if I could go back and not have my team do what they did, I would 100 percent do that,” he added. “I don’t want to be that person. Instantly, I was like, ‘Gosh darn it,’ this kind of went to a crazy place that I didn’t want it to go.
“I didn’t do what I did to put the kids down or humiliate the kids, I can understand why. That wasn’t in my mind either. I was standing up against what was happening on the field. I was not trying to humiliate the Serra kids. I actually know a few of those kids, I like them. They are great, fantastic players. They’re a good team, they’re going to be successful. It was just, I was over that tactic being used, and it was not meant to show up those kids.”
Altenberg and Ellinghouse have not spoken since the game, but Ellinghouse spoke highly of Altenberg and said he hopes they can maintain a professional working relationship in the future.
“The one thing that’s kind of lost in this whole thing is I have an immense amount of respect for coach Altenberg and what he’s built,” Ellinghouse said. “He’s built probably the most storied program in Los Angeles, or one of, and I think he’s one of the best coaches around.
“I’ve been doing it 25 years. Like he said, I’ve never seen anything like that. I can tell you, I’ve never been a part of anything like that. That was more frustrating, that was more upsetting to me. I’ll deal with it better next time.”