Modesto JC football team flattered by its appearance on Netflix show Last Chance U
It was a beautiful sight to see.
There were conversations this week on Twitter about local sports, specifically about Modesto Junior College football.
Not about a game that was played recently or one that won’t happen until February (California Community College Athletic Association shifted the season to the spring due to the coronavirus). They were about a game that was played nearly 11 months ago.
On Tuesday, Netflix released its latest season of the popular show, “Last Chance U” , which follows a junior college football team for an entire year and shows the ups and downs of JC football. The series has eight episodes.
This year’s featured team was Laney College, the state’s defending champion, which just happened to open the season against MJC on Sept. 6, 2019.
The final 20 minutes of the first episode showcased the game, one the Pirates won, 33-20.
“Man it was awesome seeing the reaction,” said former Pirates quarterback Danny Velasquez. “All of us worked so hard in preparation for that game and for it to play out the way it did was super cool.”
In the week leading up, the Laney coaching staff mentioned multiple times how talented the Pirates were (one called them a future playoff team) and specifically highlighted Velasquez.
Velasquez said he enjoyed watching the opposing coaches and players talk about how they were going to prepare for his dual-threat ability.
They tried, but the former Turlock High graduate was the star of the game with 279 total yards and four touchdowns, including his signature hurdle over a defender for a touchdown.
“It was fun to watch and hear the Modesto Pirates in a positive light and I knew that Danny had a monster game and that there was a chance you were going to see a lot of clips of him making plays,” Pirates coach Rusty Stivers said.
While watching the episode, some of the players texted in group chats that had been pretty quiet since the season ended, Velasquez said.
“It was cool just to talk to everyone again and see what they had to say about the episode!” Velasquez said.
Stivers said the praise between the two coaching staffs is “mutual” as they have played several tightly-contested games before Laney left the Valley Conference for the Bay 6 after the 2017 season.
He also was close with Brett Haagenson, whose brother is Laney’s offensive coordinator, Jeff Haagenson.
Stivers was teammates at UC Davis with Brett Haagenson and Stivers named his third daughter, Haygen, in honor of Brett, who passed away on May 9, 2007, after a battle with cancer.
Besides the football element, the show follows the athletes off the field.
This season is different than the previous four as both East Mississippi Community College in Scooba, Mississippi (Season 1 and 2) and Independence Community College in Independence, Kansas (Seasons 3 and 4) provide housing and scholarships for their athletes while California schools do not.
Some of the featured athletes drove two hours each way to Laney and worked multiple jobs so they could play football while one player was featured at the end of the first episode sleeping in his car.
Stivers said it’s common and there are stories like that at every campus.
The win over the Eagles helped start a successful campaign for the Pirates, who were 9-3 in 2019 and lost in the NorCal Final to the College of San Mateo.
“You know you come into this as the defending national champion, and you have a bull’s-eye on your back,” a Laney commentator said after the game. “Modesto threw the dart right into the eye of the bull’s-eye.”
