Some call it a two-minute offense, but on this particular Friday night, it was more like panic mode.
The reality of our season — and my football career — coming to a screeching halt settled in, but we were still in denial that we’d lose the game. At least I was.
During my senior year at Cienega High School in 2012, we faced the same Mountain View team that beat us earlier in the regular season. We figured we were the better team. After all, we were the higher seed and then got to play the Mountain Lions at home for the playoffs.
It’s hard to beat the same team twice in a season, right?
“We’re not losing to (bleeping) Mountain View again,” I told our offense in the fourth quarter. Since I was the center, I met with Cienega offensive line coach Mark Fontana, our offensive line and quarterback to ensure we were on the same page heading into a potential game-winning drive.
Trailing 19-17, we drove down the field before Mountain View stopped us inside the red zone. Our third-down play failed. That set up a chip-shot field goal for our kicker, a guy who consistently made 50-yarders in practice. I was also Cienega’s long snapper and — to this day — have never experienced more anxiety in my life. It felt as if both fan bases were yelling right into my helmet hole as we lined up for the game-winner.
“Don’t (bleep) this up. Don’t (bleep) this up,” I thought.
I got the snap off, the holder took the ball and set up the field goal for our kicker to send Mountain View home for the season. Wide right. (Kickers, man.)
But somehow, we still had one more shot to score. We got the ball back, but with limited time on the clock, our hurry-up offense went into overdrive.
Exhausted from a slugfest of a game and facing defeat, I looked around our huddle and just soaked in the emotions of the players around me. I was on the verge of tears and did everything in my power to bury it. And then, a few plays into the drive, our quarterback threw an interception.
Game over.
I felt robbed, because I played one of the best games of my career that night. Yet Nov. 2, 2012 — 10 years ago this week — would be the last time I ever strapped on shoulder pads and a helmet. The rush of emotions is something I’ll never forget. “Home” and “Hand in the Sky” by Explosions in the Sky, songs used in the movie “Friday Night Lights,” almost seemed to play on repeat starting the second that Mountain View defensive back intercepted the ball and ended our season.
Following the game, our coaches congratulated us on a successful season. We appreciated the message, but knew it wasn’t that great. After all, Cienega played for a state championship the previous season. My senior year felt like a letdown.
We broke from our postgame huddle, and the first person I saw was my older brother. Josh had also played football at Cienega, and knew how devastating playoff losses could be. He grabbed my head and pulled me in for a hug. I cried on his shoulder like a baby, my eyeblack smearing onto his white Cienega windbreaker.
“Do you have any regrets?” he asked me.
My head, buried in his shoulder, shook no.
“Then you don’t have to be upset about anything, J,” he said. “I’m proud of you, man, and I love you.”
I learned a life lesson that night. Hard work and determination don’t always get you what you want.
Cienega center Justin Spears, on ground, stretches before the start of a Bobcats football game.
“State” was a word we repeatedly used at Cienega. Winning a state championship was the reward for the offseason summer workouts, camps and countless practices — and so many uber-talented Cienega teams came up short of winning one. Cienega has always been one of the well-respected football programs in Southern Arizona, but around Arizona, we always felt like the underdog.
There were great parts about playing at Cienega. For one, we made Vail feel like Odessa, Texas. Our playoff games were standing-room only. It was spectacular. As a 15-, 16-, 17-year-old, looking around and seeing that many people pack in to watch a high school football game, it made a 5-foot-8-inch offensive lineman such as myself feel big-time. (Our iconic PA announcer, Tim Nichols, was the cherry on top of it all.)
I made connections playing high school football. Cienega’s coach, Nemer Hassey, was a household name in the Vail area. He still is — as the principal of Mica Mountain High School.
If you lived anywhere close to Cienega and played football, you attended his football camp. Every summer, I picked up a new “Nemer Hassey Camp” T-shirt.
Then, one year, I became a Cienega Bobcat.
That’s when I met his hard-nosed assistant coaches Jay Johnson, Steve Schween and Chuck McCollum. But Fontana, my position coach, is someone who tested me like no other coach has. Whether it was flipping monster truck tires at his compound or running two-minute offense in practice, Fontana found a way to stay in my ear and motivate me. I still hear, “That’s dog(bleep), son,” in my nightmares. But he always loved his players, and would put his baseball mitt-size hands around my head and wax poetic. That’s something he learned from playing for Dick Tomey at Arizona.
I sat and talked with Coach Fontana last weekend while we watched the Packers-Bills game at the Rita Ranch home of his son Vaughn, my former offensive line-mate and one of my best friends. Every so often I’ll have dinner with former Cienega tight end Donavan Vance, who’s now a Tucson police officer.
I’m indebted to football.
Football added a new dimension to the relationship with my late father, Gerry. My dad was an assistant coach for the Vail Vikings, the youth football team I played for in middle school. We rode to practice in his silver Toyota Tacoma during the fall, a memory I’ll ways cherish. When we got on the field, he was Coach. But once I took off the shoulders and helmet after practice, I went back to being his son.
My father went from coach to superfan when I made the Bobcats’ roster. He often worked six days a week, but he never missed a practice or game. Knowing my hero was always watching practically put a battery in my back and kept me motivated. My mom and dad always sat at the 50-yard line for games — and my dad left mounds of sunflower seeds on the bleachers.
My father died in 2019, and guess who attended his funeral? Coach Fontana and a large contingent of my Cienega teammates.
Football players have a huge branch of extended brothers, fathers and uncles. And if you’re lucky, you accumulate a lot of them over the years. When you’re at rock bottom like I was after my father’s death, having your brothers and coach there reminds you that football really is family.
Do I miss running 100-yard sprints in 100-degree heat? No. Do I miss Champions Day, a six-hour practice starting at 6 a.m.? Not one bit.
But the team meals together, the bus rides to games, the weight room sessions, summer camp trips and Saturday morning film sessions, those are all perks of playing football.
Ten years ago, I played my last football snap. In those 10 years, I’ve learned how to become someone who’s not Justin Spears, the football player, but Justin Spears, the football writer. I’ll never identify as a football player ever again, but it’s still a part of my identity.
Thank you, football. Without you, I wouldn’t be the man I am today.
