FOOTBALL: Seniors Suit Up One Last Time in Charlie Wedemeyer All-Star Game

Fourteen straight wins en route to a CIF State Football Championship may spoil you a bit, but that didn’t stop members of the Palo Alto High football team from itching to suit up one last time and try to extend that streak to 15.

A collection of the Central Coast Section’s finest high school senior football players from the 2010 season gathered at Spartan Stadium Wednesday night for the 37th annual Charlie Wedemeyer All-Star football game.

The South All-Star team led wire-to-wire and defeated the North All-Stars 24-13 on a perfect summer evening for some football, leaving Palo Alto quarterback Christoph Bono, wide receivers DaVante Adams and Maurice Williams and hard hitting linebacker Michael Cullen to walk off the field on the other end of the score for the first time in many moons.

The 37th edition of the South Bay all-star staple was just the second game held since the passing of Charlie Wedemeyer. Wedemeyer lost his 32-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—most commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease--on June 3 of 2010.

A former head football coach and teacher at Los Gatos High, the all-star game hosted by the Rotary Club of Almaden Valley was named after Wedemeyer in the late ‘80s.

The mid-July event closes the door on the past year’s football season and wets the appetite for South Bay football fans with a little pigskin action just before high school practices begin in early August.

“It’s tough to go out like this being on the wrong side of the score, but it was still a great experience to get to know a lot of great guys that I hadn’t met before,” Bono said. “It was a great experience overall. This was a great atmosphere to play in.”

Now that the high school football journey is over for the game’s participants that came from as far as Gilroy High to Palo Alto, several of the players will try and make it at the next level.

Bono will walk-on at UCLA, while Adams will attend Fresno State University.

“I’m a bulldog now,” Adams said with a grin. “It was great to hook-up with my guys one more time. Bono and I have that chemistry. We didn’t execute the way we needed to tonight, but this game was more about the experience. The experience is what I’ll remember.”

Another player getting ready to make a big college decision is Westmont tailback Alex Kamara. Kamara carried the ball six times for 28 yards on Wednesday night.

“I’m flying up to Oregon on July 30th,” Kamara said. “I’m either going to go play for Oregon State University or I’ll come back down here and play for Foothill (College). I love the brotherhood of the sport. I had so much fun being a part of this game.”

Other Patch players that suited up for the North were: Martin Aycott Jr. (Los Altos), Alex Oxo (Del Mar), Casey Mintz (Prospect), Brady Wood (Cupertino), Josh Jackson (Gunn), Nehemiah Tia (Westmont), Kyree Rhodes (Homestead), Anthony Paz (Milpitas), Grant Manley (Monta Vista), Michael Cullen (Palo Alto), Kenny Hannan (Leigh), Clay Jones (St. Francis-Mountain View), AJ Monroe (St. Francis-Mountain View), Taig McNulty (Los Gatos), Lemaki Musika (Milpitas), Sam Mapa (St. Francis-Mountain View), Ryan Blodgett (Homestead-Cupertino), Blair Gardner (Los Gatos), Eddie Carrillo (Milpitas), Brett Hughes (Mountain View), Preston Rind (Los Gatos) and Chris Chang (St. Francis-Mountain View).

Cullen earned top honors for the hit of the night, unloading on a South ball carrier near his own sideline in the second half. The high energy linebacker made a handful of high impact tackles during his final game putting on the white helmet with the green Paly ‘P’ in the middle.