Grass Got Greener for RBV, Levings

SAN DIEGO —  The Dust Bowl, they called it.

A dried-out field surrounded by a dirt track, and a few rickety wooden bleachers bandaged together by some old metal bars.

There was no grass in the middle of the field, just dry, crumbling brown dirt. Lots of it. Thankfully, there were no games there, just practices--long, hot and dusty.

Rancho Buena Vista senior tight end Shannon Levings started his varsity football career on this field three years ago.

It was at Lincoln Junior High School in Vista. Each day after school, a few dozen RBV players would climb into a bus for the mile trek to the practice field. The older guys with drivers’ licenses would ferry themselves.

Levings rode the bus. Oh, sometimes he would hitch a ride with one of the seniors. But he was just a sophomore, so he usually kept quiet and boarded the bus.

Levings was a pioneer, a starter on RBV’s first football team. He remembers those days well, particularly the days on that Lincoln Junior High School field. RBV players still joke about the Dust Bowl.

“It was kind of a bad field,” Levings said.

In those days, there wasn’t much choice. It was 1987, and a football program was being born.

Flip the Shannon Levings scrapbook ahead about three years, and the field is a whole lot different. It’s still 100 yards long, but now it’s covered with grass. Lots of grass. And look around. There are lots of seats. San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium seats more than 50,000 people.

They call it The Stadium. All season, high school football players dream of playing for the championship in The Stadium.

Saturday, RBV will be there to play Morse for the section 3-A title.

It will be the second consecutive appearance there for Levings and his teammates. RBV won the 2-A section championship last year, 21-10, over San Pasqual. This year, the Longhorns can become the first team to win a 2-A championship one year and a 3-A title the next.

And one more thing. Since last season, they’ve been practicing on a field at their own school. They’ve come a long way from Lincoln Junior High.

At 6-feet, 190-pounds, Levings isn’t a prototype tight end. He isn’t all-county; he isn’t even first-team all-league.

“He looks more like a gardener,” RBV Coach Craig Bell said. “Or like a kid in the back row struggling to get a passing grade. But his heart is probably bigger than the city of Vista.”

Levings--second-team All-Palomar League this season--has started on the varsity for as long as RBV and its football team have existed. He was a split end his sophomore season on a team that went 4-5-1, and he was a split end his junior year on the 13-0 2-A team. This year, he moved to tight end. He will finish his senior season with another trip to The Stadium.

When you read RBV’s press clippings, you won’t find his name mentioned often. He caught only five passes this season for 135 yards and three touchdowns despite starting nine of RBV’s 11 games (he missed the first two playoff games with a strained knee). But he’s a solid high school football player, a cog in a championship team.

“He isn’t real large, yet he’s blocked everybody from 280 to 140-pounders,” Bell said. “He doesn’t have great hands, but he always catches the ball. He isn’t real quick, but he manages to get free. He can’t, but he always does.

“On paper, you look at him and say, ‘Nope. No way. It can’t be done.’ But he’s one of the best things that’s happened to us.”

In an offense built around the rushing game, a tight end blocks. Markeith Ross and O.J. Hall, RBV’s two 2,000-yard running backs, get the glory. Levings gets the bruises.

He has played football for seven years. He played his freshman season at Vista High, three years of Pop Warner before that.

Now, he has reached the end of the line. There are no college scholarships waiting--there’s not much of a market for small tight ends. Levings is considering San Diego State or Cal State Long Beach. He will study art, not square-outs.

“Maybe if I were a few inches taller, I’d be thinking about playing more,” he said. “I like playing, but I will have a lot of good things to look back on.”

This week has been one of them.

“With all of the stuff that’s been happening to the team lately, everybody is telling us it’s not very often that stuff like this happens,” he said. “It’s really weird when you think about it. I’m more nervous this year than last year. It’s my senior year. I have to go out with a bang.”

Levings nearly went out with a splash during his sophomore year. He was on the Vista swimming team as a freshman, and he enjoyed it so much he was ready to give up football for water polo the next fall. He was talked out of it by Bell and RBV quarterback David Roberts.

“David Roberts ragged me, and then he told Coach Bell,” Levings said. “When we registered for sports (the summer before Levings’ sophomore year), Coach Bell said, ‘I hear you play football. But you go to swimming for a year, and we lose you to water polo.’ He said something about having water in my ears.”

So Levings changed his mind. One of his rewards comes Saturday when he makes his second trip to the stadium.

“I never played water polo before anyway,” he said. “I was just going to try out for something new.”

In three years, he has seen a bunch of guys grow from rookie status into a real team.

“Me and David played Pop Warner together,” he said. “Just yesterday, we were talking about how far we’ve come. We were talking about how important it is to make our senior season the best. Now, we have to win one more.”

And after Saturday--win or lose--Levings will close one chapter of his life. He will turn his attention to the rest of his senior year, and football will be only a memory.

Sure, he will remember those crunching blocks, lopsided victories, and even a few losses. He will remember a handful of catches and a fistful of practices. But mostly, he said, he will remember pregame moments, sitting around the locker room with friends and catching up on the week’s events.

And bottom line, he said, is that the best thing about having played three years of varsity football is all of the friends he has made.

“I figure,” he said, “maybe I’ll hang out with these guys later.”